Talk:Martin Amis

message: I'm not sure that we need a picture of Amis' dad on Martin's wikipedia page. Amis Sr is linked to on the page. A picture of young Amis perhaps with his friend Hitchens would be good if copyright issues will be allowed. Farrtj (talk) 04:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Early life

message: The last entry on the MEN story was somewhat economical with the actuality.
By those same figures- released as ploy by a UNITE union rep facing hundreds of non-teaching staff job-losses in the wake of the merger between two Manchester Universities - this paper indirectly showed that Amis really brought in a staggering extra £112,000+ clear profit to the University of Manchester. This figure is the amount of money above that which previous post-holders brought in as his name and reputation had added an extra 50 students to the course at £3000 each.
No mention is made of the extremist politics, the lunatic fringe party membership (or YABs recent anti-semitic remarks) of his 'critics', how come?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.2.2 (talk) 11:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Glad to see the photo replaced. InvisibleSun 15:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: This article reads more like an Amis fanzine than an encyclopaedia entry. Irrespective of whether it has received a B class rating, paragraphs two and three have no place in a short introduction and show no thought for the kind of information potential readers will be looking for. Plain English might not be appropriate when reviewing Amis's work nor evident in his prose but it should be mandatory pratice in Wikipedia. For reference, have a look at how other editors have written about different prominent individuals, say Dickens, Darwin, Austen etc. 87.80.9.63 (talk) 02:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Style

message: Could the anons say what's wrong with the sentences they keep deleting, why they're deleting that he influenced Will Self, and why they keep changing the quote: "terrible compulsive vividness in his style ..." SlimVirgin (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  I added "ostensibly" before it.  --zenohockey 21:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Deletions

message: The sentence "He lives and writes in London and Uruguay and is married, for the second time, to the writer Isabel Fonseca." is ambiguous; does it mean that he has married Isabel twice or that Isabel is his second wife?  Elf | Talk 17:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Marriage

message: Book titles should generally be italised, not boldened. Skinnyweed 02:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Book title conventions 

message: If people don't like the image on the left of the page, we should find one where he isn't looking to the right. Placing an image so that the person is looking away from the text is a no-no, because the reader's eye is known to follow the direction of faces. SlimVirgin (talk) 14:14, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't really matter all that much... people are here to read the article, so they're going to. I don't think anyone'll be put off by the fact that he's looking to the right... Barbara Osgood 23:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: "Although the book did not sell as well as expected, it did receive decent acclaim in the literary press."
This is as pov as it gets, because the book DID NOT, receive decent acclaim, nor in the literary press, nor in the wider press, it got very negative reviews, too bad there's not a "rotten tomatoes" style website to collect literary reviews, but the book got trashed many times around for it's stale prose, for being unimaginative etc. etc. 
Even the way it's mentioned here that some lesser writer was solely responsible for the negative reaction is very misleading.
"He is the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature,"
This also is very pov, has a survey been conducted, or are we getting this by the publicist's office as well and Mart's uruguayian internet provider, most of his books at amazon have got the lowest number of reviews and sales figures amongst british writers, from what I have read he also ranks amongst the least translated british authors abroad, with minimal reception in foreign countries.
"He also wrote the screenplay for the film Saturn 3." 
Why are the successes made to look grandiosed and the failures, such as the reception to the film not even mentioned? "The film was widely panned by reviewers as derivative, mediocre and lacking in suspense." According to the wikipedia page on the film. Looks like mart's been a bad boy and has been editing things out...
"Time's arrow drew notice both for its unusual technique — time runs backwards during the entire novel, down to the actual dialogue being spoken backwards — as well as for its topic."
Another misleading statement, this unusual technique, had already been used very successfully too, by dame muriel spark in the driver's seat, and kurt vonegaut in slaughterhouse five amonst others.
"In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a book about the crimes of Stalinism and the intellectual left."
First of all the intellectual left has got to go, of course in a post cold war era with most of these issues already covered from every possible side by historians and the press, Amis out of place book has a distinct unpleasant smell of propaganda and a closet attack on the intellectual left at large who for some very peculiar reason have to apologise for the behaviours of Stalin, while the conservative Amis is of course completely unrelated and unapologetic to the various capitalist genocides and massacres, courtesy of the U.S. and British Imperialism. Consequently, the only crimes commited by the intellectual left are those that Mart in a typical sly way tries to assign to them, by virtue of association, communism=Stalin=left intellectuals, but of course he wouldn't hold arch capitalist conservative and jewish propagandist Saul Bellow responsible for the various genocides fo the israelis, or the U.S. at large in places such as Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, Venezuala... But of course say Sartre
is responsible for crimes... Is this more laughable than pathetic you be the judge... Moreover this book was time again ridiculed for Amis lack of scholarship and appropriate knowledge of the subject area.
Why is there no mention that all his books since the information have consistently failed to sell well despite the perenial press coverage, and the agressive marketing campaigns, and have for the most part received negative, or even downright dismissive or ridiculing reviews by  literary critics and the general public?
I ll let these comments stand with no further alterations, and as soon as this has rippened I ll move on to edit accordingly. Hopefully, mart's manager the coyte, the one footed rabbit or whatever his animal monicker is won't expurgate this page again.
195.134.68.6 09:56, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POVS, Publicity Statements, and Biases. 

