Opinion Express View on Martin Amis: A man of style
The voice he cultivated — irreverent, dark and ironic — found a cult following
-
Share -
-
-
In his writing as in his life, Martin Amis, who died last week at 73, was a man of style. Introduced to the workings of literary stardom by his novelist father Kingsley Amis, whose take on the British working class, Lucky Jim (1954), became an instant classic, the junior Amis had a readymade launchpad. He turned his hand at writing with The Rachel Papers (1973), an autobiographical novel about a glib young adolescent preparing for his Oxford entrance while trying to seduce an older woman.
It helped that Amis had an original literary vision that allowed him to forge his own relationship with language, away from the comparisons and claims of nepotism that is the lot of star children.
Part of the brat pack in the late Eighties and early Nineties, alongside other trailblazing writers such as Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, Amis evoked both envy and curiosity in the literary fraternity with his sartorial choices, well-known romances, open confrontations with adversaries and flagrant disdain for the tried and tested.
What built his cult, though, is the voice he cultivated — irreverent, dark and ironic — through 15 novels, including a memoir and several volumes of short stories and non-fiction writing. Amis claimed it was this voice — a writer’s own, unique imprint — that ought to be the fulcrum on which novels ought to be built, instead of the older emphasis on plot. His London trilogy — Money: A Suicide Note (1985), London Fields (1990) and The Information (1995) — as well as his memoir, Experience (2000), remain the hallmark of this stylistic excellence.
In an oft-cited Paris Review interview in 1998, Amis spoke of how at the end of a telephonic conversation with one of his literary icons, Saul Bellow, the older American writer told him to get back to work and give his readers “hell”. It was an advice he followed, creating a body of work that cemented his legacy and stretched his readers in many audacious, unforgettable ways.
-
Share
-
-
-
Share
