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Spanning three decades, ten novels, six works of nonfiction, two short story collections, and nearly four hundred reviews and essays, Martin Amis’s career already testifies to a lifetime devoted to literature. From the appearance of his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973), to his most recent book, Yellow Dog (2003), Amis has inspired some of the most controversial debates of the contemporary era. His work has prompted new considerations of realism, postmodernism, feminism, politics, and culture, and his personal life has provided fodder for gossip and tabloid journalism.

As is true of anyone whose life has veered into celebrity, such evaluations have not always been civil or reciprocally welcomed. However, they have always been lively, always been edifying, and they continue to confirm Amis’s status as one of England’s most important living writers.

From the leveling satires of his early period, through the mature flourish of the 1980s, to the ongoing evolution of his latest publications, Amis’s career has garnered international attention. His awards include the Somerset Maugham Award for best first novel and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, and his work is routinely shortlisted for other awards, most notoriously the Man Booker Prize, which he has yet to claim despite his numerous literary achievements.

Formal commendations aside, few writers can match the spectacle of Amis’s literary ascension during the 1980s. After establishing his name with a series of early comedies and satires that centered upon hip, sarcastic, urban youths — The Rachel Papers, Dead Babies (1975), Success (1978), and Other People: A Mystery Story (1981) — Amis expanded his stylistic and thematic repertoire to produce his masterpiece, Money: A Suicide Note (1984). Twentieth-century literary history stills bears the imprint of this work, which represents for many scholars the commencement of Amis’s middle — and decidedly major — period.

Following a collection of essays (The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America, 1986) and a book of short stories (Einstein’s Monsters, 1987), London Fields appeared in 1989, joining Money as two of the decade’s most incisive portraits of apocalyptic anxieties, nuclear fear, and bristling individualism. Indeed, Amis considers these works to form—with The Information (1995) — an informal trilogy.

Literary scholars have largely agreed, ranking this triptych of novels among Amis’s major productions, a showcase for his distinctive themes, influences, and techniques. Of course such classifications obscure the intervening Time’s Arrow, or The Nature of the Offense (1991), a taut yet forceful novel that focuses Nazi atrocities through the structural lenses of reverse chronology and split consciousness.

Such a work also exemplifies the grounds upon which Amis’s detractors have often congregated: some reviewers objected to Amis’s subjugation of history to style, labeling his efforts artistically callous or indulgent. Like Money, however, Time’s Arrow is a technical tour-de-force, a forum for Amis to re-imagine humanist atrocities as well as literary frameworks and forms.

A highly influential, often imitated stylist, Amis has engendered more than his share of literary rivalry. As is true of most authors, Amis has also struggled to maintain the momentum of his major, middle period. Literary history features relatively few W.B. Yeatses or Saul Bellows -- perennial producers of exceptional work, literary longevists. Indeed the author of Yellow Dog bears little resemblance to the author of The Rachel Papers — as one would expect or hope, given the rigors of experience.

After refining his trademark characteristics and summiting the pinnacle of literary celebrity, Amis took a semi-hiatus from fiction after 1995, inaugurating a transitional period that would ultimately produce his best nonfiction writing. Although two works of fiction did appear — Night Train (1997) and Heavy Water and Other Stories (1998) — the highlight of this most recent period remains his memoir, Experience (2000), a poignant rumination upon the most pressing relationships in his life: those with his father, his mentors and friends, wives and children, and — perhaps most important — his own aging. Significantly, his authorial perspective is divided in this book. Often he peers at the specter of literary immortality, surveying fame; other times he languishes upon lower terrain — mortality, celebrity, feuds. Of course, there remains only one unsettled feud in Experience, and that is Amis’s quarrel with death.

Besides Experience, the early years of the twenty-first century witnessed the publication of two additional nonfiction books: a collection of previously published work — The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000 (2001) — and the controversial political memoir Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002), a companion text in many ways to Experience.

Solidifying his reputation as a Man of Letters, Amis also composed some of his most forceful essays during this period, especially following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

In 2003 he returned to fiction with Yellow Dog, an ambitious work that many people considered to be his least successful novel. Fueling the controversies that his work always seems to inflame, the novel spawned new debates concerning the trajectory of Amis’s career, his prodigious talent, and his literary reputation and legacy.