message: http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/   Pliny 23:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A nit rims ma

message: What is the correct pronunciation of this author's last name?  Can somebody spell it out phonetically?
Alca911 18:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: For the ignorant:

message: How nice it is to read something written by Tibor Fischer. I haven't read anything by him since Under the Frog. Good to see he can still put pen to paper. --Dilaudid 22:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh dear. I just read the review of Tibor's last book (published 4 years ago) in the washington post... "my right hand ... wants to type something ... Evokes Amis in the style of Martin with the Amis clearly influenced by following in the Amis of Martin bloody Amis help ow Amis . . ." Could this have led to the tiny element of sour grapes I think I see in Tibor's "masturbating uncle" quote? --Dilaudid 22:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tibor Fischer

message: Hello Wiki's.  I've been doing some reasearch on certain writers and found a wonderful link for Martin Amis. It is a live interview where he talks about his latest novel and the journey of his 30 year writing career. I've attached the link and wanted some of you to check it out for post approval.  I think it's rare and wonderful. http://www.victorialautman.com/ontherecord.shtml#amis
Corkyshag (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Martin Amis/Great Live Interview 

message: His nationality should be listed as "British" rather than "English" in the information panel
: ha ha, or perhaps Ukanian.  Anyway, here's an interesting review of The Second Plane in today's New York Times. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 06:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect Nationality 

message: User:Remform has regularly changed this article as well as the one on Terry Eagleton to include emotive words such as "disgraceful", "lumpen" to describe Eagleton and his allegations about Amis senior and Amis junior. It seems to me that this is a clear breach of NPOV. What do other users think? Since Remform seems to be a new user I don't wish to accuse him of vandalism. I'm going  to leave a message on his talk page. --Mia-etol (talk) 08:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a blog. If you want to add more writers in support of Amis feel free to do so. Just don't add your own personal comments. --Mia-etol (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible vandalism, breach of NPOV 

message: I think that Martin Amis was a very proficient and humourous writer in his youth. However, as Cyril Connolly points out in the second part of his book Enemies of Promise, one of the main pitfalls for an author is 'the Slimy Mallows' representing success, the most insidious enemy of a writer. Unfortunately, I think this has blighted MA's later writing efforts. Perhaps his tenure at Manchester University will help to correct this as he has the true characteristics of a very talented writer. 
* Following up on this last post, I am now not sure that this is the case. Looking at this recent interview in The Daily Telegraph [], it seems that M.A. is harking back to the time of his youth; by focusing on his former flat-mate and friend, Rob Henderson, he is attempting to re-create similar scenarios to his previous novels. Now, for a youngish writer this might be appropriate and it was with his books like The Rachel Papers and Success. However, I think for any future books he should be focusing on themes more appropriate to his time of life.
Here is a fragment from the article describing their friendship as young men:
Rob left Westminster in July 1966, and was sent to the crammer where he met Amis, who arrived, “late in 1967… aged 18 and averaging one O-level every other year”. Both small, good-looking and charming, the two quickly became friends. “They were the terrible twins – what they didn’t do isn’t worth recording,” says Dingwall-Main, who was also at the crammer and is still friends with Amis. “They were both 5ft 6in tall. It was Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” According to Amis, he and Rob spent their time “bunking off school and going to betting shops”, but the lives of the terrible twins were about to take a crucial turn. “Mart went off to university. I went off to design gardens,” says Dingwall-Main. “Rob went off to get drunk.”
Getting into Oxford would be the making of Amis, but friends say that failing to emulate his partner in crime was the breaking of Rob. “He tried to follow Martin into Oxford but couldn’t. It was a huge blow to him,” says Jo Cruikshank. “That’s where his life started to unravel. He started doing absolutely nothing.” Instead he plunged his inheritance, which he received aged 21, into what Amis calls “a small but fancy maisonette” in Pont Street, off Belgrave Square. It was there, after Amis graduated, that the pair lived together with a certain debauched panache in the early Seventies. And to begin with, it seemed that with his looks and charm, it would be Rob’s career, at a film-production company in Soho, that blossomed.
“Rob’s career would seem to me, for a while, to be horrifyingly meteoric,” notes Amis, who was jobbing as a journalist and working on The Rachel Papers while Rob landed himself a job on the Joan Collins film The Bitch. With the publication of Amis’s first novel in 1973 however, the real pecking order was revealed. It became clear that, as Simon Harling (a fellow friend) says, “one of these guys was on an upward curve, and one of them was on a downward curve”. 
Ivankinsman (talk) 18:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyril Connolly's [[Enemies of Promise]] 

