It’s a shock to think Martin Amis is in his seventies now. Though his writing always had the heft of an author who knows his own power, you cheer for the ruffian underneath, the upsetter, the hatchet-wielder and smasher of conventions. You felt, though, as a reader, that you would always be inadequate to the task of meeting his expectations, and this made it hard to like his work. You were stuck with admiring his clever tricks, and usually hating the way women were treated. I began softening my attitude to his work when I read his autobiography, ‘Experience’, which was quite a lot more than the genre straitjacket might allow.
Now, with Inside Story, which works into memoir the idea of novel and a sort of guide to reading and writing, there’s a comforting welcome to the reader, a glass of whisky, an armchair for you to sink into. There’s his family, his wife, his daughters for you to meet. Or a version of them. His sons from his first marriage. A composite of former girlfriends, a certain Phoebe, taunts and half-defeats the youthful Amis, and drives such of the narrative tension he allows. There’s a lot of ruminating on his personal literary lions. The Pantheon. He flaunts his friendship with Saul Bellow, pays homage to his father Kingsley Amis, and, from a little further distance, genuflects, as ever, to Vladimir Nabokov. There’s a twisty exploration of the power and inadequacies of Philip Larkin, that rides shotgun with the fictional adventures of Phoebe and calls into question the author’s paternity. The heart of the book, though, and it’s odd even for this to be a feature of an Amis work, (a heart, I mean), is all to do with his fondness and yearning for his old friend Christopher Hitchens. I would re-read the book just to savour the saltiness and the piquancy of that friendship. I’ve been a fan of The Hitch for years. (That voice!)
Inside Story – a nice play on words, as the book has lots of tips and wise words about the art of writing, story-telling, as well as being comfortable with the idea of creating story out of the author’s own life, whether as memoir or as fiction forged from the building blocks of memory.
Amis is a horrific name dropper, and he knows it – but as he points out, his Dad was, well, his Dad, who just happened to be one of the leading writers of the day, and his stepmother, Elizabeth Jane Howard – a fine and, as he admits himself, dreadfully under-rated author. I confess, I got fairly tired with Amis’s awe-struck reminiscences about Saul Bellow, an author I’ve never been able to read without having his amazing talent stick in my throat. I prefer my literary geniuses to give me more space to admire them than Bellow allows. And as he ruminated about Bellow and Nabokov and Larkin and Kingsley, I wondered why he was so very wrapped up with these elderly gents. It seemed he was almost crippled by his need to win approval, and to leap over them at the same time. It seemed a shame for him to care so much about these dusty, elderly old chaps. His urge to take his place in the Pantheon alongside these nicotine-stained, self-assured gents.
And then I realised, listening to the excellent edition of ‘Open Book’, with Amis being interviewed by Elizabeth Day, he’s already become one of them himself.
But not the prose, it’s full of pungency and accurate, jolting observations. Things like, “When a novel comes to you, there is a familiar but always suprising sense of calorific infusion; you feel blessed, strengthened, and gorgeously reassured.” (My italics). A host of other things to savour.
Thanks to Netgalley and Jonathan Cape for giving me a copy to read pre-publication.
Izzy Brown 