The son of the comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.

Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including A The son of the comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others. Martin Amis, you will discover, is a human punching bag for critics.

Google his name or one of his books, and you will find an endless resource of Amis-bashing from broadsheets to boobrags. People perceive Amis as a conceited windbag who ranks himself amongst Nabokov, Saul Bellow and his father Kingsley in the pantheon of literary greats. The voice doesn’t help – that interminable transatlantic drawl with its considered hesitations and self-important emphases. The fact of t Martin Amis, you will discover, is a human punching bag for critics. Google his name or one of his books, and you will find an endless resource of Amis-bashing from broadsheets to boobrags. People perceive Amis as a conceited windbag who ranks himself amongst Nabokov, Saul Bellow and his father Kingsley in the pantheon of literary greats. The voice doesn’t help – that interminable transatlantic drawl with its considered hesitations and self-important emphases.

Relaciones conflictivas lyrics: Solamente Basto Conocer el amor de la primera vez a hoy se vuelto muchas ocasiones y passiones que no acabaria nunca de contar.

The fact of the matter, of the fact of the matter (of the matter), is that Amis is a towering presence in the field of lit-crit: the sharpest and smartest Nero of criticism working in Britain right now, with almost four decades of experience under his belt. Which brings me to Experience, a book that is not about lit-crit, that is not about literature, but which purports to be about Amis and his dad. Well, firstly, there is no book about Martin Amis which is not about lit-crit and the process of writing. After the first fifty pages – past the infinitesimal detail about his entrance into the litosphere – I got the impression Amis had been imprisoned in this role of literary executioner since birth. His entrance into the literary world is so casual, like a son automatically following in his dad's footsteps, that it is barely covered. The novel is largely about Amis’s relationship with his father Kingsley Amis and his cousin Lucy Partington, cut down by Fred West at a bus stop at the age of 21. Amis writes about his father using an incredible amount of literary comparisons and footnotes, showing how much he learned of his father through his books, and quite how important ‘the book’ was in their lives – scarcely a day in the Amis household would pass without reference to the Greats.

As is to be expected in household of writers who count Philip Larkin as a cuddly uncle. Anyway, this book is fascinating and intimate.

Amis was deeply affected by his cousin’s death, and her presence is felt throughout the whole novel, mirroring her impact on his life. Kingsley is evoked as a genius, wit, and a hilariously un-PC father, but also an adulterer, paranoid and lonely man. Amis looks back on his youth with humour and contempt – including a series of spotty photos in the sleeve – and tackles the press who fondly hound him, and romanticises his dental agony as being a sign of greatness.

There are the usual Amis preoccupations to be found here – Nabokov, Saul Bellow and his never-less-than-irritating mate Christopher Hitchens. Even if you’re not a fiftysomething intellectual from a time when people had staunch political stances and voiced ‘radical’ opinions among the bourgeois highbrow crowd, you should find this memoir a touching portrait of an unconventional and privileged upbringing. The passages about his father's death are especially touching. Amis's most honest and lyrical writing is to be found here. Or, you’ll find this a self-indulgent portrait of a man you have absolutely interest in whatsoever. I rather enjoyed it, you know.

The memoir is a guided tour, no free ranging research with the price of admission. Le Parole Che Non Ti Ho Detto Ita Download on this page. It is likely closer to a slide show. One mustn't shuffle the sequence. It alleges itself as a report, an account.

It isn't submission. That is unseemly. I often felt ill at ease when reading Experience. My friends and I read Zachary Leader's biography of Kingsley Amis a few years back. The sordid details of the home life and its philandering projections really bothered me.

It also gave a context to Marty's less th The memoir is a guided tour, no free ranging research with the price of admission. It is likely closer to a slide show. One mustn't shuffle the sequence.

It alleges itself as a report, an account. It isn't submission. That is unseemly. I often felt ill at ease when reading Experience. My friends and I read Zachary Leader's biography of Kingsley Amis a few years back. Jbl Speaker Serial Number Dating here.

The sordid details of the home life and its philandering projections really bothered me. It also gave a context to Marty's less than stellar moments. The pauses, omissions and gaffes fuel the narrative. The footnotes underscore the narrative.

