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Inside Story (novel)
''Inside Story'' is an autobiographical novel by the English author Martin Amis, published in 2020. It was Amis' final novel to be published before his death in 2023. Synopsis The book revolves around a fictionalized account of Amis' relationship with three central figures who have died: Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow and Christopher Hitchens. Another central figure, Phoebe Phelps, is entirely fictional, and characterized by a mixture of hyper-sexuality and vulnerability reminiscent of previous female characters written by Amis (e.g. Nicola Six in ''London Fields'', Gloria Prettyman in '' The Pregnant Widow''). The novel begins with Amis welcoming the reader into his home. It is interspersed with sections in which Amis addresses the reader directly and discusses the art of writing. The final part of the novel describes the death of each of the three principal figures (Larkin, Bellow, Hitchens), followed by Amis himself bidding farewell to the reader. Development Amis first attemp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir ''Experience'' and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice (shortlisted in 1991 for ''Time's Arrow'' and longlisted in 2003 for '' Yellow Dog''). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, ''The Times'' named him one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's work centres on the excesses of " late-capitalist" Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what ''The New York Times'' called "the new unpleasantness".Stout, Mira"Martin Amis: Down London's mean streets" ''The New York Times'', 4 February 1990. Inspired by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation for high quality design and production and a fine list of English-language authors, fostered by the firm's editor and reader Edward Garnett. Cape's list of writers ranged from poets including Robert Frost and C. Day Lewis, to children's authors such as Hugh Lofting and Arthur Ransome, to James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, to heavyweight fiction by James Joyce and T. E. Lawrence. After Cape's death, the firm later merged successively with three other London publishing houses. In 1987 it was taken over by Random House. Its name continues as one of Random House's British imprints. Cape – biography Early years Herbert Jonathan Cape was born in London on 15 November 1879, the youngest of the seven children of Jonathan Cape, a clerk from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, '' The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, '' Jill'' (1946) and '' A Girl in Winter'' (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, ''The Less Deceived'', followed by '' The Whitsun Weddings'' (1964) and '' High Windows'' (1974). He contributed to ''The Daily Telegraph'' as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, with his articles gathered in ''All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71'' (1985), and edited ''The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse'' (1973). His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman. After graduating from Oxford University in 1943 with a first in English Language and Literature, Larkin became a librarian. It was during the thirty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990."Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" National Book Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2012. In the words of the Swedish , his writing exhibited e mixture of r ... |
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, Hitchens worked as a journalist with the ''New Statesman'' magazine in London in the 1970s after leaving Oxford. In the early 1980s he emigrated to the United States and wrote for ''The Nation'' and '' Vanity Fair''. Hitchens political views evolved greatly throughout his life. Originally describing himself as a democratic socialist, he was a member of various socialist organisations in his early life, including the International Socialists. Hitchens eventually no longer regarded himself as socialist, but continued to admire aspects of Marxism. He was critical of aspects of American foreign policy, including its involvement in Vietnam, Chile, and East Timor. However, he also supported the United States in the Kosovo War. After Hitchens di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Fields
London Fields is a park in Hackney, London, although the name also refers to the immediate area in Hackney surrounding it and London Fields station. It is common land adjoining the Hackney Central area of the London Borough of Hackney. The park covers an area of , and includes sporting and recreation facilities. The park's history is recorded as early as the 13th century, and it has been known as London Fields since the mid-16th century. __TOC__ History In 1275, the area now known as London Fields was recorded as common pasture land adjoining Cambridge Heath. The park was first recorded by name in 1540; in the singular as 'London Field'. Still common ground, it was used by drovers to pasture their livestock before taking them to market in London. By the late 19th century the name had become pluralised to 'London Fields' and parts of the Fields were being lost to piecemeal development. There was a threat of comprehensive development of the park in 1860 but this threat was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pregnant Widow
''The Pregnant Widow'' is a novel by the English writer Martin Amis, published by Jonathan Cape on 4 February 2010.Martin Amis Launch Event 'The Pregnant Widow' booktrade.info, accessed 2 February 2010. Its theme is the feminist revolution, which Amis sees as incomplete and bewildering for women, echoing the view of the 19th-century Russian writer, Alexander Herzen, that revolution is "a long night of chaos and desolation". The "pregnant widow", a phrase taken from Herzen's ''From the other shore'' (1848–1850), is the point at which the old order has given way, the new one not yet born. Amis said in 2007 that "consciousness is not revolutionised by the snap of a finger. And feminism, I reckon, is about halfway through its second trimester." The story is set in a cas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Experience (book)
''Experience'' is a book of memoirs by the British author Martin Amis Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir '' .... Publication history The book was written primarily in response to the 1995 death of Amis's father, the famed author Kingsley Amis, and was first published in 2000. Serialization Upon publication, ''Experience'' was serialized in the UK's ''The Guardian'' in four parts. Reception Critical response to Amis's memoir was very warm. The literary criticism, critic James Wood (critic), James Wood wrote in the ''Guardian'', "''Experience'' is a beautiful, and beautifully strange book, and it is unlike anything one expected. One feared a trough of plaint: either a sad, Edmund Gosse, Gosse-like reckoning with the father; or an angry, journalistic reckoning with those j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Elizabeth Jane Howard, Lady Amis (26 March 1923 – 2 January 2014), was an English novelist, author of 12 novels including the best-selling series ''The'' ''Cazalet Chronicles''. Early life Howard's parents were timber-merchant Major David Liddon Howard MC (1896–1958), son of timber-merchant Alexander Liddon Howard (1863-1946), and Katharine Margaret ('Kit') Somervell (1895–1975), a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and daughter of the composer Sir Arthur Somervell. (One of her brothers, Colin, lived with her and her third husband, Kingsley Amis, for 17 years.) Mostly educated at home, she briefly attended Francis Holland School before attending domestic-science college at Ebury Street and secretarial college in central London. Career Howard worked briefly as an actress in provincial repertory and occasionally as a model before her writing career, which began in 1947. ''The Beautiful Visit'' (1950), Howard's first novel, was described as "distinctive, self-a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kevin Power
Kevin Power (born 19 August 1981) is an Irish writer and academic. He currently teaches in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. He writes regularly for The Sunday Business Post. His novel '' Bad Day in Blackrock'' was published by The Lilliput Press, Dublin, in 2008 and filmed in 2012 as What Richard Did. In April 2009 Power received the 2008 Hennessy XO Emerging Fiction Award for his short story "The American Girl" and was shortlisted for RTÉ's Francis MacManus short story award in 2007 for his piece entitled "Wilderness Gothic". He is the winner of the 2009 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Education Power graduated from University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ... with a BA (2002), an MA (2003), and a PhD in American Literature i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herzog (novel)
''Herzog'' is a 1964 novel by Saul Bellow, composed in part of letters from the protagonist Moses E. Herzog. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the Prix International. In 2005, ''Time'' magazine named it one of the 100 best novels in the English language since ''Time''s founding in 1923. Plot summary The novel follows five days in the life of Moses E. Herzog who, at the age of forty-seven, is having a midlife crisis following his second divorce. He has two estranged children, one by each wife, and is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment. Herzog spends much of his time mentally writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures, including recipients who are dead or who Herzog never knew. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, or apologizing for the way he has di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
