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Success (novel)
''Success'' is Martin Amis's third novel, published in 1978 by Jonathan Cape. Plot ''Success'' tells the story of two foster brothers—Terence Service and Gregory Riding, narrating alternate sections—and their exchange of position during one calendar year as each slips towards, and away from, success. Themes ''Success'' is Amis's first statement of the doppelganger theme that would also preoccupy the novels ''Money'', ''London Fields'', and, especially, 1995's '' The Information''. Reception ''Success'' was widely praised upon publication. ''The Guardian'' observed that "Gregory and Terry double the narrative in a way that makes Martin Amis's ''Success'' like a kind of two-way mirror"; critic Norman Shrapnel praised the novel's "icy wit" and called the narrative approach "artfully appropriate... tbuilds up an air of profound unreliabiity—entirely fitting, since things are by no means what they seem." In ''The Observer'', critic Anthony Thwaite called the book "a moral ... [...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] |
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] |
Novels By Martin Amis
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1978 British Novels
Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary (also known as Stephen of Hungary Crown) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II. * January 10 – Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a critic of the Nicaraguan government, is assassinated; riots erupt against Somoza's government. * January 18 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the British government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. * January 22 – Ethiopia declares the ambassador of West Germany '' persona non grata''. * January 24 ** Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. ** Rose Dugdale and Eddie Gallagher become the first convi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermione Lee
Dame Hermione Lee, (born 29 February 1948) is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of New College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. Early life and education Born in Winchester, Hampshire, Lee grew up in London, where her father was a GP. She was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, City of London School for Girls, and Queen's College, London. She took a first-class degree in English Literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1968 and an MPhil at St Cross College, Oxford, in 1970."Author Biography" Hermione Lee website. Academic career Lee has taught at the |
Anthony Thwaite
Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire parents, Thwaite at the age of 10 crossed the Atlantic alone to spend the war years in and around Washington D.C. with an aunt and uncle. On D-Day in 1944 he was on his way home. At Kingswood School, Bath, a teacher, praising his Anglo-Saxon type riddles, encouraged him to think he was a poet. National Service near Leptis Magna in Libya, encouraged him further, both as a poet and as an amateur archaeologist (he eventually became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries). Thwaite came to early prominence as a poet. While still an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, he published a pamphlet with the Fantasy Press in a series that included the early work of Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jennings. Poems began to appear in '' The Listener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. History Origins The first issue, published on 4 December 1791 by W.S. Bourne, was the world's first Sunday newspaper. Believing that the paper would be a means of wealth, Bourne instead soon found himself facing debts of nearly £1,600. Though early editions purported editorial independence, Bourne attempted to cut his losses and sell the title to the government. When this failed, Bourne's brother (a wealthy businessman) made an offer to the government, which also refused to buy the paper but agreed to subsidise it in return for influence over its editorial content. As a result, the paper soon took a strong line against radicals such as Thomas Paine, Francis Burdett and Joseph Priestley. 19th century In 180 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Shrapnel
Norman Shrapnel (5 October 1912 – 1 February 2004) was an English journalist, author, and parliamentary correspondent. Biography Shrapnel was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and was educated at The King's School, Grantham. In 1947, after Second World War, war service in the RAF, he joined the Manchester Guardian as reporter, book reviewer, and theatre critic. He became the paper's (and the later Guardian's) parliamentary correspondent in 1958, succeeding Harry Boardman, a post he held until 1975. In 1969 he won the first Political Writer of the Year award."Norman Shrapnel Obituary" ''The Guardian'', 2 February 2004 He wrote books on history and politics (''The Performers: Politics as Theatre'' 1978, and ''The Seventies''), and on topography (''A View of the Thames'' 1977, and his ''S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Information (novel)
''The Information'' is a 1995 novel by British writer Martin Amis. The plot involves two forty-year-old novelists, Gwyn Barry (successful) and Richard Tull (not so). Amis has asserted that ''both'' characters are based (if they can be regarded as based on anybody) on himself. It is, says Amis, a book about "literary enmity". Synopsis Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull have been friends since they roomed together at university. Richard Tull was a promising writer with a seemingly bright future. His first novel, 'Aforethought', was published, but 'nobody understood it, or even finished it.' Three years later, his second novel, 'Dreams Don't Mean Anything' was published in Britain but not America. His third, fourth and all subsequent novels were not published. His career flags and he finds himself becoming depressed, writing book reviews, articles for a small literary magazine and sub-editing for a vanity press. To his chagrin, Gwyn Barry—whose literary skills Tull holds in low esteem— ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Fields (novel)
''London Fields'' is a black comic, murder mystery novel by British writer Martin Amis, published in 1989. Regarded by Amis's readership as possibly his strongest novel, the tone gradually shifts from high comedy, interspersed with deep personal introspections, to a dark sense of foreboding and eventually panic at the approach of the deadline, or "horror day", the climactic scene alluded to on the very first page. The story is narrated by Samson Young (Sam), an American writer living in London who has had writer's block for 20 years and is now terminally ill. The other main characters are Guy Clinch, the foil; Keith Talent, the cheat; and Nicola Six, the murderee, who knows she will be murdered a few minutes after midnight on 5 November 1999—her 35th birthday—and who goes in search of her killer. Plot summary ''London Fields'' is set in London in 1999 against a backdrop of environmental, social, and moral degradation, and the looming threat of world instability and nu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money (novel)
''Money: A Suicide Note'' is a 1984 novel by Martin Amis. In 2005, ''Time'' included the novel in its "100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present". The novel is based on Amis's experience as a script writer on the feature film ''Saturn 3'', a Kirk Douglas vehicle. The novel was dramatised by the BBC in 2010. Plot summary ''Money'' tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of adverts who is invited to New York City by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, to shoot his first film. Self is an archetypal hedonist and slob; he is usually drunk, an avid consumer of pornography and prostitutes, eats too much and, above all, spends too much, encouraged by Goodney. The actors in the film, which Self originally titles ''Good Money'' but which he eventually wants to rename ''Bad Money'', all have some kind of emotional issue which clashes with fellow cast members and with their roles — the principal casting having already been done by Goodney. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
