Inside Story by Martin Amis

 

Biographies and autobiographies are generally not to my taste. For me, recounting episodes from real life, so called, is not nearly as provocative as shifting into the fantastic via imagination. However, since I count Martin Amis as among my favorite authors (I have read a collection of his essays and several of his novels; The Information is a true modern classic, a tale of two novelists that I've reread again and again), I didn't want to miss his 560-page autobiographical novel, Inside Story

Inside Story makes for an entertaining, enlightening read. There's also an audiobook expertly narrated by Alex Jennings. Martin Amis recounts his life with best friend Christopher Hitchens, lover Phoebe Phelps, wife Isabel Elena Fonseca, mentor Saul Bellow, and many, many others. However, for the purposes of my review, I will focus on the British author's insights on writing, authors, and the art of literature and link my comments to specific passages from the book.

On Graham Greene
“I incredulously revisited Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair, and it became quite clear to me that Greene could hardly hold a pen. His verbal surface is simply dull of ear (a brier patch of rhymes and chimes); and his plots, his narrative arrangements, tend to dissipate into the crassly tendentious (because they're determined by religion).”

Those are harsh words poured on one of the premier British authors. I’ve read and reread A Burnt-Out Case and Our Man in Havana. Perhaps I’m being overly generous, but I judge both novels to be superb, classic works of twentieth-century literature. And A Burnt-Out Case centers on several men and women of the Roman Catholic faith. There’s no doubt that Graham Greene presents a scathing indictment of religion.

On Religion
“This would include all ideologies, all institutionalized networks of committed belief . . . People who talk at any length about dreams, or about sex, will soon find themselves standing alone at the bar. And the same goes for religion. . . . No, fiction can't be doing with religion, because fiction is essentially a temporal and rational form – a social realist form.”

I agree completely with Martin here if a novel attempts to be a cheerleader for a particular religion. Unless in the hands of an outstanding author, it simply doesn’t work—or doesn’t work well. However, if a novel examines religion objectively as an institution and a set of beliefs exerting an influence, then a novel can work quite well—for example: At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Origin of the Brunists and The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover—all extraordinary novels.

On Successful Contemporary Novels
Martin asks what doomed novels of the experimental sort – the stream of consciousness novels, language oriented novels, novels rebelling against plot and character? Answer: “A rational form, a secular form, and a moral form, the novel is in addition a social form. That's why social realism, always the dominant genre, is now the unquestioned hegemon. A social form—you might even say a sociable form. And the fatal character flaw of experimentalists? They're introverts, they keep themselves to themselves, they prefer their own company. They're antisocial, in a word.”

I am a big fan of experimental fiction—novels such as The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus, The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán, Zone by Mathias Énard, Animal Money by Michael Cisco, and Invidicum by Michael Brodsky. I also recognize that, as a reader, I'm the exception. The overwhelming majority of contemporary readers gravitate toward novels that obediently reproduce the social-realist formula perfected by Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie. What experimental fiction threatens is not merely convention but comfort itself: the unspoken agreement that novels should reassure us with all the recognizable psychological and social cues. Experimental novels refuse this contract. They unsettle, estrange, and disrupt—treating confusion and complexity not as a failure of craft but as a demand of attention and commitment placed on the reader.

On Being a Literary Man or Literary Woman
Martin reflects back on his commitment to the literary life. He speaks of himself in the third person: “Martin was eighteen, and he was walking just after dark through a distant and neglected suburb of North London when he saw a lit window on the second-lowest floor of a council medium-rise. All it showed were the dark-blue shoulders of an unoccupied armchair. And he thought (this is word for word), That would be enough. Even if I never write, complete, publish anything at all, ever, that would be enough. A padded seat and a standard lamp (and of course an open book). That would be enough. Then I'd be a part of it.”

That’s so, so beautiful. I recall having a similar feeling in my early twenties—just give me a reading chair, a lamp, and a good book. I have kindred thoughts here in 2026: each time I pick up a work of literature, I am engaged in an act of intellectual defiance—the preservation of culture through reading and inquiry—in a world where millions of women and men in my country, the US, suffer from TV stupor, bad food, pills, and booze; a world where most adults not only don’t read books but are incapable of reading a book. Pathetic.

On Using Words
Martin was scrupulous in his use of language. His advice to anyone wishing to engage in writing is clear: “Never use a form of words which is in any sense ready made. A form of words like stifling heat or biting cold or healthy scepticism or yawning gap; adjective and noun, long-married couples who ought to now be sick of the sight of each other.” And “To re-emphasise: never use any phrase that bears the taint of the second-hand. All credit to whoever coined no-brainer and (I suppose) to whoever coined go ballistic and Marxism lite and you rock and eye-popping and jaw dropping and double whammy and all the rest of them. Never do it –not even in conversation”

Once again, I agree with Martin here. However, we should be careful. In my review of his novel, The Information, I wrote: “Thus, I have figured out the major reason why I found The Information such an emotionally draining read. It is a real double whammy – both the narrator and the main character spit their vitriol out on every single page.” Martin says I shouldn't use the term double whammy. I disagree on three counts. First, I can't recall ever seeing double whammy in print. Thus, it hardly qualifies as an overused turn of phrase. Secondly, double whammy is colorful and contains power. Thirdly, I can't think of another term that could be used as a substitute that would carry equal force. Any suggestions?

I admit that my review hasn't touched on many of the book's main topics and themes, especially Martin's friendship with Christopher Hitchens, his relationship with Phoebe Phelps, and politics from Hitler's Germany to Trump's United States. For the full 500+ page life of Martin and Martin's world, you'll have to read for yourself.