Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

I’m bored of Martin Amis

Martin Amis (Getty images)

To say that Martin Amis exemplifies the elevation of style over substance is like saying that Donald Trump is a bit vulgar. An author who makes his name by elevating style over substance so dramatically, I suggest, cannot come back from it. It is a one-way act, like losing your virginity. In recent years, Amis has tried to balance style and substance, to offer wintry-wise reflection amid the verbal fireworks. Reviews of his latest book, Inside Story, suggest that the effort continues. But it doesn’t work. It’s like trying to unsell your soul to the devil.

I derived much pleasure from him as a teenager. What a thrill, to find a form of literature so streetwise! Like many other bookish lads, I idolised, for a brief phase, this fearless punkish aesthete with his hyperactive hyperbolic gift. In my twenties, I was still quite impressed, though Nabokov began to seem the real deal when it came to style-over-substance-elevation.

But soon my feelings were mixed: his prose was still sometimes exciting and fresh, but it was now obvious that this was not enough. And there was something sort of sad about his insistence that it was, that style was all.

Aestheticism is for painters, composers, dancers. Writers who attempt it are dubious fellows. For the writer must engage, directly or indirectly, with ideas, values. For decades, Amis proclaimed one core idea: literary talent is the highest good in the world, and it is spiritually sovereign, and must not be besmirched by moral or political (or, God help us, religious) agendas. 

In recent years, he has quietly noticed that this is not a serious point of view, and so he has imported a sort of nervy liberal toughness, and has implied that this was always part of his worldview.

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