money pt. 1

I was really intrigued by the first 50 pages of Martin Amis' Money mostly because of the writing style he used. The first person point of view, stream of consciousness style, and the fact that the John Self frequently addresses the reader really pulled me in and made me personally invested in his problems, especially his problems with his girlfriend, Selina. I'm actually still trying to really figure out who he is, what his motivations are, what his relationship with Selina is like, and why he is in New York. I love that he mentions things, like something bad he heard about Selina or the strange phone call he received at his hotel, but then tells us he'll explain it all later and waits until you almost forget to do so. This obviously made me think of so many questions about what was going on and made me want to keep reading and find out what it is he was keeping from me. Usually in novels, I've noticed that the reader is usually exposed to more information than the characters and might find out important information before the characters do, but in Money, Amis makes sure that we are always just as ignorant of what is going on as John Self is, or even more so.  Here is a passage that really grabbed my attention:

"My head is a city, and various pains have now taken up residence in various parts of my face. A gum-and-bone ache has launched a cooperative on my upper west side. Across the park, neuralgia has rented a duplex in my fashionable east seventies. Downtown, my chin throbs with lofts of jaw-loss. As for my brain, my hundreds, it's Harlem up there, expanding in the summer fires. It boils and swells. One day soon it is going to burst."

This initially grabbed my attention because I like the way he uses different areas of New York City to reference different parts of his face (he does this in other parts too, not just this). It also intrigued me because so far I have not yet gotten a real read on what he thinks of New York. It kind of seems to me like he doesn't want to be here, so the fact that he is referring to parts of his body as parts of New York was interesting, especially since it is also apparent that he does not take good care of himself at all. I'm glad that this is a continuing metaphor because it makes it so the way he views himself affects the way he sees the city, and vice versa. Overall I'm really excited to read more.