We must agree with Kingsley's observation that life is grief and labor. I suppose Forster is also on target and I should feel that Amis connected with me, the reader, though I'm not sure I welcome such. Whether you love or hate Amis, the sentences he crafts are as sparkling and witty and imaginative as anything, and his pronouncements are somehow uttered with this devastatingly quiet authority of hipness that you sort of can't help but take him seriously. He's the guy at the party you want to like you.

I initially found out about him through my years-long obsession with all things Hitch, so learning about Amis' life and work has been an unexpected bonus. Check it: 'I said in the car, the hired Whether you love or hate Amis, the sentences he crafts are as sparkling and witty and imaginative as anything, and his pronouncements are somehow uttered with this devastatingly quiet authority of hipness that you sort of can't help but take him seriously. He's the guy at the party you want to like you. I initially found out about him through my years-long obsession with all things Hitch, so learning about Amis' life and work has been an unexpected bonus. Check it: 'I said in the car, the hired Chevrolet Celebrity, -Now no sinister balls, okay?.No sinister balls. My passenger was Christopher Hitchens and I was taking him to Vermont to meet Saul Bellow. We would have dinner and stay the night and drive back to Cape Cod the following morning.

Cape Cod was where I spent eight or nine summers with my first wife, and with the boys, on Horseleech Pond, south of Wellfleet. The trope sinister balls went back to our days at the New Statesman. In 1978 the incumbent editor, Anthony Howard, bowed to historical forces and honorably stepped down. I and the Hitch were part of the complicated, two-tier, six-member committee that would decide on his successor. During an interview Neal Ascherson, one of the three candidates on the final shortlist, came up with the following: 'Anyone who resists the closed shop is going to get the biggest bloody nose of all time.' I said afterwards that this was sinister balls, and Christopher, whether or not he agreed (he was, of course, much more pro-union than I was), certainly seemed to be taken by the phrase.

So 'no sinister balls' meant no vehement assertions of a left-wing tendency. In 1989 temporary fluctuations- going under the name of Political Correctness- had rigged up Saul Bellow as a figure of the right; he was under frequent attack, and I felt that he deserved a peaceful evening in his own house. As it happens I now believe that Bellow and Hitchens are not dissimilar in their political intuitions- especially in their sense of how America is managed or carved up.As the Chevrolet Celebrity moved boldly down Route 6, I was pretty confident that the evening would go well. There would be no sinister balls. At about 11.15 a silence slowly elongated itself over the dinner table. Christopher, utterly sober but with his eyes lowered, was crushing in his hands an empty packet of Benson & Hedges. The Bellows, too, had their gazes downcast.

I sat with my head in my palms, staring at the aftermath of the dinner-that evening's road smash, with its buckled headlights, its yawning hinges, its still-oscillating hubcap. My right foot was injured because I had kicked the shins of the Hitch so much with it. It would be a simplification to say that Christopher has spent the last ninety minutes talking up a blue streak of sinister balls. But let us not run in fear of simplification. Simplification is sometimes exactly what you want. The theme of the discord was, of course, Israel.

Christopher was already on record with a piece called 'Holy Land Heretic' (Raritan, Spring 1987), where he had adduced 'the generalized idealizations of Israel commonly offered by Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel, and others'. Much of Christopher's discourse, at the dinner table in Vermont, can be found in this 8,000 word essay, which he wrote, so to speak, as a gentile. And the rest of his discourse can be found in 'On Not Knowing the Half of It: Homage to Telegraphist Jacobs' (Grand Street, Summer 1988), which he wrote as a Jew. Needless to say, it was a point of fundamental, of elementary intellectual honor that Christopher's changed ethnicity should have no effect whatever on questions of political science and political morality. Grandmother Dodo's disclosure had not rendered Israel any less mechanistic or expansionist or quasi-democratic.

Christopher would do no thinking with his blood, neither at his desk nor at the dinner table. Emotions, atavisms, would be set aside, while reason- the nabob of all the faculties- went about its work. Naturally Bellow was capable of a rational- indeed a Benthamite- discussion of Israel, pros and cons. But it wasn't that kind of evening. No, it wasn't that kind of evening.

Very soon Janis and I were reduced to the occasional phoneme of remonstration. And Saul, packed down over the table, shoulders forward, legs tensed beneath his chair, became more laconic in his contributions, steadily submitting to a cataract of pure reason, matter-of-fact chapter and verse, with its interjected historical precedents, its high-decibel statistics, its fortissimo fine distinctions- Christopher's cerebral stampede. Then it was over, and we faced the silence. My right foot throbbed from the warm work it had done beneath the table on the shins of the Hitch, availing me nothing.As I shall explain, I too think about Israel with the blood.

But my blood wasn't thinking about Israel, not then. A consensus was forming in the room, silently: that the evening could not be salvaged. A change of subject and a cleansing cup of coffee? Nothing for it, now, but to finish up and seek out bedding. But for the time being we sat there, rigid, as the silence raged on. Christopher was still softly compacting his little gold box of Benson & Hedges.

He seemed to be giving this job his full attention. Before him in the silence lay the stilled battlefield: the state of Israel, thoroughly outmanuvered, comprehensively overthrown.In his clef-ish novel of London literary life, Brilliant Creatures (1983), Clive James said of the Hitchens-based character that the phrase 'no whit abashed' might have been invented for him. But Christopher did now seem to be entertaining the conception of self-reproof.

During the argument the opinions of Professor Said had been weighed, and this is what Christopher, in closing, wished to emphasize. The silence still felt like a gnat in my ear. - Well, he said. I'm sorry if I went on a bit. But Edward is a friend of mine. And if I hadn't defended him.I would have felt bad. - How d'you feel now?

And there's the hilarious (to me) moment where Amis fils observes papa Amis busily scratching through the newspaper crossword puzzle, crafted by a guy he knew from Oxford back in the day and who he clearly doesn't respect very much, furiously mumbling to himself 'Oh, Thompson, that was so obvious, you, you swine.' Gets me every time. Made it to page 236. Thought I was a huge enough Amis fangirl to be crazy about this, but after a promising beginning it wound up making me adore him less. At the end of the day, I just don't find Martin Amis's life as fascinating as Martin Amis does, and I definitely am not as interested in his relationship with his father. Don't get me wrong, there's some amazing stuff in here, but the book as a whole reminded me of personal essays I see students write for grad school admission: most people ha Made it to page 236. Thought I was a huge enough Amis fangirl to be crazy about this, but after a promising beginning it wound up making me adore him less.

At the end of the day, I just don't find Martin Amis's life as fascinating as Martin Amis does, and I definitely am not as interested in his relationship with his father. Don't get me wrong, there's some amazing stuff in here, but the book as a whole reminded me of personal essays I see students write for grad school admission: most people have no insight, in writing about their own lives, into what material will be interesting to other people and what will not.

So there is some incredible writing and good anecdotes and analysis and fun literary name-dropping, but there are also portions that just didn't feel print-worthy to me, and there are too many points where Martin gifts us with some breaking news -- e.g. Both the Amises and Nabokov agree that Shakespeare was a great writer! 117) -- that don't seem that urgent and sort of made me roll my eyes. He also seemed not to be getting around to many of the subjects that would have interested me most, which made his focus on things I didn't care about even harder to bear. Part of my problem with this was doubtless based in my personal suspicion of and discomfort with the genre of memoir. If you love Martin Amis and memoir, you'll probably love this. I got increasingly bored, then stalled out, and when I read Alison Bechdel's Fun Home somehow being so invested in another author's relationship-with-my-father memoir gave me permission to throw in the towel on this.

I have always felt that Martin Amis is probably a giant ass. This opinion is only confirmed by my feeling of an increasing crankiness in each new book. I'm glad I read Experience. It's very easy to judge a total stranger based on interviews, but this memoir is an honest account of his untidy life, and it's told with genuine feeling. There's his huge jerk of a famous father, there's a missing cousin, there's a child he knew nothing of.

With Experience, readers gain some sympathy for Amis, who tur I have always felt that Martin Amis is probably a giant ass. This opinion is only confirmed by my feeling of an increasing crankiness in each new book. I'm glad I read Experience.

It's very easy to judge a total stranger based on interviews, but this memoir is an honest account of his untidy life, and it's told with genuine feeling. There's his huge jerk of a famous father, there's a missing cousin, there's a child he knew nothing of. With Experience, readers gain some sympathy for Amis, who turns out to be a real person, and not just some character you read about in Vanity Fair.

The title, it turns out, is a caveat emptor. I went in expecting a look at MA's life as a writer in his twenties, thirties, and forties--the Granta/Booker heydays, nights out, friends, foes and lovers. You know, summer reading fun. I got perhaps fifty pages on tooth pain, tooth anxieties, trips to dentists, and ruminations on the dental problems of famous novelists. And discussions about a murdered cousin (and with it, the obvious hope that the weight of that terrible event would counterbalance the The title, it turns out, is a caveat emptor.

I went in expecting a look at MA's life as a writer in his twenties, thirties, and forties--the Granta/Booker heydays, nights out, friends, foes and lovers. You know, summer reading fun. I got perhaps fifty pages on tooth pain, tooth anxieties, trips to dentists, and ruminations on the dental problems of famous novelists. And discussions about a murdered cousin (and with it, the obvious hope that the weight of that terrible event would counterbalance the triviality of the rest), plus schoolboy letters home and critiques of schoolboy letters home, glancing references to big events in Amis' life (you know, because it's assumed I would already know All Things Martin before I picked up Experience), and a handful of pages about Hitchens and Bellow, focusing mostly on where they met, what was worn and what was eaten. The only saving grace is that it's secretly about Kingsley Amis.

But if you're looking for Marty, there's no way around it: Experience is an underwhelming read. I can't even say it's for fans only. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Yes, Amis is self-satisfied. And yes, he writes more -- much more -- about his teeth than about his wives. But he's just so CLEVER, it's hard not to enjoy it.

And he turns out to be unexpectedly sensitive when writing about sad or tender moments. Demerits: the book lacks structure, and runs on a bit. A third of the way through, I thought it would be one of my favourite recent reads; two-thirds of the way through, I'd run out of steam and had to take a I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Yes, Amis is self-satisfied. And yes, he writes more -- much more -- about his teeth than about his wives. But he's just so CLEVER, it's hard not to enjoy it. And he turns out to be unexpectedly sensitive when writing about sad or tender moments.

Demerits: the book lacks structure, and runs on a bit. A third of the way through, I thought it would be one of my favourite recent reads; two-thirds of the way through, I'd run out of steam and had to take a break. But then the last third, in which Kingsley died, was just phenomenal.

One caveat: if you're not British, you might find this book hard going. Amis makes a lot of passing allusions to British news stories, etc., particularly ones involving coverage of himself (Amis was so regularly savaged by the British press in the 1990s that as a teenager I gathered, without yet having read a word of his own writing, that he was Someone To Be Despised). If you don't understand those, the book may be boring. Amis starts and ends by criticising life as an inherently poor story. “The trouble with life is its amorphousness thinly plotted, largely theme-less, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven.

The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning; the same ending” He believed writers write far more penetratingly than they live. He also repeatedly recalls a phrase Kingsley once said to him (whether or not he also subsc Amis starts and ends by criticising life as an inherently poor story. “The trouble with life is its amorphousness thinly plotted, largely theme-less, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning; the same ending” He believed writers write far more penetratingly than they live.

He also repeatedly recalls a phrase Kingsley once said to him (whether or not he also subscribes isn’t clear): “life without a woman is only half a life.” This memoir really isn’t for the women (the many women, it seems) in Martin’s life, but for his father Kingsley, his ‘twin peaks’ (Nabokov and Bellow), Christopher Hitchens, his mother Hilly, brother Philip, and his cousin Lucy Partington. Experience was published in 2000, partly in reflection of his father (passed in 1995), and also in response to the discovery – decades later – of his cousin Lucy’s remains among the many victims of Frederick and Rosemary West (1994). Although he never mentions it, this is Martin Amis’ Song of Innocence and of Experience*. The majority of authors I read distance themselves enough from their work to at least give the impression of author removal. Somehow, Martin Amis is different. Before Experience I might compare him with a kind of ‘’ that the child within you desperately hopes to please. I was a reluctant fan of the man before (wholehearted of his writing, though, I should make clear) but this memoir brings me into the fold.

He’s a flawed character, but he’s clearly decent, private, and self-aware. As ever, his writing is excellent.

He acquaints you with the literary and intellectual giants he grew up surrounded by, addresses the many scandals and tragedies in his life with elegance (at least with humanity), and although his explanations and justifications are often parenthetical, he is more mindful than ever of his reader and kind in his clarification. Some of the episodes he describes, I must say, seem astonishingly unlikely. I suspect a little conceit is at play, for example, in this ‘sincere recollection’. (Amis flags a cab and asks to be taken to Notting Hill.) Taxi driver: “Notting Hill?

I thought you lived in Camden Town.” “Not yet.” “I was reading somewhere you live in Camden Town.” “I’m moving next month.” This is only one of several episodes where Amis is apparently extremely recognizable and everyone is clearly familiar with his life as well as his future plans. I am a fan of Amis, for sure, but even I wouldn’t necessarily recognize the man if I saw him out of context. He mentions Nabokov and Joyce throughout Experience, first for what he perceives as a physical fraternity (all three had to have all their teeth removed. This is at once unbearable and incredibly comic), but also for his colossal admiration. His adulation of Saul Bellow is in an entirely different dimension.

Although Martin and Saul are 40 years apart in age, their bond is remarkable. When Kingsley dies, Martin calls Saul. (Saul is also the one who said: ‘Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.’) “You’ll have to be my father now. As long as you’re still alive I’ll never feel entirely fatherless.” Saul to Martin, “Well I love you very much.” A thing like that!

(Forgive me while I now just share some of my favourite passages with you) Kingsley, like Martin, is a wonderfully flawed, brilliant genius. I loved the performance and friction that seemed to define their relationship.

Kingsley, in Martin’s words, was ‘energetically old school.’ If you pronounced sine qua non sinny-qua-non he would yodel it back to you in music-hall Italian. He also had a lot of love for HRH and was even knighted. After hearing about his knighting ceremony on the radio, and when he came to Martin’s for Sunday dinner (he did every Sunday), the front door swung open to reveal Martin’s boys “accoutred in various plastic breastplates, gauntlets and Viking moose antlers, and slowly raising their grey plastic swords. In silence Kingsley went down on one knee, there on the doormat, and the boys, also silent, and unblinking, dubbed him in turn with a touch of the blade on either shoulder.” Another favourite passage from Experience is a recollection of a very tense dinner clash with Salman Rushdie. Of course, it bears repeating: Martin to Salman: “So you like Beckett’s prose, do you? You like Beckett’s prose. “ (Having established earlier that he liked Beckett’s prose, he neglected to answer.) “Okay.

Quote me some. You can’t.” (No answer: only the extreme hooded-eye treatment.) “Well I’ll do it for you. All you need is maximum ugliness and a lot of negatives. ‘Nor it the nothing never is.’ ‘Neither nowhere the nothing is not.’ ‘Non-nothing the never.’” (By this stage Salman looked like a falcon staring through a Venetian blind.) *considering how often Amis talks about experience and innocence counterbalancing each other, it is a little odd that he never once mentions Blake.

To be honest I’ve always preferred the novels of Amis Sr to Amis Jr. Although I haven’t dipped as extensively into Martin’s work as some of my contemporaries, nothing I’ve read so far has matched – say – ‘Lucky Jim’. Indeed I think the younger Amis’s books would benefit from him taking a page at the beginning to write: “My name is Martin Amis and I am very clever.” Once those two facts have been clearly established he wouldn’t need to bang on about them in the prose and we’d no doubt have much m To be honest I’ve always preferred the novels of Amis Sr to Amis Jr. Although I haven’t dipped as extensively into Martin’s work as some of my contemporaries, nothing I’ve read so far has matched – say – ‘Lucky Jim’. Indeed I think the younger Amis’s books would benefit from him taking a page at the beginning to write: “My name is Martin Amis and I am very clever.” Once those two facts have been clearly established he wouldn’t need to bang on about them in the prose and we’d no doubt have much more insightful novels.

But I digress. Having taken KA’s ‘Memoirs’ from the library, I thought that, in the interest of fairness, it was only right I also borrowed MA’s ‘Experience’.

