SOURCE: "Martin Amis: Between the Influences of Bellow and Nabokov," in The Antioch Review, Vol. 52, No. 4, Fall, 1994, pp. 580-90.

In the following essay, Alexander discusses the influences of Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov in Amis's work, focusing on London Fields, Money, and The Moronic Inferno.

Martin Amis's novels feature heroes of playboy fantasies, unscrupulous upwardly mobile yobs, and charismatic murderers. With a mixture of anxiety and fascination, Amis chronicles the "cheapening of humanity," a phenomenon he attributes partly to the uniquely twentieth-century prospect of total annihilation and partly to the fact that much of American (and more lately British) life is dedicated to televised "event glamour"—a phrase borrowed from Amis's mentor, Saul Bellow. Both writers maintain that popular sporting/religious extravaganzas give a false sense of collective life experience. Moreover, says Amis, channel-hoppers skip through tabloid journalism shows, cursory reports of sex scandals and riots, and mini-series...