Martin Amis | The New York Observer

The Ties That Bind

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:23:21 -0400

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By Isabel Fonseca

Alfred A. Knopf, 306 pages, $23.95

Oh, to be Isabel Fonseca! A stunning brunette with high cheekbones and that glam international surname that suggests a yummy pairing of fontina and prosecco. Second wife of Martin Amis, easily among the top five writers working in the English language (never mind those scathing reviews of his recent Sept. 11 essay collection; part of genius is just being brave and prolific)—surely they’re...

Wieseltier-amis: Post-game

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:42:46 -0400

An incendiary essay by New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier about Martin Amis’ recent essay collection on 9/11 and the evils of Islamism ran on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last weekend. The review was an evisceration, built on Mr. Wieseltier’s contention that Mr. Amis aestheticizes politics and tragedy for his own narcissistic purposes.

Sample snippet: “Amis is the sort of writer who will never say ‘city’...

Amis in the 21st Century

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:44:09 -0400

THE SECOND PLANE: SEPTEMBER 11: TERROR AND BOREDOM
By Martin Amis
Alfred A. Knopf, 211 pages, $24

Martin Amis’ The Second Plane is a collection of essays, short fiction and book reviews arranged in order of composition. It thus functions, in some ways, as a walking tour of the motley post-Sept. 11 mind—its fears, madnesses, misapprehensions and insights. While the book’s first essay, written in the immediate aftermath of the...

The Amis Bunch—Martin, Isobel, Kingsley—Share Shelf with Woodward, Walters, Proulx

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:02:58 -0500

Would you be surprised to hear that a surging tide of books about politics is about to engulf us?

Later this month we’ll get a chance to peruse War and Decision, by Douglas Feith (HarperCollins, March 25). Mr. Feith, a neocon promoter of the Iraq War, was famously identified by Gen. Tommy Franks as “the dumbest fucking guy on the planet.” It’s unlikely that Mr. Feith will have reached the same conclusions...

Our Critic's Tip Sheet On Current Reading: Amis on Islam; Harvard's Hot President; James Wood on Character

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:42:33 -0500

Is it still schadenfreude when it’s the indestructible Martin Amis getting kicked around? His new book, a collection of essays and stories about militant Islam, The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007, won’t be published over here until April Fools’ Day, but it’s already out in the U.K. (Jonathan Cape, £12.90) and was greeted last weekend with a one-two punch that would have left any ordinary writer reeling. On Saturday the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) ran a...

Martin Amis’ Gulag: Accurate, Harrowing, Not Quite Plausible

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Five years ago, Martin Amis published a peculiar little book about Stalin called Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. Part memoir, part polemic, part history lesson, it seemed a misuse of the novelist’s considerable talents (one eminent historian complained of “basic factual errors on almost every other page”). Why couldn’t clever Mr. Amis, who took on the Holocaust with wit and daring in Time’s Arrow (1991)—and “The Last Days of Mohamed Atta”...

As United 93 Opens At Tribeca Festival, Shock, Pain, Culture

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:00:00 -0400

By 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25, four news vans, an immensely long red carpet and a gaggle of conspiracy theorists had gathered around the Ziegfeld Theater for the Tribeca Film Festival’s premiere of United 93. People calling themselves part of the 9/11 Truth Movement distributed leaflets—they were quickly banned across the street—and yelled at a man walking his dog. Jason Bermas wore a maroon hoodie with white letters that read “Investigate 9/11.”...

Mr. Bellow's Planet: Amis, McEwan Snatch Saul's Herring Soul

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:00:00 -0400

One opened The New York Times expectantly, two days after Saul Bellow's death, ready for the Op-Ed tributes that seemed as certain to appear as The Times itself: Surely one or more of American literature's surviving phallocrats, a Mailer or a Roth or an Updike, would contribute a brief but feeling essay, hastily composed yet sharply observed, glittering with wit and fond (or double-edged) remembrance of the tart-tongued, pint-sized titan, that pluperfectly penetrating colossus...

Breakneck Bourne at B.A.M.: A Barrage of Nonstop Busyness

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 20:00:00 -0400

How the English love playing at being naughty boys! Think of the young Martin Amis (or the middle-aged Martin Amis, for that matter). Think of Damien Hirst. And think of Matthew Bourne, who conquered Broadway and the West End with his all-male Swan Lake a few years ago. (I hated it-not because of its all-maleness, which lost its shock value after about two minutes, but because its pretentious and unconvincing plot and vulgarized dance...

Looking Backward, And Looking Forward

Sun, 15 Dec 2002 19:00:00 -0500

Here are three possible stocking-stuffers and, who knows, mind-stuffers as well-books for the season, and for the months to come.

First is Martin Amis' Koba the Dread . Koba was a nickname of Iosif Dzhugashvili, whose better-known nickname was Stalin, and whose sinisterly macho face smiles from the dust jacket of Mr. Amis' book. Martin Amis is, of course, the hot novelist, and for him to have written a work of nonfiction was a surprise....

Amis and the 'Talent Elite'-Count on a Fancy Prose Style

Sun, 25 Nov 2001 19:00:00 -0500

The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000 , by Martin Amis. Talk Miramax Books, 506 pages, $35.

In Experience , the memoir he published last year, Martin Amis confessed to a sad truth: "A writer's life is all anxiety and ambition." The memoir was more concerned with other matters-his father, the late Kingsley Amis; a murdered cousin; an illegitimate daughter; his famously bad teeth. But now we have The War Against Cliché , a...

What's It All About, Tina Brown? At Mid-Life, Talk Boss Assesses

Sun, 18 Jun 2000 20:00:00 -0400

Tina Brown did not look like a target as she stood in the vast East Fifth Street loft of Martin Amis' brother-in-law, Caio Fonseca, June 6.

Elegant in a black slip dress, she moved easily through the comfortably large crowd of literary types who had come to fête the publication of Martin Amis' memoir Experience for Talk-Miramax Books. Mr. Amis devoted a few paragraphs of his book to Ms. Brown, the "fringe playwright, journalist,...

All for a Liberace Smile? Amis in the Dentist's Chair

Sun, 28 May 2000 20:00:00 -0400

Experience: A Memoir , by Martin Amis. Talk Miramax Books, 406 pages, $23.95.

In London, thanks to a series of absurd pseudoscandals whipped up by the British press, every reader of novels knows the dirt on Martin Amis. They know where he lives, how much money he's made, how many kids he has and who their mothers are. If ever it looks like "Smarty Anus" is misbehaving, headlines tell the tale. In New York, the...

Salman Rushdie's 1001 Manhattan Nights

Sun, 16 Apr 2000 20:00:00 -0400

On a recent Sunday evening at Babbo restaurant, a literary agent regarded a plate of beef-cheek ravioli. Waiters crisscrossed the room with orders of pasta. The restaurant was full. The city was quiet. It was the kind of peaceful, comfortable night that has been falling over Manhattan for quite some time now.

Suddenly, the conversational hum began to sputter. Someone famous was moving through the room. The agent looked up from dinner to see writer...

Amis Talks American, Takes a Metaphysical Meander

Sun, 01 Feb 1998 19:00:00 -0500

Night Train , by Martin Amis. Harmony, 175 pages, $20.

Martin Amis has a thing about ketchup. That's the term he uses for the smothering sauce of ersatz that Hollywood and television plop all over the American scene. Everywhere we look, tacky imitation, like ketchup for blood; everything is an imitation of itself or something else. Mr. Amis, a British novelist whose every sentence yearns for the unique, is seesaw-ambivalent about "copycat" culture and...