The news of Martin Amis's death came as an awful shock. Quite irrationally, I'd always thought of him as a young writer, even though I knew he was my age. And at my age, of course, people quite often die. Martin actually lived a little longer that his father – and surely no one was thinking of Kingsley as a young writer by the time he died...
There will be tributes and assessments everywhere today, I'm sure. I'm not going to join in, partly because I have read nothing of his for years, apart from his memoir Experience. I will only say that I'll always be grateful to Martin Amis for gifting me some of the most intensely pleasurable reading experiences of my life in those scabrous, flashy, ultra-stylised early novels – back in the day, when he and I were both young. RIP.
His London Fields is very good.
ReplyDeleteI was beginning to wonder why he had seemed to drop out of public life, but this obviously came as shock. I may try and read 'Experience' again, it seemed good 10 years ago...
ReplyDeleteI thought this interview with him was fascinating & full of thought provoking moments, in case you did not see it, (from ZMKC):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/late-show-face-to-face--martin-amis/zvnqrj6