Experience

Product Information

The letters from an adolescent Amis to his father and stepmother, lodged in between chapters, don't really add much substance. Martin's affairs with these women, however, happen offstage, or in footnotes, as far as this narrative is concerned.

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.Sono le parole di Kingsley Amis, il padre scrittore dell’ormai più celebre Martin, parole che possiamo citare a esergo di questa splendida autobiografia.

At one point in this remarkable book, Martin Amis refers to a phrase he coined in a 1983 newspaper piece on Saul Bellow. 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. La sua ironia, meglio la sua autoironia, le sue letture, il suo sguardo sulle cose della vita, il suo modo di raccontare il padre, i figli le donne, la tragedia che ha attraversato la vita della sua famiglia ovvero la morte atroce della cugina Lucy. He wants to tell us his side of things and have us accept it as the truth, that's what he is saying. 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).sono poche le pagine che ho girato senza incantarmi di fronte all’acume di una riflessione, al modo di sottolineare le sfumature di un rapporto e, in generale, di raccontare una vita dalla tensione intellettuale a voltaggio sempre molto alto.

Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that he once again does nothing resembling setting any record straight. And his dental preoccupation is understandable: they were terrible teeth, and the solution to his problems was a highly unpleasant procedure.

He is a self-conscious character in his own story, infinitely vulnerable to the reflection in his bathroom mirror. Amis concludes his memoir by stating that literature’s “great deficiency” is that it cannot prepare one for real life. It is moving, angry, honest, and above all wonderfully stylish; it is packed with incident and anecdote, and very, very funny.