21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wild Ride, July 30, 2001
This is a memoir structured like none you have ever read. You don't read about Martin Amis' life, you "experience" it. The occasional letters home written while he was in school anchor the structure. The letters are bracketed by his fierce criticisms of his own past writing styles.
Mr. Amis has brilliance, humor and intellect, all bursting like fireworks off the page. He also has quirks that he freely indulges. You have to get past his obsession with his teeth. (Yes, teeth.) He can start on any subject and get waylaid by dental experiences he has had. You almost forgive him these tirades, as he describes them so vividly. No one who has served a sentence or two in a dentist's chair can help but agree "the drill, capable of making your vision shudder." Then there is the issue of his phantom obesity. He continually worries about the past, present and future size of his "bum," yet every single photo in the book depicts a slim boy/youth/man called Martin Amis.
One of the strongest areas in the book is his loving tribute to his family, particularly his father, the renowned Kingsley Amis. The family is eccentric-twenty years after his parents' divorce, Kingsley moves in to the upper story of his happily remarried ex-wife's residence where she cares for him the rest of his life. The reason for this move is Kingsley does not and will not stay alone at night. His sons take this as an absolute given and grown up Martin and brother Philip discuss whether they will have to move in with Dad to quell the night frights.
Mr. Amis' descriptive powers are a marvel as they drop effortlessly through his narrative, such as, "There is a slushy crush outside the British Airways terminal. Everyone is enlarged, fattened, baggy with impedimenta, with winter coats, padded, air-bubbled, taking up a lot of space, and bumping into one another." He gives you instant mental snapshots and then races off to something new. Some parts of his life he takes for granted you must know and never bothers to enlighten the reader. A photo of Saul Bellow, the author holding a baby and an attractive woman standing by his side is captioned "---For structural reasons, the baby I am wielding cannot be named." Mr. Amis never sheds any light on who this baby is or what the "structural" reasons are.
Though the author can be a cynic, waspish and impatient; his best portraits are of those people he admires and loves. His mentor Saul Bellow and close family friend, poet Philip Larkin, are marvelously well drawn and prescient. Martin feels Larkin was horribly maligned by his biographer, Andrew Motion and does what he can by drawing a poignant portrait of his father's dearest friend.
This book draws you in until you are completely absorbed and involved in Martin's usually frenetic, but always interesting life. Highly recommended, particularly for anyone interested in modern English literature.
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book true to the texture of experience., June 13, 2000
This review is from: Experience (Hardcover)
I think that Martin Amis has never written more beautifully than he does in `Experience'. This is saying a lot. In the last twenty years no other writer -- not even John Updike -- has displayed a comparable love of language: what Sebastian Faulks calls Amis's 'disciplined literary exuberance'. I think the 'disciplined' part is something a lot of people overlook in talking about Amis's linguistic acrobatics. Amis never eschews lucidity in his writing; every word is carefully chosen, every adverb and adjective absolutely spot-on.
'Experience' shows Amis turning his prose on himself, and his family, particularly his father; yet the book isn't a conventional memoir. James Wood, in an insightful review, wrote of the book as `an escape from memoir...an escape into privacy.' Rather than trace in detail the life of a successful writer in the post-WW2 world, the advances and the interviews, Amis has tackled the universal theme of innocence becoming experience; of Youth becoming Age and ultimately Death. This is not to say that Amis has gone super-solemn. `Experience' is full of wonderful set-pieces (including a wonderfully funny account of Christopher Hitchens laying into Saul Bellow over Israel's foreign policy) and his father's tidal-wave wit is everywhere. But at the heart of `Experience' sits the understanding that Death is inescapable, yet not impossible to accept. Kingsley's death - the most moving part of the book - removes the intercessionary figure that stands between Martin and Death; yet it also makes him realise how precious and important life is, and how lucky writers are in being able to leave their best work behind them. I should say that `Experience' does have its annoyances. There are too many footnotes, interesting though some of them are; and Amis appears to be leaning more and more on the ellipsis as a literary device, and diminishing returns are starting to creep in. But these are minor cavils. `Experience', I believe, will pass the sternest test of literary value: it will reward re-readings in the years to come.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Notes From a Frustrated Fan, July 23, 2001
By A Customer
I am probably a bigger fan of Martin Amis than I am of his brilliant and too-imitated father. I often wish more writers, particularly American writers, took his verbal verve as inspiration. I've always loved the way MA broke all the rules of the "how to write" school -- his brazen use of adverbs, etc. When I started reading Amis in my early twenties, he gave me hope.
