From Book News, Inc.
A compact (5x7") but detailed reader's guide to Amis's novels, short stories, and nonfiction. Diedrick (English, Albion College) examines Amis's development as a writer through close analysis of his writing, from the informal trilogy of his first three novels to his 1995 novel The Information. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Book 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

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Understanding Martin Amis is a comprehensive reader's guide to the novels, short stories, and nonfiction written by one of Britain's most highly acclaimed and controversial authors. Building on the first edition, published in 1995, James Diedrick draws on personal interviews, reviews, and criticism, as he maps 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 the stylistic and thematic range of fiction while creating forms adequate to the unsettling 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 the first two decades of his career, the younger Amis consistently opposed his father's political and aesthetic conservatism. But his opposition has given way in recent years to frequent expressions of political and literary solidarity. Diedrick shows how this filial relationship continues to shape the son's social outlook and his career as a writer.

SYNOPSIS

Martin Amis is one of Britain's most highly acclaimed and controversial contemporary authors. Drawing upon personal interviews, reviews, and criticism, Diedrick analyzes the ways in which Amis's fiction has reshaped the British literary landscape. He also provides close readings of Amis's nonfiction collections and his uncollected essays and reviews. Diedrick (Albion College) collaborated with Amis in compiling and editing Amis's nonfiction collection The War against Clich￯﾿ﾽ. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

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