The Moronic Inferno by Martin Amis
At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit. Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and sanitised image are penetrated. There can be little that escapes the eye of Martin Amis when his curiosity leads him to a subject, and America has found in him a superlative chronicler.
Martin Amis's America is funny and horrific * The Times *
Perceptive, witty and felicitously written.. A terrific book -- Frank Kermode * London Review of Books *
He writes brilliantly on novels and novelists. He has a laser-keen eye and an enviable descriptive power, using words with great originality and precision * Sunday Telegraph *
As a foreign journalist-cum-essayist on America, Mr Amis has no equal * The Economist *
Perceptive, witty and felicitously written.. A terrific book -- Frank Kermode * London Review of Books *
He writes brilliantly on novels and novelists. He has a laser-keen eye and an enviable descriptive power, using words with great originality and precision * Sunday Telegraph *
As a foreign journalist-cum-essayist on America, Mr Amis has no equal * The Economist *
Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780099461869 |
| ISBN 10 | 0099461862 |
| Title | The Moronic Inferno |
| Author | Martin Amis |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2006-01-05 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |