Just finished reading London Fields recently and recommend it highly. Does anyone know if Amis’ other books are as good?
At the risk of pissing some folks off, I must say that I think Martin Amis is one of the best prose writers (in the English language) alive today…
Many people find his works soulless and cold…but I adore his cynicism, dark humour, and his absolutely masterful, loving use of language.
I highly recommend The Information, which was panned by many critics, but is a hilarious look at the literary establishment.
His short stories are also wonderful…
He has tried different genres: Night Train is his take on noir, and it is quite good…
Time’s Arrow is entirely told backards …
I would say London Fields is his tour de force, but you should seek out every piece of prose he has ever written…
Good reading!
I’ve only read one Martin Amis book, The Alteration, and I can highly recommend it.
His dad was good.
I’ve pondered starting a thread like this for a long time. If I had a nickel for every person I told to read London Fields…
So far, the only book of his I didn’t like was Dead Babies. My favorites of his fiction are London Fields, Money and The Rachel Papers.
For non fiction, Experience. It’s somewhat of an autobiography with great stories of his father Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, Christopher Hitchens…
There’s also some incredibly touching stores about his family. I will not spoil them.
That book made me laugh and cry. Read it.
His dad was very good. You Can’t Do Both is an incredible piece of work. IIRC there’s an anecdote in Experience where Martin Amis is at a reading or something and someone asked him if he considered Saul Bellow to be his literary father. Amis responded, “I’ve already got a literary father.”
hardygrrl, I was going to post that Dead Babies is one of my favorite Martin Amis novels. It totally unnerved me. But I do share your affection for The Rachel Papers and, of course, Experience (he signed my copy!). In addition to that non-fiction work, there’s also Amis’s The Moronic Inferno and Visiting Mrs. Nabokov, collections of essays on various topics.
Time’s Arrow is the one I liked most–it always seems to me that he has promising ideas and promising style, but just doesn’t quite get all the way there.
His dad was good–The Alteration is my sleeper favorite–a revisionist history thing.
And here’s a link to Amis’s new novel, Yellow Dog, coming out November 2003.