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Martin Amis
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Sir Martin Louis Amis FRSL[1] (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and was twice listed for the Booker Prize (shortlisted in 1991 for Time's Arrow and longlisted in 2003 for Yellow Dog). Amis was a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing from 2007 until 2011.[2] In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.[3]

Key Information

Amis's work centres on the excesses of late capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirised through grotesque caricature. He was portrayed by some literary critics as a master of what The New York Times called "the new unpleasantness.”[4] He was inspired by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis. Amis influenced many British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith.[5]

His stylistic innovations – marked by ironic detachment, baroque sentence structures, and postmodern narrative experimentation – shaped a generation of British writers.[6] His novels are often credited with revitalizing the comic novel in late 20th-century Britain.[7]

Amis died from oesophageal cancer at his house in Florida in 2023.[8] A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times after his death: "To come of reading age in the last three decades of the 20th century – from the oil embargo through the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the way to 9/11 – was to live, it now seems clear, in the Amis Era."[9]

Early life

[edit]

Amis was born on 25 August 1949 at Radcliffe Maternity Hospital in Oxford, England.[10] His father, novelist Kingsley Amis, was the son of a mustard manufacturer's clerk from Clapham, London;[4] his mother, Kingston upon Thames-born Hilary ("Hilly") Ann Bardwell,[11] was the daughter of a Ministry of Agriculture civil servant.[n 1] He had an elder brother, Philip; his younger sister, Sally – for whose birth Philip Larkin composed "Born Yesterday"[13] – died in 2000 at the age of 46. His parents married in 1948 in Oxford and divorced when Amis was 12 years old;[14] following the separation, Hilly and the children decamped to Mallorca, Spain, where they stayed for a while with Robert Graves.[15]

Amis attended a number of schools in the 1950s and 1960s, including an international school in Mallorca,[16] Bishop Gore School in Swansea, and Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, where he was described by one headmaster as "unusually unpromising".[5] The acclaim that followed his father's first novel Lucky Jim (1954) sent the family to Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, where his father lectured.[17]

In 1965, at the age of 15, Amis played John Thornton in the film version of Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica.[17] At 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) tall, he referred to himself as a "short-arse" while a teenager.[18] His father said Amis was not a bookish child and "read nothing but science fiction till he was fifteen or sixteen".[19] Amis said he had read little more than comic books until his stepmother, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to Jane Austen, whom he often named as his earliest influence.[20][16] He graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, with a congratulatory first in English, "the sort where you are called in for a viva and the examiners tell you how much they enjoyed reading your papers".[21]

After graduating from Oxford in 1971, Amis wrote reviews of science-fiction novels under the nom de plume "Henry Tilney" (a nod to Austen) in a column for The Observer.[22][23][n 2] He found an entry-level job at The Times Literary Supplement by the summer of 1972.[25] At the age of 27, he became literary editor of the New Statesman, where he cited writer and editor John Gross as his role model,[26] and met Christopher Hitchens, then a feature writer for The Observer, who remained Amis's closest friend until his death in 2011.[27]

Early writing

[edit]

According to Amis, his father was deeply critical of certain aspects of his work. "I can point out the exact place where he stopped [reading Amis's novel Money] and sent it twirling through the air; that's where the character named Martin Amis comes in." Kingsley complained: "Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself."[4]

His first novel The Rachel Papers (1973) – written at Lemmons, the family home in north London – won the Somerset Maugham Award.[28][29] It tells the story of a bright, egotistical teenager and his relationship with the eponymous girlfriend in the year before going to university;[30] It has been described as "autobiographical"[27][19] and was made into an unsuccessful 1989 film.[31]

Dead Babies (1975),[30] more flippant in tone, chronicles a few days in the lives of some friends who convene in a country house to take drugs.[32] A number of Amis's writerly characteristics show up here for the first time: mordant black humour, obsession with the zeitgeist, authorial intervention, a character subjected to sadistically humorous misfortunes and humiliations, and a defiant casualness ("my attitude has been, I don't know much about science, but I know what I like"). A film adaptation was made in 2000, which Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw described as "boring, embarrassing, nasty and stupid – and not in a good way".[33][34]

Success (1977) told the story of two foster-brothers, Gregory Riding and Terry Service, and their rising and falling fortunes. This was the first example of Amis's fondness for symbolically "pairing" characters in his novels, which has been a recurrent feature in his fiction since (Martin Amis and Martina Twain in Money, Richard Tull and Gwyn Barry in The Information, and Jennifer Rockwell and Mike Hoolihan in Night Train).[35] During this period, because producer Stanley Donen detected an affinity between his story and the "debauched and nihilistic nature" of Dead Babies,[36] Amis was invited to work on the screenplay for the science-fiction film Saturn 3 (1980).[37] The film was far from a critical success,[38][39] but Amis was able to draw on the experience for his fifth novel, Money, published in 1984.[40]

Other People: A Mystery Story (1981) – the title is a reference to Sartre's Huis Clos – is about a young woman coming out of a coma. It was a transitional novel in that it was the first of Amis's to show authorial intervention in the narrative voice, and highly artificed language in the heroine's descriptions of everyday objects, which was said to be influenced by his contemporary Craig Raine's "Martian" school of poetry.[37] It was also the first novel Amis published after committing to being a full-time writer in 1980.[41]

Main career

[edit]

1980s and 1990s

[edit]

Amis's best-known novels are Money, London Fields and The Information, commonly referred to as his "London Trilogy".[42] Although the books share little in terms of plot and narrative, they all examine the lives of middle-aged men, exploring the sordid, debauched, and post-apocalyptic undercurrents of life in late 20th-century Britain. Amis's London protagonists are anti-heroes: they engage in questionable behaviour, are passionate iconoclasts, and strive to escape the apparent banality and futility of their lives. Amis wrote, "The world is like a human being. And there's a scientific name for it, which is entropy – everything tends towards disorder. From an ordered state to a disordered state."[43]

Money (1984, subtitled A Suicide Note) is a first-person narrative by John Self, advertising man and would-be film director, who is "addicted to the twentieth century". "[A] satire of Thatcherite amorality and greed",[44] the novel relates a series of black comedic episodes as Self flies back and forth across the Atlantic, in crass and seemingly chaotic pursuit of personal and professional success. Time included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels of 1923 to 2005.[45] On 11 November 2009, The Guardian reported that the BBC had adapted Money for television as part of its early 2010 schedule for BBC 2.[46] Nick Frost played John Self, and the adaptation also featured Vincent Kartheiser, Emma Pierson and Jerry Hall.[46] The adaptation was a "two-part drama" and was written by Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford.[46] After the transmission of the first of the two parts, Amis was quick to praise the adaptation, stating: "All the performances [were] without weak spots. I thought Nick Frost was absolutely extraordinary as John Self. He fills the character. It's a very unusual performance in that he's very funny, he's physically comic, but he's also strangely graceful, a pleasure to watch ... It looked very expensive even though it wasn't and that's a feat ... The earlier script I saw was disappointing [but] they took it back and worked on it and it's hugely improved. My advice was to use more of the language of the novel, the dialogue, rather than making it up."[47]

Martin Amis talks about creative writing, his father and PR for books. (Interview 1990)

London Fields (1989), Amis's longest and "most London" novel,[48] describes the encounters between three main characters in London in 1999, as a climate disaster approaches. The characters have typically Amisian names and broad caricatured qualities: Keith Talent, the lower-class crook with a passion for darts; Nicola Six, a femme fatale who is determined to be murdered; and upper-class Guy Clinch, "the fool, the foil, the poor foal" who is destined to come between the other two.[49]

The book was controversially omitted from the Booker Prize shortlist in 1989, because two panel members, Maggie Gee and Helen McNeil, disliked Amis's treatment of his female characters. "It was an incredible row," Martyn Goff, the Booker's director, told The Independent. "Maggie and Helen felt that Amis treated women appallingly in the book. That is not to say they thought books which treated women badly couldn't be good, they simply felt that the author should make it clear he didn't favour or bless that sort of treatment. Really, there were only two of them and they should have been outnumbered as the other three were in agreement, but such was the sheer force of their argument and passion that they won. David [Lodge] has told me he regrets it to this day, he feels he failed somehow by not saying, 'It's two against three, Martin's on the list'."[50] A 2018 film of London Fields, on which Amis worked as a scriptwriter, suffered from a problematic production process and was critically and commercially unsuccessful.[51]

Amis's 1991 novel, the short Time's Arrow, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Notable for its backwards narrative, including dialogue in reverse, the novel is the autobiography of a Nazi concentration camp doctor. The reversal of the arrow of time in the novel, a technique borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) and Philip K. Dick's Counter-Clock World (1967), is a narrative style that itself functions in Amis's hands as commentary on the Nazis' rationalisation of death and destruction as forces of creation with the resurrection of Nordic mythology in the service of German nation-building.[52]

The Information (1995) was notable not so much for its critical success, but for the scandals surrounding its publication. The enormous advance of £500,000 (almost US$800,000) demanded and subsequently obtained by Amis[53][54] for the novel attracted what the author described as "an Eisteddfod of hostility" from writers and critics[55] after he abandoned his long-serving agent, Pat Kavanagh, to be represented by the Harvard-educated Andrew Wylie.[56] The split was by no means amicable; it created a rift between Amis and his long-time friend, Julian Barnes, who was married to Kavanagh. According to Amis's autobiographical collection Experience (2000), he and Barnes had not resolved their differences.[57] The Information itself deals with the relationship between a pair of British writers of fiction: one, a spectacularly successful purveyor of "airport novels", is envied by his friend, an equally unsuccessful writer of philosophical and generally abstruse prose.[58]