In September 2006 (U.K. edition; January 2007 in the U.S.) Amis published House of Meetings, his most successful novel since The Information (1995). Touching on similar themes as Koba the Dread (2002) -- albeit in a fictional framework -- House of Meetings is a deeply humanist political novella that dramatizes the lives of two brothers and a Jewish girl in the "pogrom-poised Moscow of 1946." The book was widely praised, especially in America, and helped to assuage concerns that Amis's fiction had entered a period of decline while his non-fiction writings had flourished.

In 2008 Amis will publish The Second Plane, a new nonfiction collection. It will appear on March 1st in the U.K. (April 1st in the US) and collect Amis's numerous essays about the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist bombings in the U.S. and U.K., the rise of radical Islam, and the war in Iraq. It will also feature the short stories "The Palace of the End" and "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta."   Amis next novel, tentatively titled The Pregnant Widow, is scheduled to appear in late 2008. According to the author, it will be followed by another nonfiction collection, which will be more general in scope, similar to The War Against Cliche and its siblings.

Related Links:

The Martin Amis Page at the Guardian Books Unlimited

The Martin Amis Page at the New York Times (Registration required)

Martin Amis at Wikipedia.com

James Diedrick in Understanding Martin Amis (excerpt) WORD

Sean Matthews on Amis for Contemporary Writers LINK

Richard Todd on Amis for The Literary Encyclopedia LINK

Biography: Days, or "Domestic Privacies"

Samuel Johnson believed that the heart of biography resided in "domestic privacies" -- personal anecdotes or private vignettes that defined a subject's character. In the modern era few authors can rival the public frenzy that Amis has inspired.

The links below provide an introduction to Amis's family relations and personal controversies. For more information, please consult the Interviews section of The Martin Amis Web.

Martin Amis was born Martin Louis Amis on 25 August 1949, the second of three children to Kingsley and Hilary (Hilly) Amis (nee Bardwell). His brother Philip is nearly one year older, and his sister Sally died in the year 2000. In 1984 he married Antonia Phillips, with whom he has two sons, Louis (b. 1985) and Jacob (b. 1986).

He left this marriage in 1993 and in 1996 married the writer Isabel Fonseca, a relationship that has produced two daughters, Fernanda (b. 8 November 1997) and Clio (b. 1999). An affair with Lamorna Heath in 1974 produced another daughter, Delilah Seale, whom he met for the first time in 1996. The previous year he lost his father and learned that his cousin, Lucy Partington, had become (in 1973) one of the victims of serial-killer Frederick West. In recent years he has divided his time between homes in London and Uruguay.

FATHER AND SON

Kingsley Amis Page at the Guardian and Observer online LINK

Kingsley Amis Interviews at BBC Four (Realplayer Required) LINK

Kingsley Amis Obituary by Eric Jacobs, The Guardian, 23 October 1995 LINK | PDF

Kingsley Amis Interview in the Paris Review (1975) PDF

Amis and Son: Two Literary Generations by Neil Powell. LINK

Review by Peter Craven in The Melbourne Age, 19 July 2008. LINK | PDF

Review by Geraldine Bedell in The Guardian, 1 June 2008. LINK

Review by John Preston in The Telegraph, 30 May 2008. LINK

Review by Sam Leith in The Spectator, 14 May 2008. LINK

Take a Dipso Like You LINK | PDF

Alexander Waugh on Kingsley's three publications on drinking. Bookforum magazine, February/March 2008.

The Life of Kingsley Amis LEADER | MOUNT | JAMES

Zachary Leader on researching and writing the book, Sunday Telegraph, 19 November 2006. Also reviewed by Ferdinand Mount in the Spectator, 11 November 2006, and by Clive James, Times Literary Supplement, 31 January 2007.

See also Leader's discussion with Martin Amis at the London Review Bookshop, 28 November 2006. LINK (three-part video)

Slipstream: A Memoir LINK | WMV

Memoir of Elizabeth Jane Howard, Kingsley Amis's second wife. See also Sarah Sands's interview with Hilly Kilmarnock [LINK | PDF] and Geoggrey Levy's interview with Elizabeth Jane Howard and Hilly Kilmarnock [LINK | PDF] in The Daily Mail, 6 October and 27 September 2006, respectively.

Interview with Elizabeth Jane Howard LINK | PDF

Speaking with Corinna Honan in The Daily Mail, 1 November 2007.

