D J Taylor
The History of Mart
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000
By Martin Amis
Jonathan Cape 490pp £20 order from our bookshop
One reads collections of reprinted book reviews by distinguished novelists for several reasons: from simple curiosity (to see what they think of old friends and recent acquaintances), in search of low–level quirks and self–betrayals (the interest in big–game hunting or bronzed musclemen relentlessly pursued across the decades), but above all in the hope, or rather the confident expectation, that what emerges will tell you something– and something pretty revealing– about the creative impulse lurking all the while in the background. It happens with Updike, it happens with Ballard (to name a couple of writers whom publishing economics allow to get away with this kind of vanity parade), and it certainly happens with Martin Amis.
It should be said immediately that The War Against Cliché, notwithstanding its stodgy, portentous title, is the best compendium of its kind that you are likely to come across this publishing season, if not this decade. Amis the novelist? Well, every other year one devotes a thousand words or so
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There is a difference between a doctor who writes medical treatises and a doctor who writes absurdist fiction. Do we want our heart surgeon to be an anti-realist?'
Joanna Kavenna peruses Iain Bamforth's 'Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trust-me-philosopher
How did Uwe Johnson, the German writer who was friends with Hannah Arendt and Max Frisch, end up living out his days in the town of Sheerness, Kent?
https://literaryreview.co.uk/estuary-german
You only have a week left to take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/