The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (Paperback)
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • In this virtuosic, career-spanning collection, Martin Amis, "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation” (TIME), takes on James Joyce and Elvis Presley, Nabokov and English football, Jane Austen and Penthouse Forum, William Burroughs and Hillary Clinton, and more.
"[Written] with intelligence and ardor and panache.... Speaks not just to a lifetime of reading but also to a fascination with individual writers." —The New York Times
Here, Amis serves up fresh assessments of the classics and plucks neglected masterpieces off their dusty shelves. Above all, Amis is concerned with literature, and with the deadly cliches—not only of the pen, but of the mind and the heart.
He tilts with Cervantes, Dickens and Milton, celebrates Bellow, Updike and Elmore Leonard, and deflates some of the most bloated reputations of the past three decades. On every page Amis writes with jaw-dropping felicity, wit, and a subversive brilliance that sheds new light on everything he touches.
"[Written] with intelligence and ardor and panache.... Speaks not just to a lifetime of reading but also to a fascination with individual writers." —The New York Times
Here, Amis serves up fresh assessments of the classics and plucks neglected masterpieces off their dusty shelves. Above all, Amis is concerned with literature, and with the deadly cliches—not only of the pen, but of the mind and the heart.
He tilts with Cervantes, Dickens and Milton, celebrates Bellow, Updike and Elmore Leonard, and deflates some of the most bloated reputations of the past three decades. On every page Amis writes with jaw-dropping felicity, wit, and a subversive brilliance that sheds new light on everything he touches.
MARTIN AMIS is the author of 15 novels—among them Zone of Interest, London Fields, Time’s Arrow, The Information, and Night Train—along with the memoir Experience, the novelized self-portrait Inside Story, two collections of stories, and seven nonfiction books. He died in 2023.
"Irresistible. . . . The man's a genius with words. . . . Whatever Amis has to say about a book or a writer seems just right--and lip smackingly phrased." --The Washington Post
“Brilliant prose. . . .[Amis] proselytizes for talent by demonstrating it, by doing it. . . . He is a master.” –The New York Times Book Review
"Whatever the book, there is no one whose review of it you'd rather read than Amis's. His prose is always buzzing, so much so that he doesn't just review books, he rewrites them." --San Francisco Chronicle
"[Written] with intelligence and ardor and panache. . . . Speaks not just to a lifetime of reading but also to a fascination with individual writers mature." --The New York Times
“Brilliant prose. . . .[Amis] proselytizes for talent by demonstrating it, by doing it. . . . He is a master.” –The New York Times Book Review
"Whatever the book, there is no one whose review of it you'd rather read than Amis's. His prose is always buzzing, so much so that he doesn't just review books, he rewrites them." --San Francisco Chronicle
"[Written] with intelligence and ardor and panache. . . . Speaks not just to a lifetime of reading but also to a fascination with individual writers mature." --The New York Times