Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: November 21, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 1133637
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Product Description:
This is a stunning collection of essays.
Amazon.com Review:
In Martin Amis's War Against Cliché, a selection of critical essays and reviews published between 1971 and 2000, he establishes himself as one of the fiercest critics and commentators on the literature and culture of the late 20th century. (He has already established himself as one of the most controversial and original novelists writing in English with novels such as Money and Time's Arrow.) In his foreword to the book Amis ruefully admits that his earlier reviews reveal a rather humorless attitude towards the 'Literature and Society' debate of the time. Yet this only adds to the fascination of the collection, as Amis gradually finds his critical voice in the 1980s, confirming his passionate belief that 'all writing is a campaign against cliché.'
In the subsequent sections of the book, this war leads to some wonderfully cutting and amusing responses to whatever crosses his path, from books on chess and nuclear proliferation to Cervantes' Don Quixote and the novels of his hero Vladimir Nabokov. Praise for his literary heroes is often fulsome: J.G. Ballard's High-Rise 'is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers in the mind and chronically disquiets it.' But his literary wrath is also devastating in its incisiveness: Thomas Harris's Hannibal is dismissed as 'a novel of such profound and virtuoso vulgarity,' while John Fowles is attacked because 'he sweetens the pill: but the pill was saccharine all along.' Often frank in its reappraisals (Amis concedes to being too hard on Ballard's Crash when reviewing the film many years later), some of the best writing is reserved for his journalism on sex manuals, chess, and his beloved football. The War Against Cliché will provoke strong reactions, but that only seems to confirm, rather than deny, the value of Amis's writing. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
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Rated by buyers 
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Of recent vintage there has been a spate of the talentless children of talented literary figures getting into print. The two worst examples are Thomas Steinbeck- son of John Steinbeck, who whined of `being forced to write a novel' by his publishers; and Frieda Hughes- spawn of Sylvia Plath's unholy coupling with Ted Hughes. A precursor to this trend is Martin Amis- a fictionist (London Fields, The Information), son of Kingsley Amis- a minor writer. The difference is the younger Amis, eased into a literature by birthright, surpassed his father long ago. Unfortunately, as this review's epigraph, selected from the titular book, proves, Amis is no stranger to banalities in his own work
The essays in his 2001 book, The War Against Cliché: Essays And Reviews, 1971-2000, do prove, however, that he's several cuts above such critics as Harold Bloom, Jacques Barzun, and Joyce Carol Oates, despite the dust jacket photo showing the fiftysomething Amis scowling like a perpetual badboy. Critics of his reviews have labeled him biased, but that's terminal PC- even as they conflate his objective critiques with terms like `he likes'. Amis is refreshing in that he speaks his mind more often than not, even if he's dead wrong, which he is more often than not in his literary assessments....Beyond that, and Amis's age when he penned such nonsense, is the fact that it is never the point to merely insult a bad writer or work in reviews nor criticism. Insults, however, are fair when just, preferably loaded with humor, and amply demonstrate the flaws they reference in the negative. In this last sense, Amis's barbs often fail and flail, for he is a poor selector of quotations in his essays, even as he can occasionally zing a barb as well as Randall Jarrell- or even this writer. The point is to let the horror show, for it is the bad writer whose work is truly insulting the reader, not the inverse in regard to the critic's assessment. When Amis learns this he may one day take his place as a good critic, but he will have to learn that the real war is not merely against cliché, but against critical and literary schizophrenia; something his solid, if not greatly worded, essays fall prey to. But, hey, if nothing else, he's no Thomas Steinbeck.
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These bits and pieces do not say all that much alone; together they work as a lethal brew strong enough to kill crawling insects, academics, and other vermin. Amis loves literature. He celebrates authorship and despises the campaign led by theorists against creativity and genius. He joins Waugh and Orwell and others who had an instinctive loathing for propaganda. In every review he takes on what he sees as the tenured onslaught against that fine thing known as the English language. He's marvelous at dismissing the pointed-headed bigots who despise refinement and elegance of expression. He is a kind of Spiro Agnew of literature. He has a take-no-prisoners attitude and shoos away the nonsense with one hand while drafting his essays with the other. He knows how to have fun and is having fun. He has his favorites: Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, Nabokov, Roth and Bellow. He is indifferent to the structuralists, post-colonialists, and Soviet-style enemies of frivolity. Amis celebrates the kinds of talent that embrace all of life, most especially the unexceptional. He likes Updike's Rabbit novels because Angstrom is deliciously ordinary. Amis himself is not; his genius lies in his knowing a good thing when he reads it.
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Martin Amis has long since established himself as one of Britain's leading novelists. It does not follow that he is necessarily a great critic of literature or even a great essayist. And he is not; but he is damned good all the same.
This collection gathers a wide variety of literary reviews from 1977-2000 (though the majority of them were composed during the 70's and 80's while Amis was writing for the New Statesman) which provide curious readers with a marvelous resource in the realm of contemporary fiction. Amis makes no apologies for his overt reverence for Nabokov, Bellow, Roth, Joyce, and Kafka. He calls Bellow's `The Adventures of Augie March' the great American novel of the 20th century (next to Gatsby), and maintains that Bellow's late period was not characterized by intellectual nor artistic diminishment (a view I have not shared). Amis' criticism is heavily indebted to the style and philosophy of Nabokov's literary lectures at Cornell, insisting that a true reader of literature reads with `the spine' and ought to reject all theory.
There is an excellent and broad array of literature reviewed in this collection, including established greats like Updike, Capote, and Murdoch, but also lesser known but exciting writers like Ballard, but he includes reviews of indubitably bad writers merely for the sake of covering the whole spectrum. Not as compelling as Amis' own literature, but very worthwhile all the same.
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All in a British sort of way.
Amis is a reminder of why there are critics in the world and why most of us, including yours truly, who write reviews are simply hacks. Though we can lend a common man (or woman)'s view of a piece and why we like it or do not, few of us have the skill, eye, education, and training to truly critique something.
Amis has all of these amply and is able to relay his view of the world the reader, without being condescending or trite.
His review of Nabokov is worth the price of admission.
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One thing about this author: he can be amusing, wicked, and pedagogic at the same time, and he spouts forth words almost like a non-extinct volcano. How does he do it?! Here he mildly critiques such academic, rambling authors like Iris Murdoch, while writing in awe of the legendary literary busyness of John Updike. His appreciation of Bellow for his non stop exuberance, and Nabokov for his extreme wordplay may be overdone, but nonetheless well worth the read. The best pieces may be of Anthony Burgess, the rollicking, phantasmagorical Brit, especially his review of the Burgess autobiography. He admits Joyce's ULYSSES is not a "straight thru" read, a comment which perfectly matches my thoughts, but plows thru this hefty tome with great style and aplomb! In fact, the fun and amusement prac tically never cease here, as in most of Mr. Amis's now hefy oeuvre. So reading through this book bit by bit is an enjoyable romp, a fun and stimulating way to make it through the night!
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