Martin Amis on Nabokov (1981)

Martin Amis in 1981 talking about Vladimir Nabokov on a rather stiff and starchy programme called 'Paperbacks'. The other guests were Douglas Adams, Jessica Mitford and Tom Sharpe. The presenter was Robert Kee.
NB: This is from an old off-air VHS, so quality varies. The section of this edition of 'Paperbacks' with Douglas Adams talking about his second novel 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' is available on the third disc of the DVD/Blu-Ray 2018 special release of the BBC TV series of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' (1981).

[@paulmichaelsmith3207]

This is a treat and I love Amis yet it could easily pass as a Python sketch.

[@brendano8]

RIP Martin Amis. He will always be remembered as a great novelist, but his capacity as a literary critic shouldn’t be overlooked. It was good to see Jessica Mitford too.

[@jonharrison9222]

He tends to be remembered as a great stylist, not a great novelist.

[@chelseapoet3664]

Hello fellow Martin mourners.

[@ItsameAlex]

they will share a cigarette in the great afterlife

[@liamhutchinson1987]

I enjoyed watching that. Thanks for uploading.

[@davidgoulden5956]

Me too. Thanks for the upload. RIP Martin Amis. You had an interesting mind.

[@SamuelDaram]

It is great to watch this 1981 footage of Martin Amis. He wasn't just a great prose stylist, he also spoke in great prose. How many novelists from our Google Generation can speak with this high level of elegance and erudition? A big and sincere thank you to Kevin Jon Davies for preserving and uploading this Martin Amis segment. Thanks to KZbin channels such as this one, great writers do not die, they live forever not just on the pages but on our small screens. (26 May 2023).

[@sonjak8265]

He was reading a text already prepared.

[@Arareemote]

​@@sonjak8265But indeed he did always speak in such a way. He was one of the few novelists I've seen who speak how they write. "Poncy" "pretentious" "affected" "ornate" as he himself used to describe it.

[@jonharrison9222]

He was the great stylist of his generation. After reading him the world seems drabber and slower. I don’t think he was a great novelist, though. Too little interest in plot or characterisation.

[@appidydafoo]

Never heard Mitford speak before, thanks for the upload.

[@kilgoretrout413]

Fascinating- thank you for sharing

[@johnjosmith42]

This was a wonderful watch; really appreciate you posting it. Thank you.

[@BenthzG]

a pleasure indeed

[@andrewmcleod1684]

Jessica Mitford's contribution: "Other people observe April Fools?"

[@aurelius54]

Amis, Mitford, Adams, Sharpe: that's quite a panel! Would have also loved to hear from the latter two. Thanks for sharing this treat.

[@squirlmy]

simultaneously a great panel but I'm sure all were much underestimated at this point, I'm not sure it would have went as well if this were tried much later in their careers. also "Douglas Adams talking about his second novel 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' is available on the third disc of the DVD/Blu-Ray 2018 special release of the BBC TV series of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' (1981)"

[@adamgrimsley2900]

I love starchy and stiff stuff. As someone famous once said, if it ain't stiff it ain't no use

[@ItsameAlex]

awesome

[@billuk1413]

Made me feel smarter just listening to that lot.

[@jmgresham93]

With every description there might be a relational sketch or account of meaning in words of the description that is different in words.

[@rufusslade5580]

Stiff and starchy in a wonderful way, thanks for posting. Are any other episodes of this programme available?

[@KevinJonDavies]

There maybe, but I only have this one as I'm an archivist and researcher for all things Douglas Adams. Book coming in August: unbound.com/books/douglasadams/

[@billthestinker]

Excellent upload, unfortunately cigarette addiction is very tough to kick

[@J_Z913]

Obviously Amis is extremely eloquent here, but this whole panel is star-studded. Thanks for sharing this!

[@athiefinthenight6894]

The accents here my gosh.

[@jimmaguire3079]

Very much how I feel about Nabokov, a great writer, a flawed writer, but still a great writer. Of course Nabokov considered himself a genius.

[@puccini4530]

I don't think there's any doubt about it - he was.

[@jonharrison9222]

Some find him icy and imperious, constantly over-investing in style and under-investing in plot and character.

[@christophermccandless8352]

Notice how Amis snubbed Mitford? After she (finally) finished talking, he says many enjoy Nabokov superficially such as "enjoying the jokes"...

[@samchapman6256]

RIP Martin. A bright light has been extinguished.

[@thomasbell7033]

Apparently a lot of us are digging deep right now to find anything from the living Martin Amis. I just learned a couple of hours ago, and I've never felt so gutted at the death of someone I never met. It's a very odd sensation.

