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Amis maintains that he is Bellow's "ideal reader", though the case for this is not presented convincingly. During this period, because producer Stanley Donen detected an affinity between his story and the "debauched and nihilistic nature" of Dead Babies, [34] Amis was invited to work on the screenplay for the science-fiction film Saturn3 (1980). [35] The film was far from a critical success, [36] [37] but Amis was able to draw on the experience for his fifth novel, Money, published in 1984. [38] Katz, Neil (30 June 2010). "Christopher Hitchens Has Cancer, Cancels Book Tour Engagements". CBS News . Retrieved 30 June 2010. Ian Hamilton, in the Sunday Telegraph, contrasted the pained, middle-aged Amis with the confident youth who had enjoyed instant literary success in the 1970s. "There is a lot of remorse and recantation in this book," wrote Hamilton, "a book, the author says, of sunderings and breakages, of heart-rending losses and dizzying new gains and a perhaps too-urgent need to exhibit some transfiguration of the self." He revels in fatherhood (including the (re)discovery of a girl he fathered in his younger days and first met some 20 years after the fact), but the women involved are treated much more circumspectly and discreetly.

Amis aroused a new controversy in 2010 with his comments regarding euthanasia during an interview, when he said that he thought Britain faced a "civil war" between the young and the elderly in society within 10 or 15 years, and called for public euthanasia "booths". Of the geriatric cohort he declared: "They'll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. [...] there should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal." [133] [n 5] Agnosticism [ edit ] It has been a profound privilege and pleasure to be his publisher; first as Jonathan Cape in 1973, with his explosive debut, The Rachel Papers; then as part of Penguin Random House and Vintage, up to and including his most recent book, 2020’s Inside Story.Hay Festival 2012: Martin Amis: over-60 and under-appreciated". The Daily Telegraph. 10 June 2012. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. At the same time his work often explored key periods in history, notably the Holocaust, which he wrote about uniquely and powerfully in novels such as Time’s Arrow and The Zone of Interest. Throughout it all, his love of literature shone fiercely: Experience, The War Against Cliché and others all brought a light up to the world he’d inhabited his entire life. Talk as much or as little... I talked much. Only to him could I confess how terrible I felt, how physically terrible, bemused, subnormalised, stupefied from within, and always about to flinch or tremble from the effort of making my face look honest, kind, sane. Only to him could I talk about what I was doing to my children. Because he had done it to me. In the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, Amis said that United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union was a "self-inflicted wound" that had left him "depressed". [126] Islam and Islamism [ edit ]

Martin Amis with his great friend Christopher Hitchens, the journalist and essayist. Photograph: Alamy Perhaps he really doesn't need to say more about his relationship with the women than he does in a revealing letter from 1971, writing about then (and longtime) girlfriend Alexandra "Gully" Wells: And it’s an irony indeed that he has now died of oesophageal cancer like Christopher. They were both extremely heavy smokers. Amis casts himself (in younger days) as Osric (the "water-fly" from Hamlet), which works quite well. Amis' life has been a very public one, so perhaps most of the pertinent facts are already familiar.

No. But now, or at any other stage, I would give up my life so that Lucy could have hers. Because my life is... And hers... Burchill, Julie (22 September 2010). "Amis and Jordan – a marriage made only in his overheated imagination". The Independent . Retrieved 23 May 2023.

Elsewhere, Amis was especially careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islamism, stating that: "We can begin by saying, not only that we respect Muhammad, but that no serious person could fail to respect Muhammad – a unique and luminous historical being ... Judged by the continuities he was able to set in motion, Muhammad has strong claims to being the most extraordinary man who ever lived... But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination ... Naturally we respect Islam. But we do not respect Islamism, just as we respect Muhammad and do not respect Muhammad Atta." [130]Amis’s most recent book was 2020’s Inside Story, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics’ Circle award for fiction. It is a “novelised autobiography” two decades in the writing, which features writing tips alongside memories of Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin.