Experience

Product Information

At one point in this remarkable book, Martin Amis refers to a phrase he coined in a 1983 newspaper piece on Saul Bellow. There's his huge jerk of a famous father, there's a missing cousin, there's a child he knew nothing of. 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.

Yet these literary stars were querulous and critical of each other: Nabokov criticized Joyce, Kingsley criticized Nabokov, and Hitchens destroyed a visit with the ailing Bellow by talking outrageously.

Edward Upward said that he felt the aging process at work in him when he experienced ‘little failures of tolerance’. Their inclusion is puzzling, all the more so when he admits that he hasn't kept Kingsley's letters to him, or Philip Larkin's. Amis also examines the case of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who disappeared without a trace in 1973 (a month after the publication of his first novel), and was exhumed in 1994 from the back garden of Frederick West, Britain's most prolific serial killer. 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. Kingsley's arrangement with Eric Jacob's is never adequately explained, and neither are many of the details of the controversy.

It is hard to remember whether these risible sentences occur in Craig Brown's inspired parody in Private Eye or in Experience itself.Looking back, he reflects that he probably made it past the interview period and into Oxford just by being himself. Martin's elliptical memoir is a very odd mixture, but easily the most memorable and moving thing in it is his portrait of his father. 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.

Certo, conoscendo meglio le opere di Kingsley e di altri scrittori sovente citati probabilmente si apprezzerebbe di più il testo. He doesn't complain, as he could so easily do, of the downsides and disadvantages of such a connection.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. Amis does his best to save her from the posthumous epitaph of helpless victim – in particular refuting Fred’s heinous tale that she wanted to introduce him to her parents - and to tell us about who she was and why he hopes, and believes, when darker thoughts enter his mind, that it was all over quickly for her. As the Chevrolet Celebrity moved boldly down Route 6, I was pretty confident that the evening would go well. It's a cunning, labyrinthine echo-chamber of regrets and farewells, appeals for permission, hesitant declarations of love. Whatever the peaks of candour, defensiveness and doggedness (and also, it should be said, sympathy, generosity and humour) scaled in Experience, it is nevertheless an extremely odd book.

All the kids' voices in Experience -- those of the narrator as a child and those of his own children -- are done with a clairvoyant accuracy that wrings the heart even though it's funny. Britain's faded but feisty bad boy puts on one of his shiniest displays here -- all flashy, stylish, explosive bursts of sound and fury. 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. 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.Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that he once again does nothing resembling setting any record straight. 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.