The war against cliché : essays and reviews, 1971-2000 / Martin Amis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Amis, Martin.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Books--Reviews.

Books.

Genre:

Reviews.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xv, 505 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Hyperion, [2001]

Summary:

In this collection of essays and reviews spanning twenty-five years of criticism, Martin Amis asserts the writer's obligation to battle "not just cliches of the pen but cliches of the mind and cliches of the heart." He marshals the forces of his infamous arsenal: his language, his wit, and his intolerance for suffering fools to review, consider, and, in some cases, condemn. He takes to task the best and the brightest, including Cervantes and Milton, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and Norman Mailer and Elmore Leonard. From "Great Books" to "Some American Prose," from "Popularity Contest" to the "Ultramundane," Amis parses the classics and the unconventional with the subversive brilliance he brings to everything he touches.

He also skewers myths about masculinity, with great skepticism and more than a dash of nose-thumbing humor. Unflinchingly, he lambastes the "supercharged banality" of Elvis, the monumental self-absorption of Andy Warhol, and American squeamishness about movie violence. Evaluating the present participle, casting a cold eye on the Guinness Book of Records, and the sacrosanct image of Abraham Lincoln, Amis astutely surveys our cultural landscape and fluctuates between celebration and castigation, with the precision of a hypodermic.

Contents:

On Masculinity and Related Questions: Iron John. Movie Violence. Thatcher, Lincoln, Hillary Clinton. The End of Nature. Elvis Presley and Andy Warhol. Nuclear Weapons. Writing About Sex

Some English Prose: V.S. Pritchett. Angus Wilson. Iris Murdoch. J.G. Ballard. Anthony Burgess. C.P. Snow, Brian Aldiss, Cyril Connolly, Fay Weldon, John Fowles. D.M. Thomas

Philip Larkin

From the Canon: Coleridge. Jane Austen. Milton. Dickens. Donne. Waugh and Wodehouse. Malcolm Lowry

Popularity Contest: Robert B. Parker: Chandler Prolonged. Michael Crichton. Elmore Leonard. Tom Wolfe. Thomas Harris

Vladimir Nabokov

Some American Prose: Norman Mailer. Gore Vidal. Philip Roth. William Burroughs. Kurt Vonnegut. Truman Capote. Don DeLillo. Saul Bellow

Obsessions and Curiosities: Chess. Football. Poker. World Records. Modern Humour

John Updike

Ultramundane: World Literature. Zamyatin. Kafka. Shiva Naipaul A Journey in Ladakh. V.S. Naipaul

Great Books: Don Quixote. Pride and Prejudice. Ulysses. The Adventures of Augie March. Lolita.

Notes:

"Talk Miramax books."

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0786866748

9780786866748

OCLC:

49603051

Online:

Publisher description