Helmintholog

the Martin Amis memoirs, are shockingly good in parts. What he writes about his parents, and about his stepmother, Elizabeth Jane Howard, reveals him as a much better writer tackling more difficult themes than any of the famous novels, not all of which I have finished.

But there is one lumpy bit, when he’s praising Howard’s novels. He writes: “As far as I am concerned, she is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation … an instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity.”

There’s nothing wrong with “Freakish and poetic eye” — look at such different novels as The Beautiful Visit, and Getting it Right. But what does “interesting” mean in this context, apart from drawing the reader’s attention to the writer’s membership of the circle of lit crits able to have interesting opinions? If you were to say, she is, with Iris Murdoch, the least boring writer of her generation, that would strike a false note, whose plunk and buzz would persist even if Murdoch were not so often bloody boring.

It would be a truer note, perhaps, if one saw evidence that Amis himself had tried to imitate her. We should always respect the interest of professionals. But I can’t see evidence he tried to do this in his own novels; though the loving descriptions of his father in Experience certainly show a freakish and poetic eye, as well as penetrating sanity.

Ah well, back to the profile. This wouldn’t fit in there. But I’m glad to have discovered what a lovely book Experience is.