The last thing I read of his was "Night Train", a piss-poor effort at a crime novel.
lol
― roxymuzak, Wednesday, 9 April 2008 15:01 (sixteen years ago) link
I suspect his novels wouldn't work for me the way the used to (except the ones I didn't like the first time round, like Yellow Dog or Night Train, which would work exactly the way they did), but I still maintain 'Experience' is a nifty, slightly mad, bit of wonderfulness.
― James Morrison, Thursday, 10 April 2008 00:01 (sixteen years ago) link
yeah EXPERIENCE is fantastic. his best book since MONEY.
― pisces, Thursday, 10 April 2008 00:11 (sixteen years ago) link
Experience is great because is quotes Kingley describing the first Terminator film as a "flawless masterpiece".
― caek, Thursday, 10 April 2008 00:32 (sixteen years ago) link
"koba the dread" is awful stuff, maybe worth reading only for all the moments where MA inadvertently proves what a first-class dick he is. my favorite: the part where he oh-so-seriously says if he had to choose he'd much rather be incinerated at hiroshima than die in a work camp.
― J.D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 01:02 (sixteen years ago) link
also gripping character study of stalin: did you know he was a BAD MAN? who did BAD THINGS?
― J.D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 01:03 (sixteen years ago) link
I put it down after 30 pgs, gagging on his naivete. His best buddy Hitchens took him to task for this a few years ago in a published review.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 10 April 2008 01:20 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/09/hitchens.htm
― latebloomer, Thursday, 10 April 2008 02:20 (sixteen years ago) link
To be fair, I too would rather be incinerated in a nuclear blast than die in a prison work camp.
― James Morrison, Thursday, 10 April 2008 05:44 (sixteen years ago) link
-- caek, Thursday, April 10, 2008 1:32 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link
lol yes -- i think hitch, mart, and kingers go to see 'beverley hills cop' and only KA digs it. obviously KA could be a dick but some of the stuff in that book is win.
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 08:25 (sixteen years ago) link
One of the big differences between père and fils - Kingsley was always unashamedly into popular culture. He even wrote a James Bond novel - I'd be kind of interested to see what that's like! Hard to imagine Martin doing that. (Although now I think about it didn't Martin write a book about Space Invaders or something)
― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 10 April 2008 08:38 (sixteen years ago) link
kingsley's book *about* bond (i haven't read the bond novel itself) is really good.
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 08:41 (sixteen years ago) link
MA has written about popular culture -- iirc the space invaders thing is the name of a collection, which includes an essay on same -- especially hollywood: 'money' is partly based on his experience as a screenwriter. his critical books have interviews with speilberg and de palma, and maybe madonna -- i can't remember so well, suffice to say he was less at ease with this stuff than kingsley.
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 08:48 (sixteen years ago) link
Martin says in Experience that Kingsley called one of the Terminator movies "a flawless masterpiece" as they exited the theater together.
― roxymuzak, Thursday, 10 April 2008 11:16 (sixteen years ago) link
A "flawleshhhhh mashterpieshe" more like
― Tom D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 11:18 (sixteen years ago) link
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 11:19 (sixteen years ago) link
!
― roxymuzak, Thursday, 10 April 2008 11:26 (sixteen years ago) link
And this was also the period when what had partly been a put-on — the persona of the reactionary philistine — began to rigidify into something real and permanent. Kingsley became the very sort of person he used to make fun of, declaring, for example, that England’s best living writer was Dick Francis and that henceforth he wanted only to read books that began, “A shot rang out.” Christopher Hitchens says he thinks that the process of self-ossification was pretty much complete by 1984. “I remember that Martin, Kingsley and I all had dinner, and then we went to see ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ ” he said a few weeks ago. “Naturally, you couldn’t go to anything French or Japanese or Polish. All through the movie Kingsley was laughing with what we assumed was pretend mirth, and afterward he announced, ‘Yes, an absolutely flawless masterpiece.’ Suddenly it became clear he wasn’t joking and that he meant to defend the virtues of the film with absolute fidelity. It was a very striking moment — the sense that the face had grown to fit the mask and that the pose had become himself.”
