Experience
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Amazon.co.uk Review
At one point in this remarkable book, Martin Amis refers to a phrase he coined in a 1983 newspaper piece on Saul Bellow. "Higher autobiography", intended to convey a fork taken by late 20th century literature, lingers on the palate long after the final page, awash with pictures of his various children. He is no longer "the kid", as Bellow puts it to him after the death of father Kingsley in 1995, and this generational shift is sharply in evidence within the quietly smouldering pages of Experience. Shunning orthodox chronology for more satisfying linearity, Amis explores the issues that have dogged his life and his reputation for too long. Though he is angry--mostly with the English media--the tone of the book is one of patient memorial and reconciliation, with most obviously Kingsley, and his own manifestations, but also with his "missing"--the cousin, Lucy Partington, a victim of Fred West's "prepotence", and the daughter, Delilah, by an earlier relationship. Gossip column titbits are confronted head-on: divorce, the change of literary agent, the falling-out with Julian Barnes, the row with Kingsley's biographer Eric Jacobs and, of course, the Teeth (actually deserving of a full set of capitals; the hardest heart would flinch and whimper at the reconstructive surgery he endured, ignorantly disparaged as "cosmetic").
The revelation of the book, however, lies in the body of the book, in its weave and stitching. Copious footnotes adorn most pages, not digressive but novelistically collusive to a self-defeating desire to "speak without artifice". A book of love, it is also one of the funniest books ever to wear the cloak of death and mortality so constantly. Money was a novel, says Amis, about "the fear that childlessness will condemn you to childishness". This volume, about how many people leave a room compared to entering it--to quote a recurrent theme--exorcises that particular fear, and a more general dread that has perpetually haunted his prose. Experience, pitched between his splendid journalism and his fiction, is a wake-up call to those who have too easily dismissed his work. It is a considerable, haunting work. --David Vincent --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
`a scrupulous and candid writer' --The Guardian
`His memoir is dazzling, provocative and mordant'.
--The Week
`His memoir is dazzling, provocative and mordant'.
--The Week
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I borrowed this book from the library and am now buying it because I want it on my bookshelf. I'm one of those readers who trips over themselves trying to get to the end of the paragraph before finishing the beginning. Consequently the footnotes and dense prose of this book had me working very hard indeed but it was so worth it. I found it extremely moving and surprisingly humble. Perhaps he bangs on about his teeth too much but, as someone who has experienced the trauma of extensive dental work, I can understand how it can permeate all conscious thought and experience.
I've always been very fond of both Martin & (more so) Kingsley Amis' work but have been slightly uncomfortable about their more hard-boiled attitudes and their misogyny. However, I can generally forgive people most things if they make me laugh and this book is also very witty. Like his father, Martin Amis' writing can make you cackle/snort out loud and, most importantly, forget the tedious tube/train journey you're taking.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While I have not always found Amis' fiction to my taste, I still feel compelled to read him. With many other authors, if they had written books as poor as "Yellow Dog" or "Dead Babies", I would never have picked them up again. So why have I continued with Amis? Because for every moment of cringey dialogue that he comes up with, there is always a moment of poetic brilliance.
So, in my dedication to the man and his works I picked up a copy of "Experience" and was blown away. There is all the usual brilliance here with none of the cringe. It is of course memoir rather than fiction, but this is far from the usual recounting of events found in most memoirs. A lot of the book is about his father and their relationship, while the rest of it focuses on other family and a few non-family relationships. Amis makes some incredible observations on growing up and moving from innocence to experience, reflecting his life through the lens of his children and parents. The observations on love and recovery from it are beautiful (the moment when his son says something like 'I hate love' after Amis' divorce, and what Amis has to say about it, stands out), as well as his comments on the fading away of life and our attitudes to death, in which he talks about his father, Larkin, Bellow, and his cousin who was a victim of Fred West.
This is a moving book, particularly the last 100 pages, and I am very much looking forward to picking up a copy of the sequel, "Koba the Dread".
So, in my dedication to the man and his works I picked up a copy of "Experience" and was blown away. There is all the usual brilliance here with none of the cringe. It is of course memoir rather than fiction, but this is far from the usual recounting of events found in most memoirs. A lot of the book is about his father and their relationship, while the rest of it focuses on other family and a few non-family relationships. Amis makes some incredible observations on growing up and moving from innocence to experience, reflecting his life through the lens of his children and parents. The observations on love and recovery from it are beautiful (the moment when his son says something like 'I hate love' after Amis' divorce, and what Amis has to say about it, stands out), as well as his comments on the fading away of life and our attitudes to death, in which he talks about his father, Larkin, Bellow, and his cousin who was a victim of Fred West.
This is a moving book, particularly the last 100 pages, and I am very much looking forward to picking up a copy of the sequel, "Koba the Dread".
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
but Experience made me want to punch the air. This is the finest writing by a living novelist I have read in the last 12 years. If I knew his address, I would be writing to MA now. Hope he sees this.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Shallow
Experience? This guy and his ignorance... The biggest sham in the lit world, Martin Amis. In a few 50s years no one is going to care for this idiot, and his nonsense cause at no... Read more
Published 3 months ago by SamSpade
The Compulsion Of Confession
I know this has been out ages, but something this big takes time. "Experience" is the closest thing that Martin Amis gets to an auto-biography, presenting instead an... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mr. M. A. Reed
Disappointing
I thought this would be an autobiography but it was no such thing. I raked through the first boring part and on through the depressing middle, all about death and false teeth... Read more
Published 21 months ago by P. Bird
Surely a masterpiece....?.
Amis is one of the county's original writers. In this auto-biography he writes un-flinchingly
about his life, his famous father (who I thought came out well despite, or... Read more
about his life, his famous father (who I thought came out well despite, or... Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2009 by Mr. Adrian A. Webber
True genius, a brutal heartbreaking tale, one of the best i've ever...
I came away from Amis' novel quite moved, sad, frustrated but feeling like i had learned so much from this man. Read more
Published on 5 Sep 2008 by British Boy Toy
A highly selective but wonderfully written memoir
Whilst Amis has self-consciously forgone detailing all but the bare bones of his inter-personal relationships, he has sought to compensate for this by focusing on his relationship... Read more
Published on 10 July 2008 by D. Heales
Amis The Spellbinder
What a book!! Amis has achieved experiential and literary alchemy. Reading his life's ride (and a lot of his father's too), is like taking the scenic route on a magic carpet - you... Read more
Published on 21 Oct 2004 by ELIZABETH DEAN
A banquet of delights
Experience is a feast. It is a wide-ranging tour de force. As well as providing a moving, affectionate and often hilarious portrait of Kingsley Amis, Experience is so full of... Read more
Published on 16 Mar 2004 by Ron Ferguson
bloody minded target missing
What an infuriating geezer Amis is. I speak as a fan, but primarily of his earlier work. Is it me, or has his style slid too far into a form of wilfully dense and murky prose that... Read more
Published on 9 July 2003 by hippriest
Songs of innocence & experience
Experience is great read. It is a very selective and stylised autobiographical memoir, with a haunted look about it, and surprisingly humble. Read more
Published on 19 May 2002 by "gummo_marx"
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