Reading them back to back has been an interesting diversion (not least because father and son have vastly different styles), but one which shows the strengths and limitations of both men. Kingsley Amis’s book is a collection of essays, wherein our author looks back over various periods of life and reminisces about various writers he’d met. As such we learn about his time in Oxford, Swansea and America; he talks about his friendships with Philip Larkin and Anthony Powell; and gets to settle scores with the likes of John Wain and Roald Dahl. The format of the book might make it a volume to dip into rather than read all at once, but all his hallmarks are here – pomposity, booze, a fear of the modern and – cringingly at times – sexism. Reading it I imagine that to have a drink with the older Amis would be to enter a world where the cantankerous had been made flesh. However, it’s impossible to deny that he was a witty old bugger and there are some genuinely laugh out loud lines. The problem with it as an actual book is that it’s a collection rather than an actual book.

There are themes that reoccur, there are dramatis personae who reappear, but in the main it’s a series of vignettes – some more comic than others. Furthermore, as the author makes clear in the preface, he is trying to focus on others rather than himself, so we end up with this odd affair where KA as a narrator remains somewhat unknowable (and certainly unexamined).

As such I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to frame a lot of these incidents as fiction and let the author run wild with a narrator who is present for the reader. Yes, there are a lot of good things in this book, but as a whole it’s not the enjoyable read his best novels are. Now focusing on one’s self is something that Martin has never had a problem with. As such I was expecting a more personally welcoming affair, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed.

We find out about Martin’s family in these pages, and as such more about Kingsley Amis’s family than we do in Kingsley’s Amis’s book. Martin does provide some very touching and real moments, and it is the more emotional of the two, but the flaws I’ve always found in Martin’s writing are still in evidence. Firstly, the self absorption. Okay, this is an autobiography and so the writer is allowed to bang on about himself.

Perfectly true. Martin writes really well on the death of his father and the disappearance of his cousin Lucy Partingdon (who fell victim to serial killer Fred West) but we also get pages of prose given over to the author’s dental problems. Yes, toothache is painful and the dental procedures MA went through sound horrific even to someone whose read a lot of horror, but does anyone really need a 100 pages on it? Secondly, there’s the style. At one point Phillip Larkin accuses Martin of “over-writing” one of his novels. This is strikes me as a perfectly valid criticism and one that holds true for this book too. It is frustrating that this autobiography can veer from tender descriptions of family and loss, to lengthy – and wordy – paragraphs of po-faced pretension.

(The young MA is quoted describing Keats thus: “All right when he’s not saying ‘I’m a Poet. Got that?’” The same criticism can be levelled at him as a writer.) The format also lacks focus, and veers off in some quite odd directions – for example, an interview the author did with John Travolta is mentioned again and again for no discernable reason. This is certainly an area where KA wins out, as his book is designed to concentrate on one individual – and sometimes one anecdote – at a time. Martin is something of a ghost in the text of his father’s book. For the most part he is fleetingly mentioned, so if you didn’t already know that he was a novelist you might just mistake him for an enthusiastic literary reviewer. (Although Kingsley does take the time to administer a kick to two of his son’s literary idols – Saul Bellow and John Updike.) His father however looms large in Martin’s book, and is far more of a real person than he is in his own volume.

I have given both books three stars. Kingsley’s book is fragmentary and episodic in design, but the prose is crisp and the text is genuinely funny; while Martin’s is incredibly touching in parts and more emotionally honest, does contain the same literary ticks that disturb me in his fiction.

However, if you have an interest in either man and want a book to read from start to finish, then the son’s is the one to go for. This book has a certain brilliance to it unrivalled by its fellow memoirs or autobiographies. Amis ignores the fact that a memoir is a recollection of his life and instead decides to throw in essential fragments from his life at you randomly throughout the novel, whilst working in a linear narrative by contrasting them with another moment. Amis manages to construct his yarn through constant use of letters sent to his father, Kingsley, and stepmother Jane during the late teen and young adult era This book has a certain brilliance to it unrivalled by its fellow memoirs or autobiographies. Amis ignores the fact that a memoir is a recollection of his life and instead decides to throw in essential fragments from his life at you randomly throughout the novel, whilst working in a linear narrative by contrasting them with another moment. Amis manages to construct his yarn through constant use of letters sent to his father, Kingsley, and stepmother Jane during the late teen and young adult era of his life, also his feelings and memories regarding the disappearance and murder of his cousin Lucy, his emotions regarding his eldest daughter Delilah Seale, and the superior event, the year 1995.

