Book description
At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New
Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has
approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and
interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers,
leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.
Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer,
Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt
Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis
also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is
attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the
beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to
out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven
Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his
films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and
sanitised image are penetrated.
There can be little that escapes the eye of Martin Amis when his
curiosity leads him to a subject, and America has found in him a
superlative chronicler.
Martin Amis is the author of thirteen previous novels, the memoir
Experience
, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction, most
recently
The Second Plane
. He lives in New York.
