Novelist Amis speaks on new work, 'The War Against Cliche'

A slim man with golden brown hair combed back and turned up at the end, Martin Amis mounted the small stage at the Stewart Film Theater last night and further demonstrated the sharpness of his wit and his command of the English language. Amis read three essays from his latest work, "The War Against Cliche," and a brand new piece that he wrote in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, entitled "The Second Plane."

Amis is known for his novel, "Money," a book English professor Elaine Showalter used last fall in her class ENG 351: Contemporary Fiction.

Amis began by reading a piece about literature and society or "lit. and soc." as he called it. The next two pieces that he read were originally book reviews. The first, a review of a biography of Margaret Thatcher, poked endless fun at the former British prime minister's masculinity and her apparent lack of sex appeal. The second essay was a review of Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village," which Amis skeptically dissected. Amis cited Clinton's work as an example of the recent trend in American culture toward being totally inoffensive. He proclaimed her book "the cutting edge of uncontroversial."

The mood changed while Amis read a piece he wrote about Sept. 11, which he composed less than a week after the disaster. Though he said it has not been released officially in the United States yet, a copy of his essay can be found on the Internet.

This was not Amis's first visit to the University. He recalled the year he spent on campus while his father, the celebrated author Kingsley Amis, taught at the University in 1959-60. Amis called that year "the most vibrant year of my childhood."

After he finished reading "The Second Plane," Amis began a question and answer session that at times inspired uproariously laughter and at others a more somber reaction.

He said that he is currently working on a new story about the English royal family in a kind of parallel universe.

Amis then revealed some secrets about his father's interactions with the royal family. He said his father not only adored the Queen of England but also "had sex dreams about her." In an more amusing anecdote, Amis recalled that when his father went to Buckingham Palace to be knighted, "he was suffering from irritable bowel syndrome" and had to be fortified by a "firewall of Imodium" after which there was "some doubt whether he would ever be able to go to the toilet again."

But the question and answer period was not all vulgar humor. Amis said he was disappointed that America responded to the Sept. 11 attacks with the reflex reaction of more violence and bombing. "I would have been for winning the other war, the political, the propaganda war, the hearts and minds war," he said.

After he finished signing books, Amis stepped outside behind 185 Nassau and lit up a hand-rolled cigarette.

Amis has chronicled contemporary life and American pop culture with what Joyce Carol Oates identified in her introductory remarks as "pitiless accuracy."

Now that Sarah Jessica Parker has been seen reading one of his books in an episode of Sex and the City, Amis is part of that pop culture. And he is fine about that. "Better that it's me than a sort of airport novel writer," Amis said. "It can't do any harm."

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Acknowledging his sometimes loathsome and repugnant characters and disturbing story lines, Amis explained, "I want to make the readers wince while they laugh."

Young authors might be comforted to hear some of Amis's remarks on his own experiences. "I don't write very easily. I enjoy it but I wouldn't say it spills out," he said, noting that "Money" took him three-and-a-half years to write.

Amis was very candid in his message to Princeton's aspiring young writers. "Kick this PC bullshit and start listening to what your sentences actually tell you rather than all this false consciousness. Snap out of it," he instructed.