Something Amis
Martin Amis was an interesting arsehole. Boring arseholes now won't shut up about him.
Previously: Obliteration of the Self
I turned on the radio and Stig Abel was eulogising Martin Amis; it was like hearing a sun-bleached photocopy of a photocopy expressing its admiration for the Book of Kells. Amis was a BIG figure with BIG books about BIG things from a BIG time called the 80s when everything was better according to people who were young and cool in the 80s and are now less young and less cool. My generation is doing it too: We’re ruining pop-punk for the kids who have just discovered it and are, according to aging scenesters, ‘not doing it right’.
In The Sunday Times, Will Self leans on nominative determinism with a tribute to his friend which manages to start by being entirely about himself:
Martin Amis came into my life along with my first wife — he was a friend of my new brother-in-law. When I was having difficulty finding a publisher for my first book, Martin read it, complimented it, and frankly, made my career: I was the only British writer of fiction whose work he endorsed in this way.
Of course, this isn’t about me — it’s about him… Amis was a nepo-baby; he knew he was a nepo-baby. Yes, you could say — as he did — that having a father (Kingsley) and a stepmother (Elizabeth Jane Howard) who were great novelists made things harder as well as easier. He wrote with expectation on his shoulder. His father was good, and his stepmother (who he credited with reigniting his love of writing) was good and he needed to be very good. But he was born rich, stayed rich, and died rich. It makes creative worries easier when you have plenty of money in the bank.
Amis was good at being famous. He said shocking things and got into feuds; he was friends with fellow BIG figures like Christopher Hitchens Ian McEwan, James Fenton and Pat Kavanagh.
The obituaries today are cloying, treacly confections that Amis himself would have sneered at; fluffy words used clumsily. If you want a good read about the era of Amis in ascendence, pick up Circus of Dreams by John Walsh. What you mustn’t do is be even remotely persuaded by the nostalgia-drunk, star fucker talking heads on TV and radio today pretending that nothing interesting has happened since 1995. Their glory days are locked in amber but new ones are here and others are coming soon.
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Thank you for writing about the worst people in the world. I really doubt it was any hindrance having famous writing parents, though. I think they like to say it was … but let’s face it - it’s not even in the slightest. As for Stig Abel … the strange story of his rise will one day be told.