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 11:31 (sixteen years ago) link
lol aging. my dad sort of hardened and narrowed his viewpoints in his 60s, not as flamboyantly as kingers but recognizably similiar, i think most people go thru this if they're lucky enough to live that long. to be honest I feel this happening already with regard to my musical tastes and I'm still in the spring of middle age.
― m coleman, Thursday, 10 April 2008 12:30 (sixteen years ago) link
also via google:
—Get your hair cut...Get your hair cut. This suggestion was being offered to the television set, more particularly to the actress Linda Hamilton every time she appeared on screen. We were watching a tape of The Terminator (again). An old science-fiction hand, Kingsley was a great fan of The Terminator, and seven years later he would make no secret of his admiration for Terminator 2 ('a flawless masterpiece'), which I took him to at the Odeon, Marble Arch. —Martin Amis, Experience
― banriquit, Thursday, 10 April 2008 13:13 (sixteen years ago) link
I suspect the "philistinism" was there more or less from the start. After all his very first novel Lucky Jim rips into academia, pretentiousness, preciousness etc., vs the joys of binge-drinking...
― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 10 April 2008 13:21 (sixteen years ago) link
how did that business with that eagleton chap end?
― DG, Thursday, 10 April 2008 13:53 (sixteen years ago) link
rough sex
― blueski, Thursday, 10 April 2008 13:54 (sixteen years ago) link
ewwwwwww
― DG, Thursday, 10 April 2008 13:55 (sixteen years ago) link
I haven't read Koba the Dread, but isn't there one particularly egregious section in which Amis compares the screaming of his baby in the middle of the night to the screams of gulag prisoners?
― Neil S, Thursday, 10 April 2008 14:23 (sixteen years ago) link
It's in the Hitchens' thing linked above:
"The sounds she was making," I said unsmilingly to my wife on her return, "would not have been out of place in the deepest cellars of the Butyrki Prison in Moscow during the Great Terror. That's why I cracked and called Caterina [the nanny]."
― Eyeball Kicks, Thursday, 10 April 2008 14:37 (sixteen years ago) link
You couldn't make it up
― Tom D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 14:38 (sixteen years ago) link
Thanks, should have checked that. It's the nanny bit that really makes the quote, isn't it.
― Neil S, Thursday, 10 April 2008 14:57 (sixteen years ago) link
It's sort of comforting to know that Kingsley never had to witness Terminator 3.
― Bodrick III, Thursday, 10 April 2008 19:15 (sixteen years ago) link
David Cameron = Gwyn Barry
― Bodrick III, Thursday, 10 April 2008 19:16 (sixteen years ago) link
I wonder what he thought about T2?
― Neil S, Thursday, 10 April 2008 19:51 (sixteen years ago) link
I guess we'll never know.
― Bodrick III, Thursday, 10 April 2008 20:03 (sixteen years ago) link
another great moment comes when amis breaks down the way trotsky phrases something in his autobiography and goes on for like three pages about how subtly it proves how heartless and inhumane the man was -- evidently oblivious to the fact that he's reading a translation, not trotsky's actual words.
― J.D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:10 (sixteen years ago) link
i dunno why everyone hates him, or why they love him so. but i read his interview in gq this month. hes an interesting figure. agreed with some of his points. his main problem with muslims becoming more religious though seemed to be that pre 9-11 he was able to fuck "muslim talent" (his words) and now since then, men like him (white upper class poshos?) have found it harder to do.
― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 14:49 (fourteen years ago) link
perhaps that has been the biggest downfall of the war on terror? less muslim women sleeping with old white men?
― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 14:50 (fourteen years ago) link
I read a piece a while back where he summed up his position as something like: 'for multiethnicity; against multiculturalism'. I think that was probably a better way of putting it.