Amis's 1997 short novel Night Train is narrated by Mike Hoolihan, a tough woman detective with a man's name. The story revolves around the suicide of her boss's young, beautiful, and seemingly happy daughter. Night Train is written in the language of American 'noir' crime fiction, but subverts expectations of an exciting investigation and neat, satisfying ending.[59] Many reviewers subjected it to negative criticism, e.g., John Updike "hated" it, but others such as Jason Crowley writing in Prospect have applauded his attempt to write in an American idiom[60] and Beata Piątek wanted "to discuss Night Train as more than a clumsy spoof detective story and argue that it is an intellectual and intertextual joke that Amis plays on the critics who compare him with the American writers and criticise him for his sexist portrayal of women."[61] The novel found other defenders too, notably in Janis Bellow, wife of Amis's mentor and friend Saul Bellow.[62] It was adapted for the cinema in 2018 as Out of Blue.[63]

2000s

[edit]

The 2000s were Amis's least productive decade in terms of full-length fiction since starting in the 1970s (two novels in ten years), while his non-fiction work saw a dramatic increase in volume (three published works including a memoir, a hybrid of semi-memoir and amateur political history, and another journalism collection). In 2000, Amis published the memoir Experience, largely concerned with the relationship between the author and his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis. Amis describes his reunion with his daughter, Delilah Seale, resulting from an affair in the 1970s, whom he did not see until she was 19. Amis also discusses, at length, the murder of his cousin Lucy Partington by Fred West when she was 21.[64] The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography.[65]

In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a devastating history of the crimes of Stalin and the denial that they received from many writers and academics in the West. The book precipitated a literary controversy for its approach to the material and for its attack on Amis's long-time friend Christopher Hitchens. Amis accused Hitchens – who was once a committed leftist – of sympathy for Stalin and communism. Although Hitchens wrote a vituperative response to the book in The Atlantic, his friendship with Amis emerged unchanged: in response to a reporter's question, Amis responded, "We never needed to make up. We had an adult exchange of views, mostly in print, and that was that (or, more exactly, that goes on being that). My friendship with the Hitch has always been perfectly cloudless. It is a love whose month is ever May."[66]

In 2003, Amis published Yellow Dog, his first novel in six years. The book received mixed reviews, with some critics proclaiming the novel a return to form, but its reception was mostly negative.[67] The novelist Tibor Fischer denounced it: "Yellow Dog isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It's not-knowing-where-to-look bad. I was reading my copy on the Tube and I was terrified someone would look over my shoulder ... It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating."[68] Amis was unrepentant about the novel and its reaction, calling Yellow Dog "among my best three". He gave his own explanation for the novel's critical failure: "No one wants to read a difficult literary novel or deal with a prose style which reminds them how thick they are. There's a push towards egalitarianism, making writing more chummy and interactive, instead of a higher voice, and that's what I go to literature for."[69] Yellow Dog "controversially made the 13-book longlist for the 2003 Booker Prize, despite some scathing reviews", but failed to win the award.[70] Following the harsh reviews afforded to Yellow Dog, Amis relocated from London to the beach resort of José Ignacio, Uruguay, with his family for two years, during which time he worked on his next novel away from the glare and pressures of the London literary scene.[71]

In September 2006, upon his return from Uruguay, Amis published his eleventh novel. House of Meetings, a short work, continued the author's crusade against the crimes of Stalinism and also focused some consideration on the state of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The novel centres on the relationship between two brothers incarcerated in a prototypical Siberian gulag who, prior to their deportation, had loved the same woman.[72] House of Meetings saw some better critical notices than Yellow Dog had received three years before,[73] but there were still some reviewers who felt that Amis's fiction work had considerably declined in quality.[74] Despite the praise for House of Meetings, once again Amis was overlooked for the Booker Prize longlist. According to a piece in The Independent, the novel "was originally to have been collected alongside two short stories – one, a disturbing account of the life of a body-double in the court of Saddam Hussein; the other, the imagined final moments of Muhammad Atta, the leader of the 11 September attacks – but late in the process, Amis decided to jettison both from the book."[75] The same article asserts that Amis had recently abandoned a novella, The Unknown Known (inspired by a phase used by Donald Rumsfeld), in which Muslim terrorists unleash a horde of compulsive rapists on Greeley, Colorado.[75][n 3] Instead he continued to work on a follow-up full novel that he had started working on in 2003:[77]

The novel I'm working on is blindingly autobiographical, but with an Islamic theme. It's called A Pregnant Widow, because at the end of a revolution you don't have a newborn child, you have a pregnant widow. And the pregnant widow in this novel is feminism. Which is still in its second trimester. The child is nowhere in sight yet. And I think it has several more convulsions to undergo before we'll see the child.[75]

The new novel took some considerable time to write: in 2008, Amis made the "terrible decision" to abandon his first version and a much-different Pregnant Widow was not published until 2010.[78] Instead, Amis's last published work of the 2000s was the 2008 journalism collection The Second Plane, a collection which compiled Amis's many writings on the events of 9/11 and the subsequent major events and cultural issues resulting from the War on Terror. The reception to The Second Plane was decidedly mixed, with some reviewers finding its tone intelligent and well reasoned, while others believed it to be overly stylised and lacking in authoritative knowledge of key areas under consideration. The most common consensus was that the two short stories included were the weakest point of the collection. The collection sold relatively well but was not well received, particularly in the United States.[79]

2010s and 2020s

[edit]

In 2010, after a period of writing, rewriting, editing, and revision dating back to 2003, "by far the longest writing-time of all [his] books",[77] Amis published The Pregnant Widow, a long novel concerned with the sexual revolution.[80] Its title is based on a quote from Alexander Herzen: "The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that what the departing world leaves behind it is not an heir but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass."[81]

The first public reading of the then just completed version of The Pregnant Widow occurred on 11 May 2009 as part of the Norwich and Norfolk festival.[82] At this reading, according to the coverage of the event for the Writers' Centre Norwich by Katy Carr, "the writing shows a return to comic form, as the narrator muses on the indignities of facing the mirror as an ageing man, in a prelude to a story set in Italy in 1970, looking at the effect of the sexual revolution on personal relationships. The sexual revolution was the moment, as Amis sees it, that love became divorced from sex. He said he started to write the novel autobiographically, but then concluded that real life was too different from fiction and difficult to drum into novel shape, so he had to rethink the form."[82]

The story is set in a castle owned by a cheese tycoon in Campania, Italy, where Keith Nearing, a 20-year-old English literature student; his girlfriend, Lily; and her friend, Scheherazade, are on holiday during the hot summer of 1970, the year that Amis says "something was changing in the world of men and women".[83][84] The narrator is Keith's superego, or conscience, in 2009. Keith's sister, Violet, is based on Amis's own sister, Sally, described by Amis as one of the revolution's most spectacular victims.[85]

Published in a whirl of publicity the likes of which Amis had not received for a novel since the publication of The Information in 1995, The Pregnant Widow was met by searing criticism, accusations of sexism, and guessing the real-world identity of its characters.[86] Despite a vast amount of coverage, some positive reviews, and a general expectation that Amis's time for recognition had come, the novel was overlooked for the 2010 Man Booker Prize longlist. In 2010, Martin Amis was named GQ writer of the year.[87]

In 2012 Amis published Lionel Asbo: State of England. The novel is centred on the lives of Desmond Pepperdine and his uncle Lionel Asbo, a voracious lout and persistent convict; for the benefit of his US readers, Amis explained the origin of the latter's surname in an interview with NPR.[88] It is set against the fictional borough of Diston Town, a grotesque version of modern-day Britain under the reign of celebrity culture, and follows the dramatic events in the lives of both characters: Desmond's gradual erudition and maturing; and Lionel's fantastic lottery win of almost £140 million. Much to the interest of the press, Amis announced that the character of Lionel Asbo's eventual girlfriend, the ambitious glamour model and poet "Threnody" (quotation marks included), had been created to honour the British celebrity Jordan,[89] whom he had a few years earlier summed up as "two bags of silicone".[90] In an interview with Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, Amis said the novel was "not a frowning examination of England" but a comedy based on a "fairytale world", adding that Lionel Asbo: State of England was not an attack on the country, insisting he was "proud of being English" and viewed the nation with affection.[91] Reviews, once again, were mixed.

