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Wednesday 3 December 2008

Notebook

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The last new literary novel Amis read - more or less - was "Time's Arrow" by Martin Amis, whose career he watches with a combination of fatherly pride and barely suppressed irritation that readers under the age of, say, forty may now in literary chat be more likely to associate the name Amis with the Christian name Martin than with Kingley. It isn't that Amis is jealous in any ordinary sense. He is extremely fond of his children and does not resent other writers' success so long as it is deserved. The trouble is, it so often isn't. But you can't really say that to your son. Nor can you tell him to his face that he has in place all the essential elements of a FUCKING FOOL. Martin, of course, knows pretty much what his father thinks of him. But how can he tell his dad that the novel has moved on since his time, that the son's brand of post-modernism has taken over from the father's brand of realism? To avoid unwanted rifts they tend to steer clear of such topics, or at any rate steer around them.

Eric Jacobs, "Kingsley Amis: A Biography".

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