Another day, another tiresome picture of Martin Amis on the front page of a national newspaper and another verbose interview.
Today's Independent: http://tinyurl.com/y97euqz
The digested Amis read: “Once upon a time I had a mind-blowing affair with a feminist. I have never got over it. It was the only time in my life that felt like a novel. See if you can guess who she was.”
This theme runs through Amis ad nauseam. I actually feel sorry for him.
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3 years ago
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Have you seen Anna Ford's letter to The Guardian about Amis? Ouch!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/martin-amis-anna-ford-media
The Telegraph has a good take on the story, with additional quotes from the excellent Ms Ford:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7277378/Anna-Ford-launches-attack-on-Martin-Amis.html
She was reacting to the fact that not only is is controversial-on-purpose when he has a book to sell, but he then proceeds to whinge about the way his views are reported. It seems that when it comes to cake, Amis is pro-having it and pro-eating it.
I have always liked Anna Ford.
Amis has now replied with his own letter to the Guardian, followed a day later by Christopher Hitchens. Ford then wrote another open letter addressed to both of them.
I have to say that Amis and Hitchens gave a convincing account of their friendship with Ford's late husband Mark Boxer.
If you want to see what some of these people looked like when they first became friends while working on the New Statemen in the late 1970s, I can recommend looking up Angela Gorgas's pictures on the National Portrait Gallery website.
A number of the prints formed the basis of an exhibition called Martin Amis and Friends that ran last year to mark Amis's 60th birthday, and several of the people featured have cropped up in fictional form in his latest book, The Pregnant Widow.
Have you read any Amis, btw? It's a bit of a mixed bag, but some of his journalism is fantastic. Visiting Mrs Nabokov is, for me, his best book, but there is some good stuff in The War Against Cliche. I should probably reread Money at some point too.
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