The Amis Inheritance LINK | PDF

Charles McGrath on the two Amises, New York Times, 22 April 2007.

Unpublished Interview with Kingsley Amis OVERVIEW | TRANSCRIPT

Interviewed by free-lance journalist Stephanie T. de Pue in 1975. An audio version of this interview also exists. Email me if you're interested.

Dear Martin, Yours Eric WORD

The Times, 11 May 2000. Eric Jacobs on his feud with Amis over the death-bed diary he kept during Kingsley Amis's demise. See

also How the Feud Began in The Times,

12 May 2000. WORD

Family Detective LINK | PDF

Nick Barratt's brief survey of Amis's life. The Telegraph, 9 June 2007.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS

Sally Amis Dies WORD | PDF

From The Times, 9 November 2000. See also Philip Larkin's poem "Born Yesterday," which commemorates Sally Amis's birth.

An Amis Who Lives in His Own World WORD

The Independent, 21 May 1995. Older brother Philip Amis speaks with Cal McCrystal about his relationship with Martin and his career as a college artist. Martin's novel Success is dedicated to him.

On a Whimsical Carousel Ride Back to Childhood WORD

The Observer Review, 28 November 1993. Philip Amis speaks with Andrew Billen.

WIVES AND CHILDREN

Interviews by Isabel Fonseca upon the release of her novel Attachment

With Mark Mordue in the Sydney Morning Herald LINK

With India Knight in the Sunday Times LINK

Teaching Protection LINK | PDF

Essay by Amis's son Louis in Standpoint magazine, July 2008.

The Old Devil WORD

By Toby Young. Sunday Times, 12 September 1993. On the breakdown of Martin Amis's first marriage; particularly unsympathetic.

"She is the smiliest, most playful of babies..." WORD

The Times, 7 April 1997. Amis speaks with Valerie Grove about fatherhood and family.

"Hello, is that Delilah? ..." WORD

The Guardian, 30 August 1997. Delilah Seale speaks with Vicky Ward about meeting Amis for the first time.

Click here to visit Delilah Seale's MySpace page

Excerpt from Experience: A Memoir

The Guardian, 10 May 2000. Martin Amis on Delilah Seale and the birth of his daughter Fernanda. WORD

"Dear Brother" LINK | PDF

Guardian Unlimited, 4 November 2000. Isabel Fonseca on her brother, painter Bruno Fonseca, who died in 1989.

Waisted WORD

The Times, 6 September 2003. Isabel Fonseca on trends in youth fashion. Note connections (and parallel phrasings) to Amis's novel Yellow Dog.

THE INFORMATION ADVANCE

The hoopla surrounding Amis's advance for his novel The Information captivated the literary world for months. Of course, money was only a one part of this controversy; also at stake were Amis's teeth and his roles as friend, father, husband, and author -- as well as his Englishness itself. Here are but a few of the hundreds of articles.

In the Boy, Find the Man WORD

The Guardian, 18 March 1995. By Sally Vincent.

How Amis Signed Up the Demon King WORD

The Times, 13 January 1995. By Valerie Grove.

Martin Amis's Big Deal Leaves Literati Fuming WORD

New York Times, 31 January 1995. By Sarah Lyall.

Portrait: Both Sides of a Good Story WORD

The Guardian, 18 December 1996. By Mark Lawson.

"I'm looking for money. Give me some. Go on. Do it." WORD

The Times, 8 January 1995. Unattributed.

MISCELLANEOUS

Amis receives honorary doctorate LINK | PDF | JPG

From the University of Ulster, 11 July 2007.

"Go and make some coffee, John ..." WORD

The Independent, 27 June 2006. John Walsh reminisces about Jonathan Wordsworth, descendent of William as well as Amis's tutor at Oxford and the model for Charles Knowd in The Rachel Papers.

Amis & Uruguay WORD

Miscellanous Excerpts from interviews and articles.

After the Storm WORD

The Guardian, 3 October 1998. Stephen Moss on the changes in Amis's life leading up to the publication of Heavy Water (1998).

Site dedicated to "East Surrey Morris Men"

Leonard Bardwell, Martin Amis's grandfather and Kingsley's father-in-law, is remembered (scroll down to "Leonard Bardwell"). LINK | PDF