Posterity, you bitch. What are you going to say about Martin Amis? When the winnowing’s done, and the windbags and the mediocrities have all been blown out the side of the thresher, what will your verdict be? Will you hail him as a Bellovian/ DeLillovian seer-novelist, bestriding the millennium with his mega-thoughts? Will you shake your head and say that he was a great comic talent misused, a prancing master wit who tripped himself up on the winding stair, the stony spiral, to seriousness and significance? Or will you be a bit confused about him, as we are, here in the clumsy, unfiltered present?
Inside Story is the most confusing of the 14 novels, two short-story collections, one memoir, and seven works of journalism and history that Amis, 71, has written. It’s a summit of confusion— appropriately enough because, he shares with us rather airily, it’s his last big book. Or his last “full-length fiction.” Listen to this: “There are a good few short stories I mean to get done (most of them about race in America), and I have in mind a third fiction about the Third Reich—a modest novella.” Is he teasing us? Taking the piss, as we say in England? Or is that a genuine flash of his still-opulent literary ambition? I’ve read all his books, I’ve loved most of them—I know him, tonally, pretty well— and I have no idea. This is sometimes the way with the older Amis.
Esta historia es de la edición January - February 2021 de The Atlantic.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición January - February 2021 de The Atlantic.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari - How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
"About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being." So begins Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and so began one of the 21st century's most astonishing academic careers. Sapiens has sold more than 25 million copies in various languages. Since then, Harari has published several other books, which have also sold millions. He now employs some 15 people to organize his affairs and promote his ideas.
Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.