This year was momentous for Amis and he gives an intricate and detailed account of all the losses but manages to make the reader feel joyous at the end when he takes you to the birth of his daughter, Fernanda. Amis' prose is as per usual original and articulate, the emotion can be felt with each passing sentence.

Never once did I feel Martin Amis wrote without soul in this book, each word is either an expression of anger, joy, sorrow or simply life. Life is breathed through Amis, and he manages to recreate his father not as a heartless Tory or an ignoramus adulterer, but as a father who happened to follow a few selfish exploits and had less than common political mantras to uphold, but in the end was still a good father whom Martin, Philip and Sally could all respect and love.

This unbiased account of a controversial man so close to his heart is an achievement that I feel Amis worthy of unadulterated praise for. I've read a couple of Martin Amis' books and several of his dad's. Somehow, after London Fields, I decided there was something about him I didn't quite care for. But then a review of another biography compared it to this one and said how good Amis's was and so I put it on my Kindle and read it at the writers' retreat. I found myself laughing out loud quite often (always a good thing)and I enjoyed his thoughts about writing and literature especially in the first part.

The second part is mainly ab I've read a couple of Martin Amis' books and several of his dad's. Somehow, after London Fields, I decided there was something about him I didn't quite care for. But then a review of another biography compared it to this one and said how good Amis's was and so I put it on my Kindle and read it at the writers' retreat. I found myself laughing out loud quite often (always a good thing)and I enjoyed his thoughts about writing and literature especially in the first part. The second part is mainly about his father's dying and increasingly I realised this was more a biography of dad than of Martin, perhaps to show dad's biographer that he hadn't always got it right and that the son knew far more. This was rather confirmed by the postscript about his relationship with the biographer.

Why do people write autobiographies, I wondered. Certainly to make a point - and he's doing that; and also vanity - and there's some of that too, carefully covered with humour; and sometimes to correct an impression they feel is false - and that's an important reason here.

He clearly wanted to show that he wasn't the spoilt brat the press had described and he didn't have all that dental work done for vanity. I was left with a strong feeling of the unreliable narrator, but I really enjoyed the book: for making me think about these reasons; for introducing me to some fascinating literary ideas - and for making me laugh. I love the themes from minutiae to magnificent, as coexisting subjects of experience - writing, adolescence, children (being a child and having them) and guilt, sex, problematic teeth, travel, marriage, troubles with friendships, pleasure in friendships, struggles with close family members. He writes at one point that his dentist 'after a particularly gruelling session, wrung his hands and told his mother 'it's a mess in there'.

He also writes of the coincidence of things that happen to familie I love the themes from minutiae to magnificent, as coexisting subjects of experience - writing, adolescence, children (being a child and having them) and guilt, sex, problematic teeth, travel, marriage, troubles with friendships, pleasure in friendships, struggles with close family members. He writes at one point that his dentist 'after a particularly gruelling session, wrung his hands and told his mother 'it's a mess in there'.

He also writes of the coincidence of things that happen to families, where the intimate and the worldly overlap, and where life exists in an absence of information. His cousin went missing - was one of those 'missing people' - and it was discovered years later that she was abducted by Frederick West. Amis does not 'deal with' or build a motif around this issue, but simply discloses it - it comes to light, but remains a shadow over their family's sense of stability and predictability - all things are incomprehensible, as experience itself when it happens - and life is only a continual contemplation of incomprehensible and incongruous experience. This autobio could have been named 'My Famous Father and Me'. He spent a lot of time on the relationship with his father and also talking about and citing other famous people’s work.

It wasn't uninteresting, it’s just that there was more about Martin’s own life that I would rather have learned about - his sister, his relationships, more insight into his own novels and writing process. The chronology was pretty loose so I did have a little trouble keeping track of where we were at any given time. This autobio could have been named 'My Famous Father and Me'. He spent a lot of time on the relationship with his father and also talking about and citing other famous people’s work. It wasn't uninteresting, it’s just that there was more about Martin’s own life that I would rather have learned about - his sister, his relationships, more insight into his own novels and writing process. The chronology was pretty loose so I did have a little trouble keeping track of where we were at any given time.

My favorite parts were the letters that he wrote home to his dad and dad’s wife while he was away at school. So funny and very brave of him to include them.

