Martin Amis

Martin Amis (born August 25, 1949) is a British novelist. He is the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature, particularly Money (1986) and London Fields (1989), and the creator of several of fiction's most memorable characters since Charles Dickens.

Early writing

According to Martin, Kingsley Amis famously showed no interest in his son's work. "I can point out the exact place where he stopped and sent twirling through the air; that's where the character named Martin Amis comes in. 'Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself,' Kingsley complained. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/01/home/amis-stout.html

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His first novel The Rachel Papers won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974. The most traditional of his novels, made into a somewhat unsuccessful film, it tells the story of a bright, egotistical teenager, which Amis acknowledges as autographical, and his relationship with the eponymous girlfriend in the year before going to university.

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Dead Babies, more flippant in tone, has a typically Sixties plot, with a house full of characters who abuse various substances and are eventually massacred by a psychopath. A number of Amis's characteristics show up here for the first time: mordant black humour, obsession with the zeitgeist, authorial intervention, a character subjected to sadistically humorous misfortunes and humiliations, and a defiant casualness ("my attitude has been, I don't know much about science, but I know what I like"). A film adaptation was made in 2000 which was also unsuccessful.

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