Martin Amis Archive

Time’s Arrow and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

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Martin Amis’ 1991 novel is principally a story about ideology, but it is also a story about denial, and the lengths we will go to justify our own hateful actions.

Interplanetary Postcards: Lessons from the Martian School of British Poetry

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Emerging in the late 1970s and already diminishing by the early 1980s, Martianism was a short-lived yet influential movement in British poetry. Principally associated with Craig Raine and Christopher Reid*, it derived its name from the title poem of Raine’s second collection, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979),

The Contemporary Epic

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  I promised you Lonesome Dove, but we’re going to start with Derek Walcott’s Omeros, because this is a family of contemporary epics. Giant, sprawling books, full of gods and families, generations and cycles, books that seem like they go on forever and seem like they should. And where

A Knack for Names

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I once read (though the source is now lost to me) that the names of the characters in a novel do the work of telling the reader what world he’s in. Musicality, characterization, hints at a character’s gender, ethnicity, and social status—all of these are important in a name.

The Saving Thing

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Mark Twain called humor “the great thing, the saving thing,” and indeed I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t like to laugh. Why, then, aren’t a greater number of humorous stories published in literary journals? Why don’t more humorous books—or films, for that matter—win prizes? “In the

Writing Lessons: Graham Oliver

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In our Writing Lessons series, writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Graham Oliver, who recently attended the Aspen Summer Words Writing Retreat 2013. You can follow Graham @grahammoliver. —Andrew Ladd, Blog Editor Our classroom was outside,