Good-Bye, Mr. Amis

I came home from a night out at the movies when I heard the news that Martin Amis had passed away. There had been a special showing of Buster Keaton's 'The General' at a church, and the film was a 16 mm print shown in black, white and tinted format on a very small screen. The audience loved it, as did I, and I thought about how my perception of the film has now changed.

Ah, why draw this picture in your heads when creating an article about the late writer?

I was a fan of his work from a young age. Finding copies of 'London Fields', 'Success' and 'Time's Arrow' were key moments in my discovery of a very original and compelling voice in English letters. I thought that they were some of the most original works of fiction that I would ever read.

And then I changed my mind.

Buster would have understood. I was never a big fan of the film when I saw it on television, and 'The General' was a box office flop that went on to be considered a classic that made it onto the Sight and Sound list of the greatest films of all time. And maybe, just maybe, the fiction of Mr. Amis will be the work that will be treasured. But for now, I have to say that when I heard of his passing, I only thought about that incredible talent for analysis and dissection in his non-fiction.

I have a copy of 'Visiting Mrs. Nabokov' in front of me. I would have taken down my paperbacks of 'Experience' or 'The War Against Cliché', but they are very rundown and ragged from overuse (the latter was a book that I must have reread and kept in my backpack for over a year after finding a copy). I chose the first book because it was one I had not read in quite some time. And it includes articles and pieces on the following:

• John Updike
• St. Lucia
• Snooker
• Salman Rushdie
• J.G. Ballard
• Darts
• Madonna
• Isaac Asimov
• John Lennon

And it goes on to cover his being kicked out of school, the benefits of being a rapper, and Chinese soccer culture (yes, I know it is football; bear with me and my North Americaness).

The man took you on a trip with these pieces. I always felt that I was sharing a journey with a well-informed guide who could point out what was less than obvious to a reader who wanted to know more than just one corner of one island nation. That is the reason why I will be hugging this collection close to me as I finally take a break and look back.

I also thought about this:

Ah, Christopher Hitchens, the man that I miss more and more every day the more and more I read and watch all that saved material online.

I was more than a little happy when I found out that they were close friends. I had read Mr. Amis' 'Experience' and wondered how these links got developed. But it does make a lot of sense for them to be within each other's orbits. Geography played its role, but so did a love for literature, an interest in the planet that is called the United States and the importance of language and what it is used for by politicians, writers, and themselves. My shelf is full of titles like 'Arguably', 'god is not Great', 'Hitch-22', 'Love, Poverty, and War', and other shots from the great man himself.

Yes, it is a little odd to talk about another writer while discussing the recent loss of Mr. Amis, but he has forced me to recognize these incredible talents that were sometimes competition - yes, writers do compete - and also close friends (I could go on about Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and many others who rose in the ranks of English letters at the same time as Mr. Amis. Maybe in another article).

And one more thought:

Kingsley...

I will admit here that I am often not too impressed with the material that forms the background of an author's life, but this is something that makes me wonder... Martin's father was the Amis that readers would turn to for years and years if they wanted to read about language ('The King's English'), the vicissitudes of lives lived in Little England ('I Like It Here') and abroad ('One Fat Englishman'). As well, here was a writer who had very firm views of what literature should be: anti-experimentalist; anti-American; anti-continental; anti-modern. Imagine what he made of his son's work.

Well, actually we do not have to. I read that Martin's mother wrote to him to mention how his father was being forced to read one of his son's books 'with a knife to his back'. This makes perfect sense (and it is a joke, folks; Kingsley was always the one to sharpen and use the blade...in his work). It would be many years before both men would be able to admit that there might be something in the tomes of the other scribbler worth respecting. I still have far to go with Martin's novels...and most of Kingsley's work (anyone who could write an entire book about his love of the James Bond novels - 'The James Bond Dossier' - is going to be problematic for me).

My final thoughts on the man are the ones that always to mind when we lose someone who was a chronicler of the human condition: he will be missed and his work will be read, even by cynics like me who still need that knife to the back in order to plow through that rich literary thicket. And yes, I know about the critiques that were thrown his way - misogyny, racism (having Philip Larkin as an godparent did not help), etc. - but you could not come up with a list of writers who were real flesh and blood people without encountering something unpleasant and familiar.

Yes, familiar... Maybe I need to accept that writers get themselves into the dirt because they know what lies there and they cannot deny it in their work. Mr. Amis has given us a body of print that should put all critics to shame.

I have a lot of reading to do.

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