"Martin Amis does brilliant, world-famous novelist and all this as well." Pass the sick bag

I was absolutely stunned when I read this over Easter. Don't think I've ever seen anything so sycophantic. OK, so I have very little time for Martin Amis. That's probably why it annoyed me so much. But still - Amis and Isabel Fonseca, "one of the most glamorous literary couples in the world"? Amis, "this writer of coruscating, polysyllabic, look-at-me prose, this writer who is one of the most famous writers alive"? (Wow, polysyllabic! How clever to be able to use words with more than one syllable!) Amis, "the sexy one, the hip one, the one who wrote the blistering satires on money and success, but did pretty well at garnering both"?

I could go on, but I fear I might be physically sick. Even Heat magazine would reject this kind of stuff for being too dumb. After the first ridiculous paragraphs, I thought ah, this is obviously some kind of super-ironic joke. She is doing a parody of a star-struck interviewer. But I fear not. She appears actually to be a star-struck interviewer. And a spectacularly brainless one at that. Oh go on then, here's a bit more: "... I'm not on his level. I haven't written a handful of the funniest, cleverest novels of the late 20th century". Ahh, poor little girl. Perhaps you should stay at home playing with puppies, rather than daring to share the same space as the most magnificent, wonderful, sexy, stylish writer around. If this is the kind of thing the Independent sees fit to print, then the sooner it goes out of business, the better. It will be no great loss.

"Tell the boys I loved them"

Very sad article in the Graun recently by Jeremy Gavron, whose Mum killed herself when he was 4. This para is especially interesting:

Observation tells us that suicide runs in families, though whether the cause is nature or nurture is harder to know. For myself, I can say that my mother's suicide has given me knowledge - unwelcome knowledge, but knowledge nonetheless. One element of that knowledge is the possibility of suicide. Like drink to an alcoholic, it is always there in the background, always an option. But another part of that knowledge is an understanding of the actuality of suicide and its consequences for those left behind.