Show Notes
Editor of Cap X Alys Denby discovered Martin Amis through a boy at university would she would later go on to marry. The first book of Amis's he leant her was Success, published in 1978.
Success juxtaposes two lives set in the same era of social and economic transformation in Britain: that of well-bred Gregory Riding and his lowly foster brother Terence Service. The story is told through a two-way mirror of Riding and Services's ego-fuelled ambition. Their contrasting projections foreshadow Amis's long-term interest in male rivalries and women who enter them, often with hilarious and horrific consequences.
Alys tells Jack the story of what Success taught her about men's idea of success, how many of Amis's male readers seriously underestimate how funny women find his prose, and how times have changed such that a book like Success would likely never receive the same plaudits today as it did from papers like The Observer.
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