Amis's 2014 novel The Zone of Interest concerns the Holocaust, his second work of fiction to tackle the subject after Time's Arrow.[92][93] In it, Amis endeavoured to imagine the social and domestic lives of the Nazi officers who ran the death camps, and the effect their indifference to human suffering had on their general psychology. It was shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction[94] and a 2023 film, "loosely based" on the novel, premiered to acclaim at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Prix.[95][96]

In December 2016, Amis announced two new projects. The first, a collection of journalism, titled The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986–2016, was published in October 2017.[97] The second project, a new untitled novel which Amis was working on, was an autobiographical novel about three key literary figures in his life: the poet Philip Larkin, American novelist Saul Bellow, and noted public intellectual Christopher Hitchens.[97] In an interview with livemint.com, Amis said of the novel-in-progress, "I'm writing an autobiographical novel that I've been trying to write for 15 years. It's not so much about me, it's about three other writers – a poet, a novelist and an essayist ... and since I started trying to write it, Larkin died in 1985, Bellow died in 2005, and Hitch died in 2011, and that gives me a theme, death, and it gives me a bit more freedom, and fiction is freedom. It's hard going but the one benefit is that I have the freedom to invent things. I don't have them looking over my shoulder anymore."[98] The finished product, Inside Story – his first novel in six years – was published in September 2020.[99]

Other work

[edit]

Amis released two collections of short stories (Einstein's Monsters and Heavy Water) and five volumes of collected journalism and criticism (The Moronic Inferno, Visiting Mrs Nabokov, The War Against Cliché, The Second Plane and The Rub of Time).[37] While he was writing Money, he wrote a guide to arcade video games of the 1970s and 1980s, Invasion of the Space Invaders.[100][101]

Amis regularly appeared on television and radio discussion and debate programmes and contributed book reviews and articles to newspapers. His wife Isabel Fonseca released her debut novel Attachment in 2009 and two of Amis's children, his son Louis and his daughter Fernanda, have also been published in Standpoint magazine and The Guardian, respectively.[102]

University of Manchester

[edit]

In February 2007, Amis was appointed as a professor of creative writing at the Manchester Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, where he started in September 2007. He ran postgraduate seminars, and participated in four public events each year, including a two-week summer school.[103]

Of his position, Amis said: "I may be acerbic in how I write but ... I would find it very difficult to say cruel things to [students] in such a vulnerable position. I imagine I'll be surprisingly sweet and gentle with them."[103] He predicted that the experience might inspire him to write a new book, while adding sardonically: "A campus novel written by an elderly novelist, that's what the world wants."[103] It was revealed that the salary paid to Amis by the university was £80,000 a year in return for 28 contracted hours.[104][105] The Manchester Evening News broke the story saying that according to his contract Amis was paid £3,000 an hour for 28 contracted hours a year teaching. The claim was echoed in headlines in several national papers.[104]

In January 2011, it was announced that Amis would be stepping down from his university position at the end of the current academic year.[106] Of his time teaching creative writing at the University of Manchester, Amis was quoted as saying, "teaching creative writing at Manchester has been a joy" and that he had "become very fond of my colleagues, especially John McAuliffe and Ian McGuire".[107] He added that he "loved doing all the reading and the talking; and I very much took to the Mancunians. They are a witty and tolerant contingent".[107] Amis was succeeded in this position by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín in September 2011.[107]

From October 2007 to July 2011, at the University of Manchester's Whitworth Hall and Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, Amis regularly engaged in public discussions with other experts on literature and various topics (21st-century literature, terrorism, religion, Philip Larkin, science, Britishness, suicide, sex, ageing, his 2010 novel The Pregnant Widow, violence, film, the short story, and America).[108]

Personal life

[edit]

Amis married the American academic Antonia Phillips in 1984 and they had two sons together. Towards the end of that marriage, he met the writer Isabel Fonseca, whom he married in 1996; together they had two daughters.[17] He became a grandfather in 2008;[109][110] he later described his new status as "like getting a telegram from the mortuary".[27]

From 2004 to 2006, he lived with his second family in Uruguay,[103] where Fonseca's father had been born.[111] Upon returning, he said, "Some strange things have happened, it seems to me, in my absence. I didn't feel like I was getting more rightwing when I was in Uruguay, but when I got back I felt that I had moved quite a distance to the right while staying in the same place." He reported that he was disquieted by what he saw as increasingly undisguised hostility towards Israel and the United States.[103]

In late 2010, Amis bought a brownstone residence in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, US, although it was uncertain how much time he would be spending there.[112] In 2012, Amis wrote in The New Republic that he was "moving house" from Camden Town in London to Cobble Hill.[113] He also had a residence in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, United States.[27]

Death

[edit]

Amis died from oesophageal cancer at his home in Florida on 19 May 2023. Like his father, he died at age 73.[27][114] Amis was a life-long smoker.[115]

Amis was knighted in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours for services to literature, and the knighthood was backdated to the day before his death.[116]

Views

[edit]
Amis conversing with Ian Buruma about Monsters at the 2007 New Yorker Festival[117]

Writing

[edit]

On writing, Amis said in 2014: "I think of writing as more mysterious as I get older, not less mysterious. The whole process is very weird ... It is very spooky."[118]

Interviewed by Sebastian Faulks on BBC television in 2011, he said that unless he sustained a brain injury, it was unlikely he would write a children's book: "The idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable ... I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write."[119] The "brain injury" remark caused opprobrium among various children's authors, although the poet Roger McGough wagered that "if I gave him £100 to write a children's book I bet he'd do a good one".[120]

Nuclear proliferation

[edit]

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Amis was a strong critic of nuclear proliferation. His collection of five stories on this theme, Einstein's Monsters, began with a long essay entitled "Thinkability" in which he set out his views on the issue,[121] writing: "Nuclear weapons repel all thought, perhaps because they can end all thought."[122]

Geopolitics

[edit]

In comments on the BBC in October 2006, Amis expressed his view that North Korea was the more dangerous of the two remaining members of the Axis of Evil, but that Iran was Britain's "natural enemy", suggesting that Britain should not feel bad about having "helped Iraq scrape a draw with Iran" in the Iran–Iraq War because a "revolutionary and rampant Iran would have been a much more destabilising presence".[123]

Electoral politics

[edit]

In June 2008, Amis endorsed the candidacy of Barack Obama for president of the United States, stating: "The reason I hope for Obama is that he alone has the chance to reposition America's image in the world."[124] When briefly interviewed by the BBC during its coverage of the 2012 United States presidential election, Amis displayed a change in tone, stating that he was "depressed and frightened" by the US election, rather than excited.[125] Blaming a "deep irrationality of the American people" for the apparent narrow gap between the candidates, Amis said the Republican Party had swung so far to the right that former president Ronald Reagan would be considered a "pariah" by the present party – and invited viewers to imagine a Conservative Party in the UK that had moved to the right so much that it disowned Margaret Thatcher. He said: "Tax cuts for the rich, there's not a democracy on earth where that would be mentioned!"[125]

In 2015, Amis criticised Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in an article for The Sunday Times, describing him as "humourless" and "under-educated".[126] In the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, Amis said that United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union was a "self-inflicted wound" that had left him "depressed".[127]

Islam and Islamism

[edit]

On the day after the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot came to light, Amis was interviewed by The Times Magazine about community relations in Britain and the alleged threat from Muslims; he was quoted as saying: "What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children ... It's a huge dereliction on their part."[128]

The interview provoked immediate controversy, much of it played out in the pages of The Guardian newspaper.[129] The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, in the 2007 introduction to his work Ideology, singled out and attacked Amis for this particular quote, saying that this view is "[n]ot the ramblings of a British National Party thug, ... but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world". In a highly critical Guardian article, entitled "The absurd world of Martin Amis", satirist Chris Morris likened Amis to the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza (who was jailed for inciting racial hatred in 2006), suggesting that both men employed "mock erudition, vitriol and decontextualised quotes from the Koran" to incite hatred.[130]

Elsewhere, Amis was especially careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islamism, stating: "We can begin by saying, not only that we respect Muhammad, but that no serious person could fail to respect Muhammad – a unique and luminous historical being ... Judged by the continuities he was able to set in motion, Muhammad has strong claims to being the most extraordinary man who ever lived... But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination ... Naturally we respect Islam. But we do not respect Islamism, just as we respect Muhammad and do not respect Mohamed Atta."[131]

On terrorism, Amis wrote that he suspected "there exists on our planet a kind of human being who will become a Muslim in order to pursue suicide-mass murder", and added: "I will never forget the look on the gatekeeper's face, at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, when I suggested, perhaps rather airily, that he skip some calendric prohibition and let me in anyway. His expression, previously cordial and cold, became a mask; and the mask was saying that killing me, my wife, and my children was something for which he now had warrant."[132]

His views on radical Islamism earned him the contentious sobriquet "Blitcon" (British literary neoconservative) from Ziauddin Sardar, who labelled Amis as such in the New Statesman.[133][n 4]

Euthanasia

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Amis aroused a new controversy in 2010 with his comments regarding euthanasia during an interview, when he said that he thought Britain faced a "civil war" between the young and the elderly in society within 10 or 15 years, and called for public euthanasia "booths". Of the geriatric cohort, he declared: "They'll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. ... there should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal."[134][n 5]

Agnosticism

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In 2006, Amis said that "agnostic is the only respectable position, simply because our ignorance of the universe is so vast" that atheism is "premature". He added that "there's not going to be any kind of anthropomorphic entity at all", but the universe is "so incredibly complicated" and "so over our heads" that we cannot exclude the existence of "an intelligence" behind it.[136]

