Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, literary critic, professor, and short story writer. He was the son of Sir Kingsley Amis. His works include such novels as Money (1984), London Fields (1989) and The Information (1995). Amis's raw material is what he saw as the absurdity and caricatures of the postmodern condition he thus sometimes has been portrayed as the undisputed master of what the New York Times has called "the new unpleasantness."
He attended a number of different schools in the 1950s and 1960s, including Swansea Grammar School, and Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. The acclaim that followed Kingsley's first novel Lucky Jim sent the family to Princeton, New Jersey, where Kingsley lectured. This was Martin's introduction to the United States.
Martin Amis read nothing but comic books until his stepmother, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to Jane Austen, whom he often names as his earliest influence. After teenage years spent in flowery shirts and a short spell at Westminster School while living in Hampstead, 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."
After Oxford, he found an entry-level job at The Times Literary Supplement, and at age 27 became literary editor of The New Statesman, where he met Christopher Hitchens, then a feature writer for The Observer, who remains a close friend.
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Who was Martin Amis?
Amis was born in Oxford, England. His father, Sir Kingsley Amis, was the son of a mustard manufacturer's clerk from Clapham; his mother, Hilary Bardwell (Hilly), was the daughter of a shoe millionaire. He had an older brother, Philip, and a younger sister, Sally. Martin Amis's parents divorced when he was twelve. Much later, Martin lived in a house with Kingsley, Hilly, and Hilly's third husband, Alistair Boyd, Lord Kilmarnock. Amis has described it as "something out of early Updike, 'Couples' flirtations and a fair amount of drinking," he told The New York Times. "They were all 'at it'."He attended a number of different schools in the 1950s and 1960s, including Swansea Grammar School, and Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. The acclaim that followed Kingsley's first novel Lucky Jim sent the family to Princeton, New Jersey, where Kingsley lectured. This was Martin's introduction to the United States.
Martin Amis read nothing but comic books until his stepmother, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to Jane Austen, whom he often names as his earliest influence. After teenage years spent in flowery shirts and a short spell at Westminster School while living in Hampstead, 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."
After Oxford, he found an entry-level job at The Times Literary Supplement, and at age 27 became literary editor of The New Statesman, where he met Christopher Hitchens, then a feature writer for The Observer, who remains a close friend.
Author
His first novel The Rachel Papers (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974), is about the adventures of a bright, egotistical teenager (presumably not unlike Amis himself) and his relationship with the eponymous girlfriend in the year before going to University. It is the most traditional of his novels, and still the favourite of some, though it has since been made into a rather unsuccessful film.
Dead Babies, more flippant in tone, has a typically Sixties plot, with a house full of characters who abuse various substances and are eventually massacred by a psychopath. A number of Amis's 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 was also unsuccessful.
His most famous novels, and the ones most respected by critics, are Money, Time's Arrow and London Fields. Time's Arrow drew notice both for its unusual technique - time runs backwards during the entire novel - as well as for its topic: It is the autobiography of a doctor who helped torture Jews during the Holocaust.
The unparalleled size of the advance demanded and obtained by Amis for The Information attracted what Amis described as "an Eisteddfod of hostility" from writers and critics; ironically, the main characters in The Information are rival authors who are jealous of various aspects of each other's lives. He has written a memoir, largely about his relationship with his famous author father, called Experience. In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a book about the crimes of Stalinism and the intellectual left. The book provoked a literary controversy for his supposedly naïve and dilettante approach to the material, and for its attack on his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens, who rebuked his charges in a stinging review in The Atlantic.
Dead Babies, more flippant in tone, has a typically Sixties plot, with a house full of characters who abuse various substances and are eventually massacred by a psychopath. A number of Amis's 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 was also unsuccessful.
His most famous novels, and the ones most respected by critics, are Money, Time's Arrow and London Fields. Time's Arrow drew notice both for its unusual technique - time runs backwards during the entire novel - as well as for its topic: It is the autobiography of a doctor who helped torture Jews during the Holocaust.
The unparalleled size of the advance demanded and obtained by Amis for The Information attracted what Amis described as "an Eisteddfod of hostility" from writers and critics; ironically, the main characters in The Information are rival authors who are jealous of various aspects of each other's lives. He has written a memoir, largely about his relationship with his famous author father, called Experience. In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a book about the crimes of Stalinism and the intellectual left. The book provoked a literary controversy for his supposedly naïve and dilettante approach to the material, and for its attack on his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens, who rebuked his charges in a stinging review in The Atlantic.
Martin Amis quotes
"Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn."
"Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy."
"When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable."
"So I am lonely, but not alone, like everybody else."
"He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed."
Source and additional information: Martin Amis