Martin Amis on Love, Loss and Christopher Hitchens

5 snips

Nov 10, 2020

In this engaging discussion, Martin Amis, a celebrated novelist often dubbed the 'Mick Jagger of the British book world,' opens up about his intimate autobiographical novel, 'Inside Story.' He reflects on profound themes of love and loss while honoring his late friend, Christopher Hitchens. Amis also navigates the blur between fiction and memoir, the creative dance with mortality, and the influence of friendships on his writing. Delving into life's hardest questions, he challenges the audience to ponder how to live, grieve, and ultimately embrace the end.

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INSIGHT

Observing Literature

Amis leverages his unique experience observing famous literary figures.
This adds universality to his autobiographical novel.

INSIGHT

Breaking the Rules

"Inside Story" offers writing advice while Amis playfully breaks these rules.
He includes sex and other elements he advises against.

INSIGHT

Mutable Violence

Amis explores violence as a mutable concept, changing across times.
While physical violence may decline, other forms persist.

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Martin Amis is often called the Mick Jagger of the British book world. As famous for his love affairs, his friendships and his complicated family history as for his dazzling prose, he dominated the literary scene for decades.

In this exclusive Intelligence Squared event he speaks about his much anticipated autobiographical novel Inside Story. It is perhaps Amis’s most intimate book, a meditation on love, loss, ageing and death. We encounter the vivid characters who have helped define Amis – his father Kingsley, his literary hero Saul Bellow, the poet Philip Larkin and his novelist stepmother Elizabeth Jane Howard.

And of course there is his lifelong friend and conversation partner, Christopher Hitchens, whose death from cancer he chronicles in some of the tenderest prose he has ever written.

In conversation with novelist Alex Preston, Amis reflects on his life and work and explore the hardest questions we all face: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die.

This event was recorded in November 2020 and produced by Executive Producer Hannah Kaye with editing by Executive Producer Rowan Slaney

To hear the full length episode in which Amis goes into the urgency of youth, the legacy we leave, and dealing with the death of Hitchens, become an Intelligence Squared Supporter today, just visit IntelligenceSquared.com/members

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