I devoured book after book. But as I grew up (i.e., entered my thirties) it began to dawn on me that he had a brilliant style, with nothing to say. I kept thinking -- God, he ought to be writing copy for Mercedes or something, what a waste of talent to the advertising community. Because despite advancing age, he clearly lacked the insight and maturity to write about women, violence, nuclear fear, the Holocaust.
The early books, I thought, were about something. The Rachel Papers was about self-regarding first love, Success about growing up and putting our childhood heartbreaks behind us, though it might mean losing our souls in the process. Other People fascinated because I lived through something like the protagonist. How did this guy tap into my experience? I was deeply impressed.
Then came the big books that made him famous and rich: Money, London Fields, The Information. In which characters became less real, too cartoonlike, too cliched to move the reader to indentification, the books themselves too long, wearing out attention span and killing their own too-grand themes. Night Train and Time's Arrow brief, merely clever style exercises full of what we already know. The world is bad and scary. So what else is new?
It's amazing that Amis's next book is called Against Cliche, because for all his brilliant word combinations, his characters and situations are nothing but cliche.
I can always bank on being entertained by Amis, but in the mode of illicit, glossy magazines. I no longer get the sense that his books are deeply felt, that they do what real literature ought to do. He can't enlighten, because he only states the obvious, he's afraid of approaching the tough stuff. It's a shame, because he's got to be in possession of the best set of technical skills out there.
After reading all but one of his novels, and then this memoir, I almost feel like I know too much about the guy, and I'm liking him less and less. To wit: This Lucy Parkington business. Amis has written, over and over again, of suicidal, self-destructive women who bring on their own murders. Fair enough, until I found out he had a young woman in his own family on the missing persons list as he scribbled away. I don't blame him for answering the call to write about it, but why, in his books, are they always asking for it? Was it too painful for him to contemplate the truth -- that innocent girls do get done in for no good reason? I guess it makes libertine boomer males like him feel better to think so. Why didn't he even try to imagine it, fictionally, as it probably occured? And then all this self-righteous finger pointing when the killer confesses.
A likewise fascinating and unexpected parallel was this lost love child of his, this girl who surfaced at eighteen, her mother having committed suicide when the daughter was only two. Heartbreaking stuff, but was that before or after MA wrote about female suicide in Success? Enquiring readers want to know. We also want to know about the girl's mother, her relationship with Martin, who was told about the baby's existence. Did he feel responsible when his ex-lover died? His thoughts on adultery? Saying nothing, he tends to incriminate himself. Where is the story? Juicy, poignant, anticlimactic. It's not here.
There is lots here for people who like literary gossip, but it's pretty smarmy and unrevealining. Supposedly he didn't want to drag up too much mud, hurt anyone's feelings further, vis a vis the ex-wife, Julain Barnes, etc. But the reader's peaked interest is unfulfilled. Maybe when he's seventy, he'll tell all.
He likewise fails to take responsibility for his teeth. In the childhood photo on the cover, and in nearly every adult photo inside, Martin is shown sucking on a cigarette. This can't be good for his gums, I feel.
Next to the structural outline of his real life as revealed here, his recent novels seem more empty and parodic than ever. That's too bad. He's a highly talented writer, who could be a great, classic writer. When you next sit down, Martin, tell us the real story: the messy love life, the real people. I'm not saying expose everyone, but you have to know more about life than you're letting on.
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