In 2010, Amis said: "I'm an agnostic, which is the only rational position. It's not because I feel a God or think that anything resembling the banal God of religion will turn up. But I think that atheism sounds like a proof of something, and it's incredibly evident that we are nowhere near intelligent enough to understand the universe ... Writers are above all individualists, and above all writing is freedom, so they will go off in all sorts of directions. I think it does apply to the debate about religion, in that it's a crabbed novelist who pulls the shutters down and says, there's no other thing. Don't use the word God: but something more intelligent than us ... If we can't understand it, then it's formidable. And we understand very little."[137]

Bibliography

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Themes and style

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Martin Amis's fiction is characterized by dark satire, metafictional techniques, and a fascination with cultural decadence. His protagonists often wrestle with identity, self-destruction, and moral vacuity, reflecting Amis's preoccupation with entropy and decline in modern Western society.[138] His writing is known for its linguistic flair—featuring neologisms, irony, and elaborate sentence constructions—and for a tone that oscillates between comic absurdity and existential seriousness. Critics have grouped his novels Money, London Fields, and The Information into a “London Trilogy,” defined by their scathing portrayal of consumerism, gender politics, and creative envy.[139]

Notes

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References

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Further reading

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Martin Amis

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Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satirical novels dissected the excesses and absurdities of modern consumer society and human frailty. Born in to the novelist and Hilary Bardwell, he graduated from , and began his career as a literary editor at the and Times Literary Supplement. Amis garnered critical acclaim with his debut novel (1973), which secured the Somerset Maugham Award, and went on to produce influential works such as (1984), (1989), and Time's Arrow (1991, shortlisted for the ). Later honored with the for his memoir (2000) and knighted posthumously in 2023 for services to literature, his oeuvre encompassed fourteen novels, short stories, and non-fiction essays probing themes of mortality, violence, and moral decay. Amis's public commentary often courted controversy, particularly his unapologetic critiques of Islamist extremism and its incompatibility with liberal values, which he distinguished from itself while facing charges of prejudice from academic and media quarters prone to equivocation on such matters.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Martin Louis Amis was born on 25 August 1949 in Oxford, England, the second child of novelist Kingsley William Amis and Hilary Ann Bardwell. His older brother, Philip, was born in 1947, and his younger sister, Sally, followed later; Sally died in 2000. The family background was literary, with Kingsley Amis achieving early success as a novelist and poet, notably with Lucky Jim in 1954, which reflected his academic milieu. The Amises relocated to , , in 1949, where Kingsley took up a lectureship in English at what is now , remaining there until 1961. This period encompassed Martin's early childhood, during which the family's domestic life was strained by Kingsley's extramarital affairs and heavy drinking, contributing to marital discord. His parents separated in 1961, when Martin was 12, with the divorce finalized in 1965 after Kingsley married novelist . Post-separation, Hilary Bardwell and the children initially relocated briefly, but Martin ultimately chose to reside primarily with his father and stepmother, Howard, whose influence he later credited with fostering his literary interests amid the household's intellectual environment. This arrangement exposed him to a stimulating yet tumultuous domestic sphere, marked by the clatter of typewriters and ongoing familial tensions from the divorce's aftermath. The instability of these years, including multiple school changes, shaped a childhood characterized by mobility and the shadow of parental conflict.

Schooling and Early Influences

Amis's peripatetic childhood, shaped by his Kingsley Amis's burgeoning literary and associated travels, led him to attend 14 schools across the , , and the before university. At age 12, following family relocation, he enrolled at near his father's new residence. Academic performance remained lackluster through much of his secondary education, with Amis later recounting deliberate underachievement until he set his sights on admission, prompting rigorous self-study in Latin and to meet entrance requirements. In 1969, Amis matriculated at , to read English, under the tutelage of Jonathan Wordsworth, a descendant of the Romantic poet . He graduated in 1971 with first-class honours, achieving the third-highest mark in his cohort, a distinction that facilitated early entry into literary and journalistic circles. Literary influences during this formative period centered prominently on his father's oeuvre, as evidenced by Amis carrying a copy of Kingsley's to boarding school in , where it served as both talisman and early exposure to satirical prose techniques. Concurrently, Amis drew inspiration from American novelists and , whose stylistic precision and narrative innovation—Bellow's urban realism and Nabokov's linguistic acrobatics—shaped his emergent aesthetic, distinct yet indebted to paternal precedents. These figures supplanted broader youthful disaffection, channeling Amis toward a in amid the era's countercultural currents.

Literary Career

Early Publications and Debut Works

Martin Amis's entry into occurred with the publication of his debut novel, , in 1973 by . Composed when Amis was 23 years old, the narrative centers on Charles Highway, a intellectually voracious 19-year-old whose entries chronicle his hypochondria, literary fixations, and calculated of an older woman named Rachel. The novel garnered immediate recognition, securing the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974 for its assured prose and satirical edge on adolescent and sexual ambition. This prize, established to support young British writers under 35, had previously been awarded to Amis's father, , for his own debut Lucky Jim two decades earlier, highlighting a familial literary lineage. Critics praised the work's verbal dexterity and unflinching portrayal of youthful entitlement, positioning Amis as an emerging stylist capable of blending humor with psychological acuity. Prior to The Rachel Papers, Amis had not published any fiction, though his editorial roles at outlets like involved reviewing contemporary , which honed his analytical voice. The debut's success, evidenced by its award and sales, established Amis's reputation for prose marked by linguistic innovation and a detached yet vivid examination of personal failings.

1970s and 1980s Breakthrough

Amis's debut novel, , appeared in 1973 from , depicting the neurotic diary entries and sexual schemes of a seventeen-year-old aspiring to amid family tensions. The work secured the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974 for fiction by authors under thirty-five, though initial reviews noted its precocious style mixed with uneven execution. Subsequent novels Dead Babies (1975) and Success (1978) explored themes of decadence and sibling rivalry through satirical lenses, establishing Amis's penchant for dark humor and social observation. During this period, he held editorial roles, starting as a reader at the Times Literary Supplement in 1971, transitioning to the Times in 1974, and assuming the literary editorship of the New Statesman from 1977 to 1979, where he commissioned pieces from figures like Christopher Hitchens. These positions honed his critical voice while funding his fiction, though he later cited the New Statesman's ideological constraints as a reason for departure. The decade's capstone, Other People: A Mystery Story (1981), experimented with narrative perspective through an amnesiac protagonist navigating urban alienation, signaling Amis's shift toward more ambitious structures. His 1984 novel Money: A Suicide Note propelled him to prominence, chronicling advertising executive John Self's descent into addiction and fiscal excess as a mirror to Reagan-Thatcher era greed; critics hailed its inventive prose and voice as a satirical pinnacle, with the narrative's unreliable first-person delivery amplifying themes of moral entropy. London Fields (1989) extended this trajectory, presenting a millenarian murder plot involving a femme fatale and contrasting male archetypes against apocalyptic backdrops, earning acclaim for its structural ingenuity and comic verve despite debates over its deterministic fatalism. These works, peaking in commercial and critical impact, positioned Amis as a leading voice in postmodern British fiction, with Money and London Fields forming a loose "London trilogy" alongside Time's Arrow (1991).

1990s Productions and Personal Turmoil

In 1991, Amis published Time's Arrow, a narrated in that depicts the life of a Nazi doctor, earning shortlisting for the but drawing criticism for its unconventional approach to themes. The work's structure, beginning with death and moving backward to birth, aimed to underscore the inversion of moral causality in atrocity, though some reviewers questioned its ethical stance on historical trauma. The mid-1990s marked a period of intense personal and professional upheaval for Amis. Following the death of his father, , on 22 October 1995 from complications related to , Amis navigated family strains exacerbated by his ongoing from Antonia Phillips, finalized around 1996 after a that produced two sons. Concurrently, Amis underwent extensive dental reconstruction in 1994–1995, involving the removal of all his teeth and jaw realignment due to chronic decay, costing approximately £20,000 (equivalent to over £40,000 today), which he funded through advances on future works. This procedure, performed amid visible pain and requiring multiple surgeries, fueled tabloid narratives portraying Amis as self-indulgent, though medical accounts confirmed the necessity arising from long-term neglect tied to his lifestyle. Professional tensions peaked with the 1995 publication of The Information, a satirical novel exploring literary envy through protagonists Richard Tull and Gwyn Barry, which Amis secured via a £500,000 advance from after switching agents to Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie in 1994. This deal, covering The Information and a subsequent book, severed ties with his longtime publisher and agent Pat Kavanagh—wife of friend —igniting a media dubbed the "Amis Wars" in British press, with accusations of avarice linked to his dental expenses and divorce settlements. Amis defended the move as essential for sustaining his family's amid rising costs, rejecting claims of betrayal and emphasizing contractual freedoms in publishing; the controversy strained relationships, including a rift with Barnes that lasted years. British literary circles, often intertwined with establishment views, amplified the greed narrative, yet Amis's output remained prolific, including essays in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov (1993). By 1997, Amis released Night Train, a departure into American noir depicting a detective's investigation into amid , reflecting his growing affinity for transatlantic themes. These years' turmoil culminated in his to on 21 December 1998, after which the couple relocated to , New York, in the late , seeking respite from London's scrutiny and proximity to Fonseca's family. The decade's events, while disruptive, informed Amis's later reflections on mortality, fame, and familial duty, unmarred by unsubstantiated claims of estate disputes with his father's legacy, which he addressed candidly in subsequent memoirs.