[@haraldodunkirk1432]

Completely agree. Had been fearing this day for the last few years…. Was really hoping he’d come out with a comic masterpiece wrecking the culture wars.

[@lordbunbury]

@@haraldodunkirk1432 His later interviews didn’t hint at him being in any way bothered by the grift of the ‘culture wars’ narrative.

[@haraldodunkirk1432]

He mentioned wanting to write some short fiction about racial politics in America, though I shudder to think from what POV it might have been written. My issue with Amis (a hero of mine since I was 15): his early reputation was built on humour that would get anyone prominent cancelled these days (humour that’d be considered racist/misogynistic/snobbish by today’s saintly standards), and yet in recent years he’s strived to put himself across as an infallible progressive- stuff about PC being common sense courtesy, banging on about white racists, his black friend when he was a little boy… It’s as though he sensed his own mortality and didn’t want to lose the love of his millennial American daughters.

[@thomasbell7033]

@@haraldodunkirk1432 Yes. He often had me wincing at some of his later, more forced utterances, like the boyhood friend one.

[@Johnconno]

'Of course it's satisfying to know that my work influenced Nabokov.' 😂

[@castelodeossos3947]

Mr Amis uses the work 'eke' properly. Unusual but not surprising (0:40).

[@jensk9564]

wonderful. the brief critique of Nabokov's "The Gift" by Amis is perfect, also in its presentation. Wow. This is almost mindblowing. Unfortunatley, he himself never really wrote a really good novel .. that's sad given his enormous intellectual power

[@FKD-ki9vk]

London Fields and Money are both pretty great

[@ledeyabaklykova]

@@FKD-ki9vk Likewise with his Time’s Arrow, The Pregnant Widow, and The Zone Of Interest. These three novels show Amis at the top of his prodigious novelistic powers. And man could he craft and lay down a sentence.

[@KLuqman01]

Two of my favorite authors

[@rossg9361]

Martin Amis was a good novelist, his father was a great novelist.

[@judsonhamilton4706]

No

[@MetFansince]

Na-BOAK-off. Gee, guys...get it right.

[@B_Ruphe]

Also not right, though. Na-BAW-kuhf is getting close.

[@greggemerer8251]

It’s Na BO kov

[@greggemerer8251]

@David Carp wow, that is quite a privilege to have been taught by him. He did learn English from his English nanny even before he spoke Russian, or so the story goes.

[@Verboten-xn4rx]

Thought about going back in to Amis before the news... Was he a good 2nd rate comic novelist for a country that became 4th rate? Rachel Papers Weekend Money London Fields The Info. Other People ( unread) It's later than I thought. Yellow Dog bears comparison with Houellebecq's Possibility Of An Island. Can't pay him a higher compliment than that. But I think Houellebecq was the superior.

[@99tonnes]

Strange to compare them on a better/worse scale, I don't get it. I see that they have points in common, not least the wildly fluctuating quality, but one on good form and the other on good form are both brilliant - what does anyone gain by saying 'better' or 'worse'? "Genuine question." I will say while I'm here, Inside Story was more fun that Aneantir. Then again so is going to the dentist.

[@Verboten-xn4rx]

@@99tonnes eh? You read annihilate in the original French? Still waiting for the English translation. The comparison that puts Houellebecq higher than Amis simple - the first Novelist to describe the world of Matriarchy as a disaster. Years before anybody heard of Incel. The Extension Of The Struggle To Other Domains ( 1994) Amis plays his misogynists for laughs - Houellebecq doesn't.

[@99tonnes]

@@Verboten-xn4rx I don't think Houellebecq is a misogynist particularly, first of all - but then again I find that term a bit mystifying in its current usage so I could be wrong. I just don't see him as a hateful guy. As for humour, it could be that you're missing the laughs: I started reading him in French with Soumission, out of impatience (my French is ok but I'm lazy), and it was extremely amusing, as was Serotonine. Then I read it in English recently, for a book club meeting I didn't go to, and the translation (I hate it when people say this kind of thing, but bear with me) just wasn't any good at that level. There were a few mistakes, I seem to remember, but above all the deadpan humour was just completely missing, so you got the story, which has a certain amount of intrinsic humour, but the moment to moment dry laughs were completely missing. In fact I was very struck by how the narrator had a completely different personality in the English. But I agree that MH's near-nihilism seems pretty straight. I don't think he sits up nights wondering about his place in posterity, unlike Mart.

