Martin Amis: 'I Have No Problems'
Steve's Blog on Writing
The novelist and essayist Martin Amis died last year. The Guardian recently did an article announcing that a memorial will soon be held for him: “Friends, family and colleagues of Amis will gather at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square on 10 June for the event, which will include tributes and readings from the writer’s body of work. Amis was best known for his 1984 novel Money and his 1989 novel London Fields. He ‘delighted, provoked, inspired and outraged readers of his fiction, reportage and memoirs across a literary career that set off like a rocket and went on to dazzle, streak and burn for almost fifty years,’ wrote Boyd Tonkin in an obituary in the Guardian.”
Amis, especially as a young man, had a dashing, Mick Jagger kind of vibe going (especially after he got his teeth fixed), and he exuded an air of easy arrogance, as if looking down on the world were an art form and he a proud aficionado of the form. He and his father, Kingsley Amis, were the rare father-son novelist duo, and it must have been weird to grow up the son of a man whose boozy womanizing was front and center in his novels. (His early novel, Lucky Jim, is well worth a read—no one has ever described a hangover so well and so hilariously.)
I bring up Martin Amis because I still think, every week at least, about some advice he gave at a San Francisco bookstore event back in the 1990s. He was basically trying to get people to shut up with their unending questions about how to be published, how to become a glamorous novelist whose pub crawls could turn up as fodder for the gossip sheets.
He all but rolled his eyes and tossed off, “You either have an ear”—meaningful, only slightly ornery pause—”or you don’t!” So, basically: Sod off to all of us! We would never be him. I was not perturbed by that news.
But Amis also shared the interesting thought that when he’s working on a book, “I have no problems.” Only when he’s done the work, he’s reached the finish line and has a full, complete, polished manuscript ready to show agent, publisher, famous-novelist friends, only at that point: “Then I have a problem.”
It’s a good point to keep in mind, but easy to let slip away: How many of us get ahead of ourselves, worrying worries that are pointless because they are also premature. If you’re wondering about who to dedicate your book to, or who to thank in the sixth paragraph of your Acknowledgements, then probably you need to think more about what Amis was trying to convey. (And yes, I plead guilty to—embarrassingly enough—having done both those things at one time or another, years back.)
My experience of writing books is that the more work one does, the more pages one writes, and rewrites, the more riddles one solves, the more insight one gains and the more one knows about what a book is and needs to be. I think as writers the more often we can simply pour our loving attention to the particular demands of a writing project staring up at us, putting all concerns out of mind, the more likely we are to have the book reveal it to ourselves and get where we’re going.
Nathan Hill explained in an Author Talk event with us when his absolute delight of a novel The Nix came out about how he’d moved away from Brooklyn to Florida and stopped worrying what other people think, or where he might submit, and instead just got lost in the book, like losing yourself in your garden. (Here’s my San Francisco Chronicle review of that novel, worth a fresh look now for its depiction of Chicago 1968.)
I’m trying to get back to that advice myself right now, weeks away from book deadline. Wish me luck!
—Steve Kettmann
Upcoming OpenMic Nights
For our next Tuesday night OpenMic readings at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, we expect to gather at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, and Tuesday, July 30. Please write us first at info@wellstoneredwoods.org with questions or to confirm.
I had been a fan of Martin Amis’s work for many years—Time’s Arrow, The Information, etc.
His books were so funny, so smart. I suspect I was also under the sway of the idea of being
born into a literary family, as he was. And he had such nice hair.
In 2008 my wife Shawna and I went to New York for a writers’ conference, where he was giving one of the featured readings. I’m not a fanboy, and have rarely stood in line to get a book signed. But for Amis I made an exception, and brought my hardcover first edition of London Fields. Shawna—another Amis fan—and I attended the reading, and waited in the long line. It was late afternoon and Amis, who clearly had made it part of his reading agreement, was staying hydrated with a bottle of white wine. When we reached his table I mentioned to him that his friend Saul Bellow’s summer house was on the road we lived on in Vermont, and that the next time he came to see Bellow he should ring us up. I knew it was highly unlikely he would so so, and the look on his face confirmed my suspicion.
In those days, the conference had VIP parties that started around 10 at night, and that night’s was in the penthouse suite of the Midtown Hilton. I doubt they called it a suite; it took up most of the top two stories of the hotel, and was accessible only by its own elevator. Back then I smoked, mostly when I’d had more than a couple drinks, and that night I was desperate for a cigarette. I had a pack but there was no place to light up. The chairman of the conference’s board was angrily going from room to room and taking the ashtrays away. It was a no-smoking hotel, but obviously the Hilton family made exceptions for the guests who could afford these digs.
As I wandered from room to room looking for either a balcony or a way onto the roof to smoke, I smelled burning tobacco. I entered what appeared to be the master bedroom, and there was Amis, smoking and holding court with five or six writers. As I approached, I realized they were talking about pot. One of the women was telling him—as if he didn’t know—that people in the US were now growing hybrid strains of cannabis that were very powerful. But she added that she had tried some and it had had no effect. I walked into their little circle and said “Well, you haven’t tried mine.” Pot was still illegal then, and though writers are arguably a wilder bunch than those in other fields, this conference was for writers in academia. Talking about drug use among writer friends is normal, but I didn’t know any of these people. Unlike everyone in the circle except Amis, I wasn’t in academia. No one could fire me. The circle grew quiet. Amis pulled me aside and said “Let’s get together later.”
Later turned about to be five minutes. The circle dissolved, I found my wife in another room, and the three of us went a few floors down to our room, where Amis proceeded to smoke an incredible amount of marijuana. Until his writing became more political, Amis was one of the funniest writers around, and I stupidly hoped he would be a hilarious smoking companion. I could not have been more wrong. He talked about politics in the Middle East, genital mutilation in Africa, women’s rights in Pakistan. He didn’t ask for our thoughts on any of these subjects. He was not hilarious.
An hour or so later, Amis pointed out that the VIP party was in part in his honor, and that he’d better get back. Like many hotels in cities, the windows in the Hilton wouldn’t open. It was a small room. Not only were all three of us stoned, we reeked of pot. But back we went. The first person we saw on entering was Cynthia Ozick. Amis hugged her, they sat down, and seemed to resume a conversation they’d been having for many years.
I so relate: when I'm writing, all problems feel solvable. Good luck with your deadline!