2000s to 2020s Evolution

In the early 2000s, Martin Amis continued his exploration of contemporary satire with Yellow Dog, published in September 2003 by in the UK and in the US, featuring a protagonist navigating media scandals, political intrigue, and personal crises amid a tabloid-obsessed Britain. The novel drew mixed reviews for its ambitious but uneven blend of farce and dystopian elements, with critics noting its critique of and pornography's societal impact, though some faulted its sprawling structure. Amis followed this with House of Meetings in 2006, a concise examining a Soviet survivor's reflections on love, jealousy, and during a visit to a memorial site with his younger brother. This work marked a shift toward more restrained prose and historical moral inquiry, contrasting the verbal pyrotechnics of his earlier satires, and received praise for its emotional depth despite its brevity. The 2010s saw Amis delving into social upheaval and historical atrocities. The Pregnant Widow (2010) revisited the 1970 sexual revolution through the lens of a group of young people in an Italian castle, probing the long-term consequences of liberated mores on relationships and identity. Critics appreciated its comic verve but debated its portrayal of gender dynamics as overly schematic. Lionel Asbo: State of (2012) satirized Britain's via a violent, lottery-winning criminal and his nephew, amplifying Amis's recurring themes of excess and societal decay, though some reviewers dismissed it as cartoonish. His most acclaimed late novel, The Zone of Interest (2014), reimagined Auschwitz through multiple perspectives—including a camp commandant's domestic life—focusing on the banality and denial enabling industrial-scale evil, earning widespread acclaim as his strongest work since for its unflinching yet innovative approach to representation. The book faced initial rejections from German publishers, possibly due to sensitivities around fictionalizing the Shoah, but later found a home and bolstered Amis's reputation for tackling totalitarianism's psychological mechanisms. By the 2020s, Amis's output reflected a turn toward and retrospection. Inside Story (September 2020) blended novelistic techniques with memoir, chronicling his formative relationships with literary mentors like and , alongside personal milestones such as his father's death and encounters with mortality. This hybrid form allowed Amis to dissect the craft of writing amid aging, departing from pure fiction to emphasize digressive, essayistic reflections on influence and loss, which reviewers lauded for its intimacy and stylistic maturity. Overall, Amis's later evolution evidenced a progression from exuberant, linguistically acrobatic satires of modern vices to soberer engagements with history's horrors and the inexorability of time, informed by his relocation to the in 1997 and personal experiences with grief and decline, yielding works that prioritized ethical confrontation over mere stylistic dazzle.

Non-Fiction and Essays

Amis's encompasses memoirs, , and polemical essays on , culture, and , often characterized by his acerbic wit and stylistic precision akin to his . His earliest significant collection, The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America (1986), compiles journalistic pieces from the exploring American society, from Hollywood excess to suburban malaise, portraying the U.S. as a of vitality and moral . These essays, drawn from publications like and , reflect Amis's fascination with the absurdities of , a theme recurrent in his oeuvre. In (2000), a blending personal history with reflections on fatherhood, mortality, and literary lineage, Amis recounts his relationship with his father , the death of his cousin at the hands of , and his own dental afflictions, earning the for its candid introspection. The book eschews chronological rigidity for thematic depth, integrating letters and family anecdotes to probe themes of inheritance and loss, though critics noted its occasional self-indulgence amid the revelations. The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971–2000 (2001) gathers Amis's , advocating for prose that evades "cliché" through vivid authenticity, with pieces on , , and emphasizing moral and aesthetic vigor over stylistic inertia. Amis critiques modernism's excesses while praising narrative clarity, as in his analysis of Bellow's urban realism, positioning himself as a defender of humane, anti-ideological . Reception highlighted its polemical edge, with some praising the demolition of fashionable pretensions and others faulting its combative tone toward contemporaries. Amis's political non-fiction intensified with Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002), a scathing indictment of Stalinism, estimating 20 million deaths under Joseph Stalin and decrying Western leftists' historical blindness to Soviet horrors, informed by archival data and personal outrage over apologias in academia. Drawing on Robert Conquest's estimates and Solzhenitsyn's testimonies, the book argues that ideological laughter masked mass murder, though it faced pushback for oversimplifying leftist dissent. Similarly, The Second Plane: September 11: 2001–2004 (2008) collects essays on Islamist terrorism post-9/11, advocating military response and critiquing multiculturalism's enfeeblement of liberal societies, with Amis estimating the attacks' toll at nearly 3,000 deaths and warning of fanaticism's incompatibility with secular norms. These pieces, published in The Guardian and elsewhere, provoked debate, with supporters lauding causal realism on jihadism's roots in theology and critics accusing Amis of Islamophobia for prioritizing empirical atrocity over contextual nuance. Later collections like The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage 1986–2016 (2017) span literature, , and , including appraisals of 's oratory and Donald Trump's 2016 rise, blending admiration for Bellow's irony with disdain for populist bombast. Amis's essays often privilege first-hand observation and textual fidelity, as in his reportage on American gun culture or Philip Roth's legacy, underscoring a commitment to truth over consolation. Overall, his reception underscores stylistic brilliance—e.g., "electric " in cultural dissections—but notes occasional polemical overreach, particularly in politically charged works where Amis's disdain for totalitarian clashes with institutional orthodoxies.

Professional Engagements Beyond Fiction

Academic Teaching

In 2007, Martin Amis accepted his first formal academic teaching position as Professor of at the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing, a role announced on February 15 and marking a significant departure from his prior focus on and journalism. The appointment was hailed by the university as a major achievement, positioning Amis to mentor postgraduate students in novel-writing workshops and seminars, with the program emphasizing practical craft over theoretical analysis. He served in this capacity from 2007 until 2011, during which time the Centre for New Writing established itself as a hub for emerging authors under his inaugural leadership. Amis's tenure involved delivering structured courses on narrative technique, character development, and stylistic precision, drawing directly from his experience with novels such as (1984) and (1989), though he reportedly favored intensive, small-group sessions over large lectures. The position was part-time, allowing him to continue personal writing projects, and compensated at a reported £80,000 annually, reflecting the prestige attached to his name despite lacking traditional academic credentials like a . In 2011, Irish novelist succeeded him in the role, inheriting the same two-year renewable contract structure that Amis had pioneered. Beyond Manchester, Amis held no other sustained university teaching appointments, though he occasionally participated in guest lectures and residencies at institutions like earlier in his career, influenced by his father's prior fellowship there in the . His reluctance to pursue extensive academia stemmed from a preference for independent literary pursuits, as evidenced by his limited engagement post-2011 and focus on non-fiction thereafter. The Manchester role thus represented a brief but influential foray into , bridging his celebrity authorship with institutional creative writing education.

Journalism and Public Commentary

Amis commenced his professional career in journalism following his graduation from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1971. By the summer of 1972, he had obtained an entry-level role as an editorial assistant at The Times Literary Supplement, advancing to fiction and poetry editor by 1974 while remaining in the position until 1975. In 1974, he transitioned to the New Statesman as deputy literary editor under Claire Tomalin, assuming the role of literary editor from 1977 to 1979 at the age of 27. These positions allowed him to cultivate his analytical prose through book reviews, literary criticism, and editorial oversight, influencing his stylistic precision in subsequent non-fiction. Throughout his career, Amis contributed journalistic pieces to outlets including , , , and Vanity Fair, often blending cultural observation with acerbic wit. His 1986 collection The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America compiled essays from these venues, examining American excess, politics, and media with a focus on empirical absurdities such as and nuclear brinkmanship. Later volumes like The Rub of Time (2017) aggregated similar reportage on literature, , and society, drawn from periodicals including and The Atlantic. Amis's public commentary intensified after the September 11, 2001, attacks, where he framed Islamist terrorism as deliberate political messaging rather than irrational grievance. In a , 2001, Guardian essay titled "Fear and Loathing," he argued that the hijackings communicated implacable hatred toward Western freedoms, rejecting relativist interpretations that equated the acts with U.S. . His 2008 Wall Street Journal piece "Terrorism's New Structure" contended that jihadist violence stemmed from totalitarian ideologies exploiting religious absolutism, distinct from secular tyrannies due to its fusion of theocratic zeal and modern technology. Amis critiqued Western intellectual responses, as in his 2006 Independent list of "30 things I've learned about terror," where he warned against torture's inefficacy—citing its historical use against the IRA—and emphasized the need for ideological confrontation over . These interventions drew accusations of Islamophobia from some critics, yet Amis maintained that distinguishing Islamist extremism from broader Muslim populations was essential for causal clarity, a stance echoed in his compilation The Second Plane (2008), which republished essays decrying the "war on terror" as both militarily necessary and intellectually muddled by moral equivalence. His commentary extended to domestic politics, lambasting British multiculturalism's failures in fostering alienation that mirrored jihadist recruitment dynamics. Amis participated in public forums, such as a 2007 Manchester debate on terrorism, underscoring his view that underestimating its theological drivers risked civilizational complacency.

