Experience (Hardcover)

by Martin Amis (Author) "- Dad. This was my older son, Louis, then aged eleven..." (more)
Key Phrases: sinister balls, pain schedule, permanent soul, Saul Bellow, Lucy Partington, Mike Szabatura (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"We live in the age of mass loquacity," Martin Amis writes by way of introduction to Experience, thereby placing the reader in a curious bind. How to feel about a memoir by a writer who deplores our current enthusiasm for memoirs? Can such a public appeal for private life be convincing? The son of misanthropic comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Amis the Younger's life story is "a literary curiosity," he tells us, "which is also just another instance of a father and a son." He's spent his whole life bathed in the dubious yellow glow of celebrity, from the cries of nepotism surrounding his first novel's publication to the bizarre tempest in a teapot involving the size of the advance for The Information, his choice of literary agent, and of course that famously expensive set of new teeth.

Here, finally, is Amis's chance to set matters straight--and if you're looking for his take on these controversies, you won't be disappointed. In fact, you should turn right away to the end of the book. After all, how many memoirs have indices--and how many indices are this entertaining? In addition to movers and shakers like "Travolta, John," "Brown, Tina," and "Bellow, Saul," one finds an extended entry for "dental problems," which includes "of animals," "sexual potency and," "Bellow on," and--more ominously--"tumour."

Yet it's as "a clear view of the geography of a writer's mind," not as a celebrity tell-all, that Experience succeeds. Organized not by chronology but by a strange thematic schema all Amis's own, this messy, tangential book moves backward and forward in time and comes studded with footnotes and interspersed with schoolboy epistles. As a result, it's much truer to the actual texture of experience than anything more "novelistic" could possibly be. Amis's charming, quarrelsome, almost entirely helpless father; the tragic disappearance of his cousin, Lucy Partington; the daughter discovered only as an adult; those teeth--the narrative circles around these events and personages in prose as virtuoso but often less chilly than that found in his novels. This is memoir as anatomy of obsessions, and in the most profound way, it illuminates the source and power of Amis's remarkable work. --Mary Park

From Publishers Weekly
The big book on this new publisher's first list is an occasionally combative but more often sweet-natured account of a literary life with an extraordinary father. Even by English standards Kingsley Amis, whom his son rightly sees as the finest comic novelist of his generation, was a highly eccentric figure: a man who loved women in the flesh as much as he appeared to disapprove of them in principle, an alcoholic who managed to create a large body of clear-headed work, a man who couldn't bear to be alone in a house at night, but whose mastery of invective was second to noneAa difficult man to live with, it would seem, yet here recalled by Martin in the most fond and generous terms. The book revolves around a small group of seminal figures in Amis's life: his father; Saul Bellow, whom he seems to have adopted as a father figure; his young cousin Lucy Partington, who disappeared in 1973 and was later found to have been a victim of child-killer Frederick West; and longtime friend Christopher Hitchens. The controversial elements in his life aren't glossed over: the so-called cosmetic dentistry, about which the press so gloated at the time of Amis's parting from his previous agent for a larger book deal through Andrew Wylie, is shown to have been an attempt to correct, with extensive and painful surgery, a long-neglected condition of his teeth and jaw. His belated discovery of a previously unknown daughter is described with eloquent sweetness, and the account of the squabble with Kingsley's biographer, Eric Jacobs, over an account of the novelist's last days he gave to English newspapers is rendered more in sorrow than anger. There seems no doubt that a certain pugnaciousness in Amis has led to perplexingly hostile behavior toward him by the English press; it will be interesting to see how this candid, often funny and far from arrogant book will be treated there. B&W photos. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Miramax Books; 1st edition (May 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786866527
• ISBN-13: 978-0786866526
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #219,180 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book true to the texture of experience., June 13, 2000

By	E. Hawkins (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Ride, July 30, 2001

By	sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Experience: A Memoir (Paperback)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Self-portrait?, June 2, 2000

By A Customer

This is a great read but it jars as a self-portrait. There are no nasty bits of self-examination to give the nice bits credibility. We hear little of his broken first marriage or his relationships with his brother and sister. He reveals that he tried to patch up his friendship with Julian Barnes without revealing the details of their break-up. But we do hear a lot about his feelings. The Amis portrayed is compassionate, loyal, put-upon, witty - and a bit of a caricature.

But it doesn't matter (that much). It is worth reading for the observations about life - grief, love, divorce, age - and the extraordinary structure. I also just love the way he writes. It's also a great insight into how authors work and think. And of course the best portrait to emerge is of his father Kingsley. It is warts-and-all mixed with biting anecdotes and judgements. Whereas Martin emerges with barely a pimple.