Known as the “bad boy of literature”, Martin Amis certainly demonstrates a good amount of bad: arrogant, opinionated, elitist.

Inside Story
MARTIN AMIS
(JONATHAN CAPE, 560 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Known as the “bad boy of literature”, Martin Amis certainly demonstrates a good amount of bad: arrogant, opinionated, elitist. He is a clever-clogs who enjoys being perverse, showing off and showing up. So what to make of his new so-called novel? He tells the reader his work won’t read like a novel and invites us to think of it more as an anthology or a set of linked short stories. Fictional characters and imagined conversations appear alongside autobiographical features such as photographs, footnotes and index.

The temptation to think of Inside Story as a grab-bag should be resisted. Not a random selection of memories and ideas, it is rather a love letter to the power of friendship and the English language. To take last things first (Amis fashion), the final section of this long book is devoted to three deaths – of the novelist Saul Bellow, the poet Philip Larkin and the essayist Christopher Hitchens, Amis’ lifelong friend. All these people Amis loved deeply, as mentor, father figure and best mate.

Get Instant Access

Continue Reading

Register for free to read this article in full

REGISTER

Subscribe for unlimited access

SUBSCRIBE NOW

From just £37.50 quarterly

  Print copy of The Tablet delivered directly to your door.
  Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
  Access to the weekly digital copy of The Tablet.
  Full access to The Tablet’s archive – over 180 years of back issues.

Already a subscriber? Login