Personal Life

Marriages, Family, and Relationships

Amis's first marriage was to the American academic Antonia Phillips in 1984. The couple had two sons: , born in 1984, and Louis, born in 1985. They divorced in 1994 amid reports of Amis's and personal struggles, including his departure from the marriage in 1993. During the later years of that marriage, Amis began a relationship with the American writer , whom he met through professional circles. They married in and had two daughters together: Fernanda, born on November 8, 1997, and Clio, born circa 1999. Fonseca and Amis maintained a supportive partnership, with both pursuing literary careers; she later described their meeting as occurring initially by telephone while she worked at a literary agency. Fonseca survived Amis and received his knighthood posthumously in 2024. Amis also had a daughter, (also known as Delilah Jeary or Delilah Seale), from a brief affair in 1974 with Lamorna Heath, a married woman who later died by . Amis was unaware of the pregnancy at the time and confirmed his paternity years afterward through DNA testing, after which he established contact with and integrated her into his family circle alongside his other children. maintained relationships with her half-siblings, including regular interactions with Louis, , Fernanda, and .

Literary Friendships and Rivalries

Martin Amis maintained close friendships with several prominent literary figures, often characterized by mutual intellectual exchange and shared contrarian sensibilities. His relationship with , whom Amis regarded as a profound influence, began with an interview in October 1983 for the Observer, evolving into a mentorship-like bond marked by frequent correspondence and admiration for Bellow's humanistic depth. Amis described Bellow as a "God" in contrast to his own style, crediting him with shaping his views on narrative vigor and moral complexity, as explored in Amis's essays and the semi-autobiographical novel Inside Story (2020), which weaves Bellow into its fabric as a pivotal . Amis's bond with dated to their days in the late 1960s, deepening into a lifelong alliance of unclouded camaraderie, with Hitchens once quipping that Amis was his "only friend." Their friendship, sustained through decades of debate on literature, politics, and atheism, featured in joint public appearances like the 2007 discussion on and , and Amis's eulogy portraying Hitchens as an inexhaustible conversationalist whose vitality persisted amid illness. Amis similarly cherished ties with , fellow British novelist, collaborating in events such as a 2013 panel with , where their rapport underscored shared commitments to precise prose and narrative innovation; McEwan later eulogized Amis as "tender, sweet, generous," highlighting a fraternal dynamic rooted in parallel careers. Amis also supported during the 1989 , confronting Prince Charles in 1991 over perceived equivocation on the issue and interviewing Rushdie amid his seclusion, fostering a friendship evident in later dialogues on and literary movements. These alliances, often clustered around and New York literary circles, reflected Amis's preference for argumentative yet affirming company, as he noted in reflections on generational "gangs" without formal movements. In contrast, Amis experienced notable rivalries, most prominently with Julian Barnes, a former friend whose marriage to Amis's agent, Pat Kavanagh, unraveled their rapport in January 1995 when Amis switched to Andrew Wylie for a £500,000 advance on The Information. This decision prompted Barnes to terminate the friendship via a curt note, amid perceptions that the novel's protagonists—successful writer Richard Tull and struggling Gwyn Barry—mirrored their dynamic, amplifying personal and professional tensions. Amis's relationship with his father, , embodied a familial-literary rivalry, marked by competitive temperaments and stylistic divergences—Kingsley's boozy realism versus Martin's pyrotechnic —despite shared roots and thematic overlaps in . They rarely collaborated, with Martin viewing Kingsley as a shadow to outpace, though mutual respect endured amid public spats over politics and craft. The Information (1995) further thematized such male literary envy, drawing from Amis's observations of success's corrosive effects on bonds. Lesser feuds, like A.S. Byatt's 1995 critique of Amis's advances as inflating literary egos, underscored broader envy in British circles but lacked the personal depth of the Barnes or paternal strains.

Health Decline and Death

Martin Amis died on May 19, 2023, at the age of 73 from at his home in . His wife, writer , confirmed the cause of death as cancer of the . The illness was the same type that killed his close friend and fellow author in December 2011. Amis had undergone treatments for the cancer, but achieved no remission. Details of his timeline were not publicly disclosed, reflecting his private approach to the illness. In the later 2000s, observers noted physical signs of decline, including a fragile appearance and stiff gait, though these were not explicitly linked to the cancer at the time. Esophageal cancer, the disease that ended Amis's life, carries elevated risks from factors such as and chronic heavy alcohol use, both of which aligned with Amis's documented habits earlier in life—he was known for a lifelong affinity for cigarettes and a period of substantial drinking in his youth and middle years. Amis died at the same age as his father, , who passed in 1995 also at 73.

Views and Intellectual Stances

Philosophy of Writing and Style

Amis regarded style as the foundational element of , asserting that it precedes and enables content rather than serving as mere ornamentation. He followed the "Flaubertian line," the conviction that rigorous stylistic practice elicits a writer's deepest imaginative capacities, often surpassing reliance on narrative mechanics or thematic imposition. In his view, effective prose demanded constant warfare against linguistic inertia, as exemplified in his 2001 essay collection The War Against Cliché, where he dissected reviews and critiques to champion originality over habitual phrasing, deeming clichés markers of intellectual laziness. Central to Amis's philosophy was the equation of style with moral seriousness in writing: "Style is morality," a principle he invoked to argue that precision and vitality in language reflect an author's ethical commitment to truth and clarity, avoiding the moral sloth of unexamined expression. He maintained that style emerges organically from perception, not as a post hoc polish, dismissing authors whose voices lacked inherent freshness as fundamentally unappealing. This embedded approach informed his technique of iterative revision, where sentences underwent exhaustive refinement—often read aloud for rhythmic authenticity—to excise any trace of contrived "writing" quality, a method adapted from his father Kingsley Amis's dictum to rewrite anything sounding overly literary. Amis described the novel's inception as unpredictable, potentially sparked by a theme, character, or image, but insisted that linguistic innovation must guide the process, rendering predetermined outlines suspect. He urged writers to presume readers' busyness and intelligence, composing for the top of discernment without dilution, and viewed the act itself as mysteriously incremental, deepening in enigma with experience. While detractors occasionally charged his oeuvre with stylistic excess eclipsing substance, Amis countered implicitly through practice, prioritizing prose's visceral "heft and twang" to forge reader engagement over explicit moralizing.

Critiques of Islamism and Terrorism

Martin Amis articulated sharp critiques of following the , 2001, attacks, framing it as a totalitarian ideology that fused religious absolutism with suicidal violence, distinct from mainstream but rooted in its unreformed elements. In his 2001 essay "Fear and Loathing," published in shortly after the attacks, Amis expressed profound species-level grief, shame, and fear over the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people, attributing the perpetrators' actions to a that glorified death and martyrdom as pathways . He contrasted this with Western secular values, warning that the scale of the horror—planes used as missiles against civilian targets—demanded a realistic confrontation with the ideological drivers rather than evasion through . Amis expanded these views in "The Age of Horrorism," a 2006 Guardian essay marking the fifth anniversary of 9/11, where he described Islamist as the dominant form of contemporary "horrorism"—a term he coined to emphasize not just fear but visceral revulsion at acts like beheadings and mass murder-suicide. He argued that while all religions have produced terrorists, Islamism's current manifestation involved a "totalist" claim on the individual, akin to medieval or fundamentalist , enforcing theocratic conformity that stifled secular progress and fostered boredom-induced leading to apocalyptic violence. Amis contended that this ideology's fusion of boredom in stagnant theocracies with the "thrill" of destruction explained its appeal to otherwise unremarkable individuals, rejecting explanations rooted solely in Western as reductive and empirically unconvincing given the terrorists' own stated religious motivations. In his 2008 collection The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom, Amis compiled essays and stories intensifying these arguments, with the centerpiece "Terror and Boredom" positing as a "murderous " that equated with and justified global through promises of eternal reward. He critiqued the West's response as hampered by "total " toward its own freedoms, leading to inadequate countermeasures against an enemy he saw as essentially opposed to modernity's and irony. Amis called for a within —comparable to Christianity's Enlightenment-era shedding of scriptural literalism—to marginalize , while dismissing multiculturalism's reluctance to judge theocratic extremism as enabling its spread; he distinguished sharply from proper but insisted the former's scriptural literalism demanded scrutiny without apology. These positions drew accusations of , particularly after a where Amis suggested temporary profiling of Muslim communities and a "" curtailment of for suspected Islamists to deter , remarks he defended as pragmatic realism against an existential threat rather than blanket . Amis maintained that and irony, tools of liberal discourse, were impotent against Islamism's "total malignancy," requiring instead unflinching intellectual engagement to expose its causal links to terrorism's empirical toll—over 3,000 dead on 9/11 alone, plus subsequent bombings in (191 killed, 2004), (52 killed, 2005), and beyond. His critiques prioritized the ideology's internal logic—divine sanction for violence against infidels—over external grievances, urging a causal focus on unreformed religious doctrines as the primary enabler of recurrent atrocities.

