num_pages: 274
description: To this tantalizing nonfiction collection Martin Amis brings the same megawatt wit, wickedly acute perception, and ebullient wordplay that characterize his novels. He encompasses the full range of contemporary politics and culture (high and low) while also traveling to China for soccer with Elton John and to London's darts-crazy pubs in search of the perfect throw. Throughout, he offers razor-sharp takes on such subjects American "If history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, then the Reagan era can be seen as an eight-year blackout. Numb, pale, unhealthily eight years of Do Not Disturb." "Nowhere in sport, perhaps in human activity, is the gap between the tryer and the expert so astronomical.... My chances of a chess brilliancy are the 'chances' of a lab chimp and a type writer producing King Lear."
language: English
title: Visiting Mrs. Nabokov & Other Excursions
titlecomplete: Visiting Mrs. Nabokov & Other Excursions
genres: Short Stories, British Literature, Memoir, Nonfiction, Literature, Essays, Contemporary, Criticism, Journalism, Literary Criticism
ratings_count: 773
publisher: Random House Value Publishing