There’s consistency to a Martin Amis novel. Whether it’s Money, London Fields, or the dozen others, you can reliably expect a transgressive take on Western culture, peppered throughout with black wit. Plenty of smoking, a bit of sex, and deep pleasures on the level of the sentence. Ruminations on apocalypses global and personal. Amis’ newest novel, Inside Story—also his longest—is something of a surprise, then, unlike anything Amis has written. It’s unlike anything anyone has written. There are autofictional portraits of his long friendships with Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow, and Philip Larkin, with moving accounts of their passing. There’s a memoir of his affair with the ribald Phoebe Phelps, who may have seduced his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis—and who does not exist. There are interstitial chapters on writing fiction, with lines like, “Keep an eye on the suffixes; maintain a safe distance between words ending (say) with -ment, or -ness, or -ing; and the same goes for prefixes, for words beginning (say) with con-, or pre-, or ex-. Try it. You’ll notices that the sentences feel more aerodynamic.” Oh, and it’s a study of 9/11. And Jewish statehood. And Trump.Above all, Inside Story is the 71-year old writer’s death-haunted ode to life, arriving at a time of pitched outrage and discrete mourning. Esquire spoke with Amis over Zoom a few weeks before the U.S. publication of his new novel. He dialed in from his vacation home on Long Island, where he has alternated with his residence in downtown Brooklyn…. Click below to read the full story from Esquire
Read More