Geopolitical Realism

Martin Amis's geopolitical outlook emphasized a pragmatic assessment of power imbalances and existential threats, particularly from authoritarian regimes and Islamist ideologies, rejecting idealistic in favor of decisive Western action. Post-9/11, he argued that the attacks exemplified a profound civilizational , where Islamism's totalitarian impulses—rooted in scriptural absolutism and a rejection of Enlightenment values—posed an unprecedented danger to liberal societies. In his 2006 essay "The Age of Horrorism," Amis described as a "death " animated by fantasies of martyrdom and conquest, contrasting it with the West's relative aversion to and noting that prior to 1979, had not been a focal point of Western geopolitical concern. He contended that underestimating this ideological fanaticism, as evidenced by the scale of the 9/11 plot involving 19 hijackers and resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths on , 2001, invited further escalation. Amis initially endorsed the 2003 Iraq as a realist response to Saddam Hussein's regime, which he viewed as a sponsor of and proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, aligning with arguments that could preempt broader regional instability. In his 2003 essay "The Wrong War," he outlined the moral and strategic case for confronting Iraq's defiance of UN resolutions—spanning 17 violations since 1991—and its ties to jihadist networks, though he later critiqued the occupation's execution amid rising deaths exceeding 100,000 by 2007 estimates. This stance reflected his broader realism: states like under Ba'athist rule functioned as "rogue" actors in a multipolar world, necessitating preemptive measures over diplomatic inertia, even as he acknowledged the human costs, including over 4,000 fatalities by 2011. In collections like The Second Plane (2008), Amis urged a clear-eyed recognition of Islamism's incompatibility with Western norms, criticizing domestic multicultural policies that tolerated parallel societies fostering extremism, as seen in the 7/7 bombings by British-born militants on July 7, 2005, which killed 52. He rejected equivalence between Western flaws—such as Guantanamo detentions affecting fewer than 800 individuals—and jihadist atrocities, advocating intellectual candor over to avoid self-sabotage. Amis's position drew accusations of bias from outlets aligned with progressive critiques, yet he maintained it stemmed from empirical patterns of violence, including over 30,000 Islamist attacks worldwide since 2001 per databases like the . This realism extended to other threats, such as North Korea's nuclear program, which he deemed more immediately perilous than in 2006 comments due to its isolation and brinkmanship.

Positions on Politics, Society, and Ethics

Martin Amis held firmly anti-communist views, rooted in a detailed examination of Stalinist atrocities, as articulated in his 2002 non-fiction work Koba the Dread, where he cataloged the regime's estimated 20 million deaths from , terror, labor camps, and executions, decrying the Western left's long-standing denialism as a form of moral evasion. He rejected as an obsolete ideology, alongside , arguing that all grand ideological frameworks had become irrelevant in the post-Cold War era, though he spared liberal individualism from similar dismissal. Amis critiqued his father and contemporaries like for their past flirtations with , attributing such sympathies to intellectual naivety rather than inherent malice, yet he maintained that the empirical record of Soviet failure—, , and —demanded unqualified repudiation. In assessing , Amis expressed admiration for American institutions, particularly the First Amendment's protection of free speech, which he saw as indispensable to political vitality, stating, "You've got it or you haven't." However, he viewed , including elements of the Trump phenomenon, as a manipulative "con" that exploited voter grievances without delivering substantive reform. Amis admitted to mispredicting outcomes like the 2016 U.S. election and , having favored remain and , and later described Trump's tenure as "scary" amid perceived threats to democratic norms. He positioned himself against what he termed the left's complacency, engaging critically with radical ideologies while evolving from youthful left-liberalism toward a more contrarian stance that prioritized empirical realism over doctrinal loyalty. On British society, Amis diagnosed a profound "moral decrepitude" by 2011, citing pervasive vulgarity, class resentments, and cultural stagnation as symptoms of national decline, which prompted his declaration that he "would prefer not to be English." His relocation to the United States in 2012 stemmed partly from frustration with Britain's "weak Left-liberalism" and hostile media scrutiny, which he likened to a "crucifixion," though he retained affection for English wit and found American society more meritocratic and less envious of literary success. He observed parallel social pathologies in both nations, including policies that exacerbated inequality by "separating the rich and poor," which he deemed a "terrific evil." Ethically, Amis espoused the principle that "style is morality," positing that linguistic precision in mirrored ethical clarity, with stylistic sloppiness signaling laxity or ideological distortion. This aesthetic ethic informed his broader quietism toward societal transformation, favoring art's role in fostering tolerance of human flaws over prescriptive , as "doesn't incite you to transform society; it strengthens you to tolerate it." He advocated for , defending it as a rational response to unbearable amid advanced age or , a position that drew controversy for its perceived callousness but aligned with his rejection of sentimental prohibitions. Amis's ethical framework emphasized causal accountability—judging actions by their verifiable consequences—over abstract , evident in his disdain for euphemistic that obscured reality, such as in political or cultural discourse.

Agnosticism and Existential Concerns

Martin Amis identified as an , maintaining that it represented "the only rational position" owing to humanity's profound ignorance about the universe's origins and structure. He contended that presumed too much certainty, describing it as "crabbed" or premature given that scientific progress—estimated as requiring "a dozen Einsteins"—remained far from comprehending cosmic phenomena like black holes, , or the universe's expansion. While rejecting the "banal " of organized religions as implausible, Amis withheld absolute denial of some underlying intelligence, prioritizing empirical unknowability over ideological commitment. This stance contrasted with his father Kingsley Amis's militant , which expressed outright "hatred" for despite acknowledging nonbelief; Martin viewed such vehemence as emotionally driven rather than purely rational. Amis criticized religious doctrine broadly as unreasoned and dignity-undermining, particularly in where he deemed it "the enemy of art" for imposing tendentious narratives over truthful depiction. He associated with from reality's harsh contingencies, favoring literature's capacity to confront existential voids without supernatural consolation. Amis's writings recurrently probed mortality's inevitability and the absurdity of finite existence amid cosmic indifference, themes intensified by personal losses including his father's death in 1995 and those of friends Saul Bellow in 2005 and Christopher Hitchens in 2011. He encapsulated this preoccupation in the observation that "it's the deaths of others that kill you in the end," underscoring how accumulated grief erodes illusions of invulnerability and forces reckoning with personal extinction. Novels such as Time's Arrow (1991) reversed chronology to expose time's entropic arrow toward death, while The Information (1995) centered on midlife's dawning awareness of decay and futility. In his memoir Experience (2000), Amis detailed familial declines—such as Kingsley's physical deterioration—and his own hypochondriac anxieties, framing aging as a grotesque unraveling without redemptive purpose. Later, Inside Story (2020) intertwined biographical reflections with meditations on writing as a defiant response to oblivion, processing 9/11's collective trauma alongside individual finitude. These motifs reflected a causal realism: human consciousness, unmoored from divine teleology, confronts entropy through art's transient assertions of pattern and significance.

Legacy and Reception

Critical Acclaim and Influence

Martin Amis garnered significant critical praise for his stylistic innovation and satirical edge, particularly in his early novels. His debut, (1973), earned acclaim for its sharp wit and linguistic dexterity, securing the Somerset Maugham Award, a prize previously won by his father for . Subsequent works such as (1984) were lauded for their vivid portrayal of excess and moral decay in contemporary society, cementing Amis's reputation as a master of prose among British critics. Despite commercial success and shortlistings for major awards—including twice for the Booker Prize, notably Time's Arrow in 1991—Amis never secured a top-tier literary honor like the Booker itself, a point he attributed to prizes favoring "unenjoyable" works over stylistically bold ones. His memoir Experience (2000) broke this pattern by winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, praised for its candid introspection on family, fame, and mortality. Amis enjoyed greater esteem in the UK than in the US, where his flamboyant style sometimes drew reservations from reviewers favoring restraint. Amis's influence lies in his reinvigoration of the through verbal experimentation and formal ambition, as noted by critic James Wood, who credited his "word-coining power" with countering literary stagnation. Writers and peers recalled him as a "crusader for " who elevated standards, compelling contemporaries to sharpen their craft amid his brash entry into a staid literary scene. His postmodern techniques—unreliable narrators, , and Nabokovian flair—shaped late-20th-century , influencing a generation to blend high artistry with cultural critique, though his polarizing persona limited broader emulation.

Controversies and Backlash

Amis's decision to switch literary agents in January 1995 from Pat Kavanagh, wife of his longtime friend , to Andrew Wylie sparked a major literary scandal in Britain. The move, coupled with Amis securing a £500,000 advance for his novel The Information, drew widespread media criticism for perceived greed and disloyalty, with tabloids dubbing it the "Amis Mutiny." The rift ended Amis's friendship with Barnes, who reportedly felt betrayed, and fueled accusations that Amis prioritized commercial success over personal ties. In September 2006, following the bombings that killed 52 people, Amis's comments in a Times interview provoked accusations of Islamophobia. He stated that the Muslim community should "suffer until it gets its house in order," suggesting temporary measures such as restricting airport travel, deportations, or even concentration camps to deter extremism. Amis clarified he was outlining public impulses rather than endorsing policy, distinguishing between —a totalitarian he viewed as a profound threat—and ordinary Muslims, whom he did not hold collectively responsible. Critics, including academic , condemned the remarks as racist and dehumanizing, prompting a broader backlash in left-leaning media that equated criticism of Islamist violence with anti-Muslim prejudice. Amis faced further controversy in 2007 over a television interview where he discussed demographic shifts in , expressing concern about rapid outpacing integration and potentially leading to "theocratic" dominance. Commentators accused him of , though Amis rejected this, arguing his views stemmed from alarm at Islamist ideology's incompatibility with liberal values, not ethnicity. His critiques of as a failed policy—contrasting it with support for —intensified opposition; in a 2014 BBC documentary, he noted austerity had exposed its weaknesses, with white skin still perceived as central to English identity amid uneven assimilation. Such positions drew ire from progressive outlets, which often framed them as xenophobic rather than responses to empirical patterns of segregation and parallel societies in Britain.

