EP.7: SUCCESS, SWEET & OTHERWISE

EP.7: SUCCESS, SWEET & OTHERWISE

From Quality Lit Game by Quality Lit Game

December 9, 2025 · 56 min · Season 1 · Episode 1

About this episode

The episode discusses the themes and complexities of Martin Amis's novel 'Success'.

On the uncharacteristically consensus-driven seventh episode of a usually contentious new podcast, co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen linger on the bitter virtues and delicious vices of Martin Amis’s third novel Success . Topics discussed include brotherhood; decadence; incest; murder; suicide; the hatred of roommates; time and novelistic structure; the geography of London; yobs; toffs; doubles; inversions; sisters; exes; anatomy; day jobs; impotence; baldness; sexual despair; sexual fulfillment; Elizabeth Jane Howard; Kingsley Amis; Nabokov; Bellow; Roth; Rushdie; Ishiguro; McEwan; Hitchens; levels of darkness; nihilism; the imagination of interior spaces; lies; euphemisms; class hierarchies and their collapse; teeth and the price of fixing them; provinciality; Mid-Atlanticism; transitional novels; ambition; reputations, their deaths and rebirths; the revelation and concealment of character through voice; attraction and repulsion; prose styles quiet and loud; what it means to be tonto; and much more. Thank you for listening.

People in this episode

Hosts: Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, Christian Lorentzen

Topics covered

  • brotherhood
  • decadence
  • incest
  • murder
  • suicide
  • hatred of roommates
  • time and novelistic structure
  • geography of London
  • yobs
  • toffs
  • doubles
  • inversions
  • sisters
  • exes
  • anatomy
  • day jobs
  • impotence
  • baldness
  • sexual despair
  • sexual fulfillment

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Success

Places: London

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