Experience by Martin Amis

A view on Martin Amis’ memoirs published in 2000

I was unsure what to expect of this one. I should add that I have read little of the Amis works. Of Sir Kingsley’s vast output ( best known Lucky Jim,1954) – nothing. Of Martin’s I enjoyed London Fields, less so Money. These are the memoirs of Martin Amis, born 1949. His memories include his childhood as the son of a famous novelist; and life in a literary household where friends included Larkin and the American Saul Bellow. A family also touched by tragedy when in 1994 it was revealed that his cousin, Lucy, who ‘disappeared’ in 1973, had been a victim of serial killer and retard, the Gloucester monster, Fred West.

There is a lot of’ literary lunching’ when Martin served his time at the Times Literary Supplement and at the New Statesman. Much also about a problem he is happy to list alongside Joyce and Nabokov – all suffered from terrible teeth. The womenfolk of the family, come and go, both father’s and son’s. Old Kingsley kept going too, until 1995 when the drink finally claimed him.

Not quite one of the gilded, although both Amis’ went to Oxford, there is a Welsh side to the family, they are resolutely secular. In terms of politics Kingsley is seen as right wing and Martin, of the left? He is brave enough to include some of his letters to (step)Mum and Dad from ages 18-21, full of precocious undergraduate needs and lofty putdowns making us thankful that only footballers ( and their ghost writers) indulge in biography before they are thirty. Always readable, but perhaps best appreciated by the true fan?