I was advised to read The Information, and then to read Experience in order to give context to Amis because he gets a lot of flak for his personal life & writings. After loving The Information, I don’t think I needed to delve into this memoir.while Amis has certainly led an interesting life, this book made me come back down to earth after The Information and like him a little less. Without any sense of chronology, the memoir touches gently on the major events that formed Amis’ life: the mur I was advised to read The Information, and then to read Experience in order to give context to Amis because he gets a lot of flak for his personal life & writings. After loving The Information, I don’t think I needed to delve into this memoir.while Amis has certainly led an interesting life, this book made me come back down to earth after The Information and like him a little less.

Without any sense of chronology, the memoir touches gently on the major events that formed Amis’ life: the murder of his cousin, Lucy Partington, by one of London’s most famous serial killers, Frederick West; physical problems (bad teeth, short stature, youthful chubbiness); a famous writer for a father; father cheating on mother; and pedophiliac & suicidal encounters throughout his life. The final major affecter is literature, which explains why there were so many quotes from books and details of other authors in a memoir about himself, but it does not mean that it was enjoyable. Because it was not. I felt slightly schizophrenic, jumping forward and back in time, and trying to unearth the subtly hinted at events in Amis’ life that were buried in literary quotes and references to other authors such as Nabokov, Bellows, Updike, and of course his father. Kingsley Amis, the father of Martin, was a famous writer as well, and much of Martin Amis’ memoir focuses on the life of Kingsley. If you are interested in reading a biography of Kingsley told through the eyes of his son, please read this book.

However if you do so, you must also sidestep the unnecessary excerpts of self-inflation by Amis, which mostly consisted of his tales of “luridly mingling” with actors like John Travolta, Tom Hanks, and Sophia Loren, and then comparing himself and his teeth troubles to other aforementioned literary greats (Updike, Nabokov). Amis IS great, but the greatness speaks for itself, and that is why his bragging about connections to other famous people is so unnecessary.

DESPITE the above, I am still in love with Amis’ prose (which furthers the idea that I should stick to his lit). I adore his use of vocab like ‘schadenfreude’ and ‘climacteric,’ and how he often identifies people in terms of dedicatees of various books. Perhaps I didn't read this at the right time: it didn't completely click with me, although it was never unenjoyable. I'll read his first four novels next, which I've left for last. Experience is a space in which Amis flaunts his consistently dazzling stylistic gifts while he assembles (in a complex structure) the narrative of his family, friendships and life as a writer.

There is also the dark story that winds itself throughout and around the book: Amis's 21-year old cousin Lucy Partington was ab Perhaps I didn't read this at the right time: it didn't completely click with me, although it was never unenjoyable. I'll read his first four novels next, which I've left for last.

Experience is a space in which Amis flaunts his consistently dazzling stylistic gifts while he assembles (in a complex structure) the narrative of his family, friendships and life as a writer. There is also the dark story that winds itself throughout and around the book: Amis's 21-year old cousin Lucy Partington was abducted and murdered by Frederick West, one of Britain's most notorious serial killers, in 1973. There are flurries of Nabakov references, bracing tales about Saul Bellow, hilarious and pathetic stories about his father Kingsley, and tender passages about his children. There's also this, one of the funniest bits he's ever written: 'Like many children in Spain, Jaime was allowed to accompany his supper with a glass of red wine, heavily qualified with water. On this particular night Jaime kept a strict eye on the dilution procedure. 'Agua, no,' he kept saying, with a raised forefinger, every time my mother moved to the tap. He probably got two or three glasses down him - and then, before anyone could prevent it, he seized and drained an unattended gin and tonic.

What followed was a stark paradigm of drunkenness, astonishingly telescoped. Jaime laughed, danced, sang, bawled, brawled and passed out, all within fifteen minutes. Then about half an hour later we heared a parched moan from his room. Jaime was already having his hangover. The voice was faintly saying, 'Agua!... Martin Amis is an English novelist, essayist and short story writer. His works include the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

The Guardian writes that 'all his critics have noted what [his father] complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style. That constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recog Martin Amis is an English novelist, essayist and short story writer. His works include the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

The Guardian writes that 'all his critics have noted what [his father] complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style. That constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop.'

Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus sometimes been portrayed as the undisputed master of what the New York Times has called 'the new unpleasantness.'