Posthumous Assessments

Following Amis's death from on May 19, 2023, at age 73, literary figures issued tributes emphasizing his stylistic innovation and cultural prominence. led commendations, portraying Amis as a stylist extraordinaire whose work bridged literature and politics. dubbed him the "Mick Jagger of literature," underscoring his celebrity status among contemporaries like and . Amis received a knighthood for services to , dated May 18, 2023—the day before his death—to comply with rules barring posthumous honors. A memorial service in on June 10, 2024, featured reflections on his later-life focus on mortality and friendship, with attendees including family and peers. Subsequent events, such as a gathering, drew hundreds and highlighted his enduring draw, with speakers praising his frenzied humor and maximalist characters as liberating for emerging writers. Critics reassessed Amis's legacy as a satirist whose supercharged —marked by rhythmic heft, slangy vigor, and comic excess—profoundly shaped 1980s and 1990s fiction. noted his influence on writers like and Nicola Barker, crediting his "heft and twang" for capturing contemporary chaos and elevating literary language. attributed her command of literary comedy to Amis's technique of escalating extremes for effect. Nathan Heller lauded his realism "with the saturation turned up," infused with an "ecstatic snicker." positioned him as Britain's preeminent "hereditary novelist," son of , whose vivid voice chronicled post-imperial shifts in class, , and generational destiny. Later evaluations acknowledged flaws alongside strengths, viewing Amis as emblematic of a fading guard. hailed his comic genius in works like (1984) and (1989), defending against charges of misogyny and structural inconsistency as envious ideological attacks, while likened him to . portrayed his media-savvy appeal—blending highbrow wit with American influences like —as resonant for a post-1960s cohort but waning among younger critics, who deemed his and explorations outdated, signaling a shift from "elegant tinkling teacup novels" to new tastes. reflected on his evolution from enfant terrible to graceful elder, thematizing as a "La Brea Tar Pit of the soul." Parul Sehgal credited his criticism with illuminating life-art tensions, affirming his singular place despite controversies over politically charged historical fictions.

Bibliography

Novels

Amis's novels, spanning from 1973 to 2014, frequently employ dark , grotesque caricature, and linguistic virtuosity to dissect the absurdities of late capitalist society, personal degradation, and moral entropy. His debut, (1973), draws semi-autobiographically from his youth, chronicling a precocious teenager's obsessive pursuit of amid posturing and family tensions, establishing Amis's signature blend of and unflinching of human folly. Dead Babies (1975; published as Dark Secrets in the United States), examines hedonistic excess and interpersonal cruelty among a group of young adults converging at a rural estate, marked by escalating depravity and black humor. Success (1978) contrasts the trajectories of two foster brothers—one rising through ruthless ambition, the other descending into failure—probing themes of identity, envy, and in contemporary Britain. In Other People: A Mystery Story (1981), Amis experiments with narrative perspective through an amnesiac navigating urban alienation and rebirth, blending metaphysical inquiry with satirical portraits of 1980s . Money: A Suicide Note (1984), part of Amis's informal "London trilogy," follows advertising executive John Self's spiral into addiction, financial ruin, and pornographic obsessions, serving as a corrosive critique of unchecked and media-saturated hedonism. London Fields (1989), Amis's most expansive novel, centers on the enigmatic Nicola Six, who foresees her own and manipulates three archetypal men—a dim aristocrat, a violent , and a terminally ill —in a dystopian vision of millennial , laced with apocalyptic and stylistic . Time's Arrow (1991), shortlisted for the , reverses chronology to depict a Nazi doctor's life from death backward to Auschwitz atrocities, confronting the irreversibility of evil and through innovative temporal structure. The Information (1995) pits mediocre novelist Richard Tull against his bestselling rival Gwyn Barry in a venomous fueled by , literary pretension, and midlife , exposing the petty tyrannies of the world. Night Train (1997), a noir-inflected departure, tracks a detective's investigation into a physicist's , grappling with despair, rationality's limits, and urban . Yellow Dog (2003) weaves conspiracy, pornography, and royal scandal around a playwright's family crises, critiquing tabloid culture and technological in early 21st-century . House of Meetings (2006), set against Soviet gulags and post-communist , narrates a survivor's return with his brother, delving into totalitarian legacy, guilt, and fraternal betrayal through epistolary fragments. The Pregnant Widow (2010) revisits 1970 sexual liberation via a 1970 Italian castle holiday among students, analyzing its long-term psychic toll on gender dynamics and personal evolution. Lionel Asbo: State of England (2012) satirizes through a violent, lottery-winning and his nephew's affair, lampooning and media . Amis's final novel, The Zone of Interest (2014), reimagines Auschwitz commandant's domestic life amid romantic entanglements, probing bureaucratic complicity and the banality of industrialized murder without redemptive illusions.

Short Fiction

Amis's short fiction, though less voluminous than his novels, spans four decades and appears in collections that showcase his satirical edge and stylistic precision. His stories often probe existential dread, technological hubris, and interpersonal absurdities through dark humor and inventive narratives. The first major collection, Einstein's Monsters (1987), comprises five stories unified by the shadow of nuclear annihilation. In the introductory essay, Amis articulates a personal revulsion toward nuclear weapons, framing both the devices and their human progenitors as "Einstein's monsters"—entities not yet fully human. Stories depict pre-apocalyptic anxieties and post-holocaust survivals, emphasizing the psychological toll of mutually assured destruction. Heavy Water and Other Stories (1998) gathers nine pieces composed from 1975 to 1997, including earlier publications like "Denton's Death." The title story follows an aging mother and her intellectually disabled 41-year-old son on a Mediterranean cruise, highlighting themes of parental endurance and social marginalization. "Career Move" inverts cultural hierarchies, portraying poets as pampered Hollywood commodities while screenwriters toil in obscurity. Other tales, such as "The Janitor on Mars," blend with commentary on isolation and extraterrestrial perspective. Later works include chapbooks like Two Stories (1994) featuring "Denton's Death" and "Let Me Count the Times," and God's Dice (1995). Vintage Amis (2004) reprints selected early stories, underscoring his recurring motifs of desire, decay, and moral entropy. Standalone stories appeared in periodicals; "Straight Fiction" (1989) deploys stylistic inversion to satirize sexual mores in a dystopian near-future. "Oktober" (2015), published in The New Yorker, draws from Amis's observations of the 2015 European migrant influx during a Munich book tour, portraying overwhelmed urban spaces and refugee desperation through a narrator's detached lens. Critics have lauded Amis's short fiction for its rhetorical flair and unflinching realism, with described as a showcase of "wickedly delightful" versatility amid explorations of and human . However, some assessments rank his stories below his novels and essays in depth, viewing them as incisive but episodic experiments.

Non-Fiction

''Invasion of the Space Invaders'' (1982), an introductory guide to early video games. ''The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America'' (1986), a collection of essays on American culture and figures including Saul Bellow and John Updike. ''Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions'' (1993), essays on literary encounters and travels. ''Experience: A Memoir'' (2000), a personal memoir addressing family, fatherhood, and his relationship with his father Kingsley Amis, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. ''The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971–2000'' (2001), a compilation of literary criticism spanning three decades. ''Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million'' (2002), an examination of Joseph Stalin's regime and the Soviet gulags, critiquing leftist apologetics for communism. ''The Second Plane: September 11: 2001–2007'' (2008), essays responding to the 9/11 attacks and Islamist terrorism. ''The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump, etc. and Other Observations'' (2017), a selection of essays on literature, politics, and culture published between 1986 and 2016.

Screenplays and Other Works

Amis penned the screenplay for the 1980 science fiction thriller Saturn 3, directed by and starring , , and . The plot centers on a remote lunar station where a psychopathic deploys a malfunctioning , leading to violent confrontations amid themes of isolation and technological peril. The film received mixed reviews for its execution despite its high-profile and budget exceeding $10 million. In 2018, Amis received screenplay credit for the adaptation of his 1989 novel , directed by William Oldroyd in a version starring , , and . The film depicts a clairvoyant woman's entanglement with two men in a dystopian marked by apocalypse and infidelity, though production faced delays and legal disputes over rights, resulting in a limited release after premiering at the in 2015. Critics noted deviations from the source material's stylistic density. Amis also authored an unproduced screenplay adapting Jane Austen's (1817) for Pictures around 2001–2004, reimagining the gothic parody as a contemporary teen . Commissioned under a reported million-dollar deal, the script excerpted in magazine emphasized youthful satire but stalled in development without advancing to production. Among other screen-related efforts, Amis contributed draft material to Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996) that ultimately went unused, and he claimed involvement in the 1979 short film Mixed Doubles starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, though details remain sparse and uncredited in final releases. Amis expressed ambivalence toward Hollywood adaptations of his novels, such as The Rachel Papers (1989) and Dead Babies (2000), which he did not script, often critiquing their fidelity in essays and interviews.

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  183. https://lostmediawiki.com/Mixed_Doubles_%28lost_short_film_starring_Adrian_Edmondson_and_Rik_Mayall%3B_1979%29
  184. https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/amis-the-unadaptable/
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