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Understanding Martin Amis: Second Edition (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) (Paperback)

by James Diedrick (Author) "At the turn of the millennium, Martin Amis surprised nearly everyone..." (more)
Key Phrases: moronic inferno, dead babies, inverted world, Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers, London Fields (more...)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product Description
Understanding Martin Amis is a comprehensive guide to the novels, short stories, and nonfiction of one of Britain's most highly acclaimed and controversial authors. Building on the first edition,of 1995, James Diedrick draws on personal interviews, reviews, and criticism, to map the distinctive features of Martin Amis's imaginative landscape—the sociosexual satire of Money and Yellow Dog, the bold experimentation of Time's Arrow and Night Train, and the provocative blend of autobiography and cultural analysis in Experience and Koba the Dread. Diedrick illustrates how Amis has reshaped the British literary landscape, expanding its stylistic and thematic range while creating forms adequate to the experience of postmodernity.

Diedrick also analyzes an increasing cultural conservatism in Amis's work, rooted in Amis's relationship with his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis. During has early career, the younger Amis opposed his father's political and aesthetic conservatism. But his opposition has given way to frequent expressions of political and literary solidarity. Diedrick shows how this filial relationship continues to shape the son’s social outlook and writing.

Diedrick also identifies two complementary impulses in Amis's work. The first is journalistic and satirical, expressed in an incisive wit aimed at contemporary social realities. The second is aesthetic, manifesting a Nabokovian love of verbal play and formal experimentation. Besides analyzing the ways Amis’s fiction forges the topical into the literary, Diedrick argues for the importance of Amis's considerable journalistic oeuvre and provides close readings of his nonfiction collections and his uncollected essays and reviews.

About the Author
JAMES DIEDRICK is the Howard L. McGregor Professor of the Humanities at Albion College, where he specializes in British fiction. He collaborated with Martin Amis in compiling and editing Amis's nonfiction collection The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000, which won the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He lives in Albion, Michigan

Product Details

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press; 2 edition (February 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1570035164
ISBN-13: 978-1570035166
Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.9 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,165,590 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
At the turn of the millennium, Martin Amis surprised nearly everyone. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
moronic inferno, dead babies, inverted world, yellow dog, night train, previous novels, literary essays, dramatic monologues, lonely crowd, nuclear threat, literary editor

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers, London Fields, The War, Koba the Dread, Time's Arrow, New York, Heavy Water, New Statesman, John Self, Saul Bellow, Lucky Jim, Philip Larkin, John Updike, Richard Tull, Joseph Andrews, Julian Barnes, Charles Highway, Keith Talent, Sally Amis, The Little Puppy That Could, Lucy Partington, Samson Young, State of England, Vladimir Nabokov

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 100 books:

Heavy Water: and Other Stories by Martin Amis on 15 pages
Night Train by Martin Amis on 12 pages
Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics) by Kingsley Amis on 12 pages
Yellow Dog by Martin Amis on 11 pages
London Review: Around the Galleries (CV/Visual Arts Research) by N.P. James on 7 pages

See all 100 books this book cites

12 books cite this book:

Understanding Michael Frayn (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) by Merritt Moseley in Front Matter
Understanding Tim Parks (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) by Gillian Fenwick in Front Matter
Understanding Anthony Powell (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) by Nicholas Birns in Front Matter
Contemporary British Fiction by Richard Lane in Front Matter
Understanding Ian McEwan (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) by David Malcolm in Front Matter

See all 12 books citing this book

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Customer Reviews

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best introduction to Martin Amis available, June 14, 2004

By	Nick (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Diedrick has written an extremely helpful guide to the work of Martin Amis that should satisfy both academics and casual readers who are looking to deepen their understanding of Amis' often highly allusive fiction. Diedrick's writing is crisp and insightful, and the many strands of Amis' thought are followed with a thoroughness that captures the complexity of his novels without oversimplifying them. So deftly written are Diedrick's discussions of each novel that just about any of the paragraphs could easily warrant a book-length treatment on its own. Students will have much to plunder.

As a longtime reader of Amis', I enjoyed the thoughtful discussions of complex novels like "Money", "London Fields" and "The Information". The attention to the structure of these novels is a great help in unraveling their mysteries, as are the passages outlining Amis' dialogue with nineteenth century luminaries like Dickens and the Romantics. The early books are not overlooked; "The Rachel Papers", one of my favorites, turned out to be a little trickier than I'd thought, while "Other People"-- undoubtedly the most maddeningly convoluted of all the novels-- was made less obscure. (Alas, even Diedrick cannot make me a believer in the insipid "Dead Babies".)

Of special interest is the running examination of Amis' view of masculinity. Amis is often carelessly dismissed by many critics as the father of "lad lit", a smirking mysoginist beyond reconstruction, and I was pleased to see that Diedrick cut through the "bad boy controversy" to illuminate Amis' multivalenced depiction of the modern male (particularly in the new fine new chapter on "Yellow Dog"). This is one of Amis' primary subjects, and almost all of his books deal with the problem of masculinity in some form or another. Diedrick shows that on this topic Amis is hardly as simple as he seems, and certainly less risible.

Importantly, Diedrick's studies also draw on Amis' other writing, such as his journalism and criticism, which is often the best starting point for deciphering the novels, as artistic and philosophic themes move freely between his fiction and non-fiction. The comprehensive use of secondary writing to explain the novels is unsurprising, as Diedrick edited Amis' volume of criticism, the excellent but rather unfortunately titled collection "The War Against Cliche".

If Amis is truly trying to "cover the world in fiction", as one of his book jackets proclaims, Diedrick has provided a learned, engaging and, indeed, indispensible road map.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Assiduous and Entertaining, June 15, 2004

By	"stephen_buckland" (London, England) - See all my reviews

James Diedrick is described in the Introduction to Amis's 'The War Against Clich�' as an 'assiduous' editor. Amis, with one eye constantly on his place in history, already has many good reasons to thank Prof Diedrick, and this update of the definitive guide to Amis's work is another one.

Critical appraisals of other writers are always a balancing act: between subjective opinion and bland objectivity; between an appreciation of the subject's skills and the desire to demonstrate one's own; between academic assiduousness and an accessible message. Understanding Martin Amis gets the balance right in all areas. Any fan (or adversary) of Amis will get a great deal from the book: apercus they hadn't spotted before, confirmation of their pet theories, (relevant) biographical background, and a shared sense of the fun to be had from Amis's fiction at its peerless best. When the Amis backlash has finished its tedious course (when wasn't there one?), this book will serve as a useful reminder of why he was, and will be, so lionised as a novelist.

A contemporary review of Ian MacDonald's superb 'Revolution In The Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties' stated that the acid test of any work of criticism is whether it makes you want to revisit the work filled with greater insight and enjoyment. I can give no higher praise than to state that Understanding Martin Amis achieves this objective every bit as successfully as MacDonald's book.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for any serious Amis scholar., November 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Understanding Martin Amis (Understanding Contemporary British Literature) (Hardcover)

If you are doing research on Martin Amis, this is a book you will have to consider. Terrifically written.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Mart Madness
Okay, so it's not enough that I maintain, repair, resurrect, and manage this board, where I'm subjected to your abuse on a regular basis; it's not enough that I fulsomely praise... Read more

Published on June 13, 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Astoundingly Insightful
The author has provided an insightful and concise portrait of Amis and his work. I can't imagine that Amis himself could have done better. Diedrick really knows his subject.

Published on April 26, 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars The best available critique of Martin Amis's work to date.
Prof. James Diedrick has written a great study of Martin Amis's work for both the general and scholarly audience. Read more

Published on October 24, 1999

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