[@99tonnes]

@@Verboten-xn4rx I saw another comment from you in my notifications but it isn't here now, weird.. anyway you asked if 'Annihilate' is really a bad one. I think it's pretty bad - first of all it's 730 pages, which is fine, but only if it's worth all that reading time, and it's not. Second, there is a load of material in it ... well, I won't give spoiler-type detail, but presented extensively across several chapters and then... that whole thread of the narrrative is just left hanging, it just disappears! I mean it looks central to the narrative, and then it's like he just forgot about it. And what ends up by default being the central story is just not compelling, in fact it's frankly a bit boring. I'll probably still try his next one, if there is one, but I really hope it's not more like that.

[@Verboten-xn4rx]

​@@99tonnesthanks for the review of Anihilate. The problem for H is that the very nature of his theme boomer boredom sexual spiritual decline and death mean it is the law of diminishing returns as a theme. As I noted his amazing strength to get through the trash of existence ect. You've actually wetted my appetite when you said things are just left hanging 😂 the narrative no longer mattered. This is an old men's thing ( nihilism nothing really matters) and it is this very turn which is inevitable in H omnipresent oblivion. And these are the very tics of H in thematic malfunction flaw shut down - these are the very tit bits to snigger at as old men die and the total doomed West goes to hell. You have confirmed why I was so excited to read it! Essentially a ritual act text of Sadistic laughter in hell. The more petty the better the more ridicule the better. I admire your strength to get through it. I'm totally frustrated it hasn't been translated a year later! Let's hope this comment doesn't disappear with the Houellebecq. This is all that is left of Western literature - scrounging tit bits to snigger at. The gossip at the end. A death certificate. Knew something was wrong when I heard the central character was a has been politician! Bad move. Like Burroughs's it is an anti text perhaps - the attempt to destroy the text it's self - Gnosticism. The ending of utterance.

[@StuffMadeOnDreams]

Toward the end of the recording, Martin Amis says that people tend to read books when they are too young. Two notes on this comment. First, it sounds strange coming out from the lips of such a young man in his end twenties I think. He was young and yet he spoke like an old man. It is not very credible. The second comment is this one: as with motion pictures or movies or films, people read books in their young years because they are discovering life and because they have plenty of time during their youth, as their youths are precisely devoted to study at school and university. There's nothing wrong in reading books in one's youth and obviously the interpretation is going to be one made from the youthful psychology of the reader. Then, if they read the same book later on in life, they will read the work of art from another psychological perspective, with the benefit of the experience in life, and they will possibly extract different lessons if at all. If we contemplate the Birth of Venus at 15 years old from a masculine perspective, this is going to be different than if we contemplate it as a 15 year old girl or a 50 year old woman. From this point of view, I consider the comment of Martin Amis the typical lofty comment of a young man looking for recognition and self-assertion at the beginning of his career. Nothing wrong in that, apart from the fact that it is simply wrong to adopt a judgmental attitude on young readers. Young readers will obtain a lesson and older readers will derive other lessors from the work of art, in the same way, that it is not the same to watch A Clockwork Orange at 18 or at 50 or at 75, and it is not the same to watch it as a man or as a woman. Martin Amis himself was not in a position to speak of Lolita as a mature man or as an old man when he uttered this words. He lacked in perspective of life due to his young age.

[@frasercattini3153]

Amen

[@mscommerce]

How do they grow 'em so clever? The Brits, I mean. There are so many of them who speak like geniuses, while us Americans and all the other English speakers just plod along. Rest in Peace, Martin Amis, you were given a gift by God.

[@Johnconno]

😂 🇱🇷

[@Johnconno]

You've been taken for a ride. Amis was given huge amounts of help and still managed to be mediocre.

[@jonharrison9222]

We’re a wet country. You have to amuse yourself somehow. The Irish do better, though.

[@davidlee6720]

Amiss and his pal Hitch unrepentant smokers, did for them both in the end, shame to loose these intelligent men - part of that nicotine-addicted generation - but died on their own terms I suppose - rebels to the end -.

[@StratsRUs]

They were odd times

[@Petrarka17]

The Gift is not really translatable, it’s too much connected to the specifics of the Russian language.

[@parathink]

Martin Amis, a bargain basement Vladimir Nabokov.

[@davidgoulden5956]

Lousy comment.

[@parathink]

@@davidgoulden5956 You mean a bargain basement comment.

[@Brandon-tk2rw]

yt allows 12 year olds to comment? disappointing

[@davidgoulden5956]

@@parathink No. I meant what I said.

[@ItsameAlex]

He is like PG Woodhouse