The Second Plane
Defender, though not of the faith
Martin AmisCape, 224pp, £16.99,
Philip Hensher on Martin Amis' new book
These journalistic pieces and two themed short stories have been written by Martin Amis after, and under the direct influence of, the events of 11 September 2001 in America. In a time of increasing specialisation, some supercilious amusement has been expended on the idea of novelists expressing their opinions on current affairs. Terry Eagleton, the academic who, by maintaining a semblance of Marxist thought in the 21st century, revives the dictionary meaning of the word ‘incorrigible’, is among Amis’s noisier critics. He remarked in a recent interview that he didn’t know why anyone should read novelists on these subjects in preference to window cleaners. The answer, that novelists tend to write better and have more actively used faculties of imagination than most window cleaners or, indeed, Marxist academics do, ought to be obvious to anyone even without reading this vivid collection.
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Wylie Marshall
January 18th, 2008 4:46pmThis article just rambled on and on. Didn't every say anything.
Wylie Marshall
January 18th, 2008 4:46pmThis article just rambled on and on. Didn't every say anything. Where's the beef?
Anmol Dogra
January 18th, 2008 7:24pmWriters like Martin Amis forget that the Bible is not just literature.It has an extra dimension as well.It is literature infused with the spirit of God.Where are in literature the beatitudes,the Lord's prayer,the sermon on the mount and crucifixion? If these have no meaning for him,he is entitled to his belief.But he can't equate the Bible with mere literature.
JOhn HOlliday
January 19th, 2008 12:12pm"Nice idea, but people like me or Amis for whom these things are not just sufficient but boundlessly sufficient are always going to be the targets of fervent believers. I love the image, and the hope, but you can’t formulate it without an immediate sense of its tragic vulnerability" COuld we have an English translation please?
daragh nugent
January 19th, 2008 9:49pmdrivel. The late and most lamented Sir Kingsley also commented that he did not wish his grandchildren to grow up in a world "where religious belief was impossible". "It's more that I hate Him, really", is not an irrelegious comment.
daragh nugent
January 19th, 2008 9:56pmThe late and most lamented Sir Kingsley also commented that he did not wish his grandchildren to grow up in a world "where religious belief was impossible". "It's more that I hate Him, really", is not an irrelegious comment.
DBH
January 19th, 2008 11:26pmShouldn't a "great novelist" have produced at least one great novel? Or perhaps a very good one? Not to seem naive, but how does Martin Amis--whose ambition to measure up to Bellow or Nabokov has so far got him about to the level of a somewhat more pretentious Stephen King--merit this sort of praise? Of course, perhaps the answer lies in Hensher's own prose, which seems (shall we say?) a little bit shapeless. Maybe he really believes that Amis's middle-brow drivel is genuinely great literature.
ian skidmore
January 21st, 2008 8:30amOn the basis of your selections of Amis's prose, I cannot think of a literate window cleaner ( my own was a B .A.) or indeed an illiterate one who could not give a more cogent explanation for his inability to believe. I am not a believer myself, but I much prefer to read St Mark as literature rather than Mr Amis who it seems to me has never exhibited any great talet in that direction. Though terribly good at Being a Novelist, which is not at all the ame thing.