Money excerpt and analysis

Something that I don’t find myself questioning is the plot of Money.  As with Ballard’s Crash, Money is less concerned with plot, a more so with voice.  John Self’s voice is the driving force behind the Money: it gives the story texture and momentum; it is, in and of itself, a character in the story.  Furthermore, because Money is such a close first person narration, we get to know so much about Self even though nothing exciting may be happening exteriorly.  For example, in the following passage, Self is about to get his teeth examined, yet he couldn’t be further away: contemplating his behavior, Selina, and his happiness.

Deep down, I’m a pretty happy guy.  Happiness is the relief of pain, they say, and so I guess I’m a pretty happy guy.  The relief of pain happens to me pretty frequently.  But then so does pain.  That’s why I get lots of that relief they talk about, and all that happiness. (74)

Initially, I found the content to be most striking.  It reveals so much about Self: not only his cognition but his insecurities and desires.  His logic is interesting: he feels that because he suffers so much and is constantly recovering from that pain, that he is happier than most, because one derives happiness by recovering from pain.  But then I broke it down and tried to figure out why this particular passage worked structurally. 

Martin Amis is a master of controlling the pace of the story.  One of the ways he does this is by using short and choppy sentence structures.  The excerpt above could easy be read quickly: the alliteration (repetition of sounds) and repetitive of words invite a reader to skim through the sentences.  But this does not happen.  Why? 

Because Amis uses punctuation purposefully.  Amis made a decision to punctuate certain moments with periods instead of with commas, and this forces the reader to pause, to wait, to contemplate.  “But then so does the pain” could easily have been connected via conjunction, but it was not.  This is intentional, as it forces the reader to slow down.

In addition, the content of the excerpt influences the way we, the readers, interact with and understand Money.  The five sentences above are Self’s ruminations.  Every sentence informs the last.  In other words, each sentence only makes sense when considering the logic of the previous.