Martin (Louis) Amis Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Martin (Louis) Amis

It must be among Martin Amis's greatest fears that when his obituary is published in The Times of London it will begin, "The son of noted novelist Kingsley Amis. . . ." To follow in the shadow of such a literary institution would seem a daunting prospect for any writer, but Amis fils has done an admirable job of finding his own limelight. If the father, as the most eloquent of the Angry Young Men, was the voice of his generation, then the son has staked out a claim to be considered, if not the most highly regarded, certainly the most widely imitated novelist of his generation. Dubbed "the rock star of English literature" by the London Daily Telegraph (24 May 1996), Martin Amis has never shied away from the issue of his own literary importance, admitting in a 1996 interview with Eleanor Wachtel to "writerly envies and ridiculous flashes of megalomania and all the rest." Fittingly, his 1995 novel, The Information, is about the competing egos of two writers; it is, he told Susan Morrison in a 1990 Rolling Stone interview, "a literary-envy novel." His first novel was published while Amis was twenty-four; he has written eight others since then, along with a screenplay for a science-fantasy film, short stories for magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and a steady stream of reviews, interviews, and articles for periodicals that include The Observer (London), The Sunday Times , Esquire, and many others.

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