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 16 February 2010 14:53 (fourteen years ago) link
he's been married for 15 years. well, 25. so idk if he'd openly talk about shagging other women. i guess he's making a general point.
― V-E-R-Y (history mayne), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 15:00 (fourteen years ago) link
A historical point in his case, I think - he did go on about former girlfriends in the piece I read.
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 16 February 2010 15:02 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah i know hes not really talking about himself, more his 'successors' perhaps.
"'for multiethnicity; against multiculturalism'. "
that makes sense.
― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 16:19 (fourteen years ago) link
it makes some kind of syntactic sense i guess
― max, Tuesday, 16 February 2010 16:19 (fourteen years ago) link
seems like hes saying hes fine with ppl of all diff races, just as long as its a bit more monocultural.
― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 16:44 (fourteen years ago) link
The novel Amis is currently working on, State of England, will, he believes, "be considered as the final insult" to his country. The story of a violent criminal, Lionel Asbo, who wins the lottery, it's "a metaphor which translates well, I think, our state of moral decrepitude: a huge reward for no effort".
Lionel Asbo.
lolsome piece generallyhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/18/martin-amis-england-moral-decrepitude
― ˆᴥˆ (blueski), Monday, 18 April 2011 14:24 (thirteen years ago) link
London Fields was the first novel I read that accurately portrayed modern evil. I thought: this will date quickly, like Hangover Square, and it has... but for that novel alone Amis has to be recognised as a great writer, despite his dire Islamophobia and general reactionary vibe.… pic.twitter.com/9UhAaceFT6— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 20, 2023
― the pinefox, Saturday, 20 May 2023 23:45 (eleven months ago) link
Reading several old (Amis) reviews of Mailer et al today reaffirms an old assessment. Most people agree that Amis was uneven and flawed as a novelist. But he was, at his best, an unusually brilliant book reviewer. Such a humble trade, but I've seen few better at it, again and again. Eventually, understandably, he left it behind, but perhaps his most consistently outstanding work remains in this occasional genre.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 21 May 2023 14:02 (eleven months ago) link
Indeed.
― Cathy Berberian Begins at Home (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 21 May 2023 14:15 (eleven months ago) link
Liked what he wrote about Ballard for example.
― Cathy Berberian Begins at Home (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 21 May 2023 14:17 (eleven months ago) link
'Dead Babies' was a good read. The obsession with teeth was pretty creepy.
― earlnash, Sunday, 21 May 2023 14:34 (eleven months ago) link
I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but his takedown of Hannibal by Thomas Harris is brilliant.
― Duane Barry, Sunday, 21 May 2023 16:02 (eleven months ago) link
xp huh that’s funny you should say that. I’m sure I’ve said before that I don’t really know his work at all but one of the reasons I get major bullshitter vibes off him is from the piece he wrote when Ballard died. It was iirc mainly a personal remembrance and fine, quite touching even, but I’ll never forget the thudding wrongness when he got around to the work and praised the “creaminess” of JGB’s prose(!)
― michel goindry (wins), Sunday, 21 May 2023 16:05 (eleven months ago) link
i only read the Rachel Papers, London Fields, the Information, and Time's Arrow, but I love all four of those novels. RIP grump.
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Sunday, 21 May 2023 17:21 (eleven months ago) link
a sudden nerve twinge made charles slash instead of dub, rip martin
― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 17 June 2023 13:20 (ten months ago) link
Given that Fosse won the Novel today I should bring up this tweet.
Where, like Fosse, we have some deployment of repetition
Anyone who says Martin Amis wasn’t a stylist is, frankly, an idiot pic.twitter.com/orr7Q0ieLe— Max Lawton (@maxdaniellawton) September 1, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 5 October 2023 15:19 (seven months ago) link
*Nobel
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 5 October 2023 15:25 (seven months ago) link