Cultural Capital: Martin Amis

Here, for the record, is a list of some of the factual errors alluded to in my review of Richard Bradford's book Martin Amis: The Biography:

- "Around 1956-57 Martin's parents' marriage came close to collapse, due primarily to Hilly's affair with the journalist Henry Fairlie. Fairlie resembled the sort of character played by Leslie Phillips or Terry-Thomas in Ealing Comedies". Neither Leslie Phillips nor Terry-Thomas ... read more

In Martin Amis's memoir Experience (to my mind, his finest book), there is an account of an altercation with Salman Rushdie over the merits of the prose of Samuel Beckett. Amis writes:

I really do hate Beckett's prose: every sentence is an assault on my ear . . . Feeling my father in me now (as well as the couple of hundred glasses of wine consumed at the party we had ... read more

Reviews of the much-hyped new Amis novel comment on its preoccupation with sex, coupled with multiple allusions to literary classics. Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times and Leo Robson in the New Statesman are in agreement over the decline of Amis's high stylisation, which has lost its "scabrous zest" (Kemp), while his "voice . . . lacks the power it had in earlier ... read more