Richard bradford martin amis biography of donald
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Martin Amis: Say publicly Biography get ahead of Richard Bradford
Biography
by Jane Sullivan•
May 2012, no. 341
Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford
Constable, $34.99 hb, 440 pp, 9781849017015
Biography
by Jane Sullivan•
May 2012, no. 341
I once difficult a inexact fantasy delay Martin Amis and I should making married. Oversight was chilling and finelooking, and amazement had positive much in good health common. Awe were miscomprehend the by a long way age; phenomenon had both read Land at Town. My sire worked rightfully a cartoonist at say publicly New Statesman when Histrion was literate editor. I was very about books and writing; Martin, mend his entirely twenties, was already a famous novelist. Perfect match.
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Jane Sullivan comment a Town author brook literary journalist. Her minute novel laboratory analysis Murder sham Punch Lane. www.janesullivan.au
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Martin Amis
Martin Amis' life could itself provide the formula for an enthralling work of fiction.
Martin Amis' life could itself provide the formula for an enthralling work of fiction. Son of one of the most popular and best-loved novelists of the post-war era, he has forged a groundbreaking manner of writing that owes nothing to the style of his father, nor indeed to anyone else. He relished and recorded the bizarre, turbulent atmosphere of Britain and America during the 1970s and 80s, arguably the transformative period of the late twentieth century.
No other contemporary writer has proved so magnetic for the popular press: he has, despite himself, achieved celebrity status. Of late, his reputation as a novelist has been matched by his outspoken, challenging writing on contemporary global politics, and he has earned the status as the Orwell of the early twenty-first century. Moreover, this fascinating biography discloses the autobiographical thread that runs through Amis' books. Richard Bradford has talked with Amis at length, questioned him on his childhood, his private history, his opinions, and the inspiration for his fiction, and these exchanges are supplemented by interviews with a large number of his friends and fellow writers.
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A Stupefied Outpouring of the Life: Richard Bradford's "Martin Amis"
On Negative Reviews
LET ME START with a few riders.
I am not in the habit of writing negative reviews. In fact, I’ve never written a predominantly negative review of a book. I just politely decline. But this really awful biography of Martin Amis got under my skin, and its warm reception by about half its reviewers caused that infection to erupt in the form of this review.
A long time ago I published a critical biography (of Christopher Isherwood) when he was close to the end of his life. So I understand the problems of combining biography and criticism of a living writer and his work.
I also published (in 2008) a book-length study of Martin Amis. This was the sixth book of criticism devoted to Amis’s writing. Yet Bradford’s critical biography shows no awareness of this body of work, none even referred to in his notes (there is no bibliography of secondary sources).
That said, here goes.
One reviewer wrote of Amis’s 2003 novel, Yellow Dog: “It’s not-knowing-where-to-look bad.” The same can be said of Richard Bradford’s new biography. Even its use of “The” in the subtitle is presumptuous and misleading. The book is pompous, posturing, and prurient. It comes closer to hagiograph