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Night train''s dark lesson.

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Abstract

Upon occasion evaluated dismissively as mere pop novel, and thus unworthy of serious academic response, Martin Amis's Night Train nonetheless provides a remarkably effective tool for introducing postmodernist notions in general literature classrooms.

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Commonplace in theory has been the assumption that novels allow for a particularly emphatic experience since they are read in waves, cycles, over multiple sittings, and as a developing whole. D. H. Lawrence aptly surmised novels allow readers not merely to observe but somehow to "develop an instinct for life" (538). His notion, I believe, yet obtains, even in our own brevity-besotted era. What is more, simply because of the genre's demand for negotiation[]in both time and mind[]the novel remains a handy classroom tool. As an instance, I have found assigning Martin Amis's short novel Night Train an effective means of introducing postmodern notions to students registered in survey courses[]many of these students having arrived in search of general humanities credit. The little book's demand that students pretend to live the narrative allows me to invite them, in turn, to approach notions sufficiently complex that they might otherwise, I fear, flee.

Debate persists regarding appropriate definitions for the postmodern. I try to begin with basics. For example, critics do seem to agree that at the heart of the matter lies, what one recent handbook names succinctly "a general skepticism towards previous distinctions and certainties" (Brooker 175). Mark Currie argues that, at its heart, the postmodern recognizes that previously respected meta-narratives, or all-encompassing cultural tales, are merely narratives (109). Madan Sarup reminds that this line of thinking usually is directly allied with the vocabulary and theorizing of Jean-Francois Lyotard, who warns that "(older) master narratives no longer function" to unify contemporary society, having lost their power in the explosion of political and technological complexities that dominated the century just closed (137). As a result, Currie observes, postmodern cultures experience an "elevation of the particular," of the "fragmentary little narrative," and a lively countering of universal ideologies with politics that are local (109). Lyotard sums, for the postmodern world the "grand narrative has lost its credibility" (37).

Focusing on one aspect of such a diverse process as the postmodern has risks. Moreover, theorists like Hans Bertens have exposed the difficulties in applying Lyotard's thinking without fully acknowledging its philosophical context (see, e.g., Bertens' chapter "The 1980s: Theorizing the Postmodern Condition"). However, in my general literature classes, this dissolution of the metanarrative has proven a fine place at least to start, and Amis's novel has been my wedge in the door. At first blush, Night Train appears a sort of inviting crossbreed, joining the traditional procedural novel with characters...

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