message: There was also an article by Julie Kavanagh in The Daily Telegraph  [which originally appeared in the summer issue of 'Intelligent Life' magazine (www.moreintelligentlife.com)] about her relationship with MA. Now, if this was about a dead author it might be of some interest but for an author who is still living, it seems that it doesn't really have that much relevance other than being a publicity stunt for both parties involved. I did start off reading the article with some interest but it just goes on ... and on ... and on ... into the minutiae of their relationship together so I had to stop out of sheer boredom about half way through.Ivankinsman (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Julie Kavanagh 

message: Is this the same Martin Amis who was an actor in A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)?  IMBD thinks so, but I can find no other evidence for or against, and there's no mention of an acting career in this Wikipedia article.  Thanks.  Keith Lynch (talk) 03:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acting career? 

message: Since there's no extant article about Dead Babies, I thought it would be worth creating one. I'd prefer that it not be a stub, but be relatively free of "spoilers." Thoughts? Alex MacPherson (talk) 06:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead Babies 

message: Surely this should be rewritten. Is the writer predicting the end of capitalism? I think not.
86.139.152.219 (talk) 01:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Late Capitalist? 

message: Is it worth mentioning that Martin Amis was the subject of a twitter game that led to his name being the #1 worldwide hashtag for the bulk of 28th June 2010? The challenge was to replace one word in a movie title with the words 'Martin Amis' which proved so popular that it gained instant notoriety. Just a note to see if this story will develop.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.208.217 (talk) 22:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Martin Amis Movies 

message: Just finished re-reading The Information having first read it when it came out 15 years ago.
One of the best bits is the obsessive interest (suffered by both main characters) in seeing eg one's name in print or in the case of Richard any reference to alcohol (high point: the word "it" on a printed page bringing to mind "gin and it", a no doubt repellent cocktail).
Anyway it suddenly occurred to me when I got to that bit, given that both characters are so obviously Amis based, and given that that particular characteristic is yet more obviously taken from Amis's own life, that:
- MA must spend a good part of every day googling himself, like many writers do, in order to see what the world thinks of him and/or what new references there are to him or his works, in the style of the Gwyn character
- similarly he must come across and check his wikipedia entry, either from wiki-ing himself or as an inevitable product of googling himself 
- occasionally it must happen that he checks the discussion page of his wiki entry, eg if nothing much is happening elsewhere in the Amis focused internet, ie this very page where I am now writing!
(I say occasionally.  It would be unnecessarily unkind to say how often I suspect he does it.)
Assuming all above is correct: Martin, the book is superb.  Please write more like it.
94.7.48.39 (talk) 10:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: If the reference to incessant auto-googling is correct, let alone the part about reading his own Wikipedia entry at times, you'd think he would have corrected the error in his birth place by now. Johnnydeeagain (talk) 14:49, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important 

message: This article has been reverted by a bot to  as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 14:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem 

message: "Night Train" (1997) was not his first book with a female protagonist. The main character in "Other People" (1981) was also a woman. Entry amended.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.21.40.253 (talk) 02:40, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  First female protaganist 

message: Do we really need paragraphs describing the author's readings?  Not even Twain and Dickens have this treatment.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.66.149.221 (talk) 20:11, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Way too much detail 

message: From the introduction: "Martin Amis is ... the author of several of Britain's best-known novels, including Money (1984) and London Fields (1989)." ARE YOU SERIOUS!? Please cast your thoughts over the history of the novel in Great Britain over the past two-and-a-half centuries and tell me where Martian Amis ranks in either fame or ability. Please delete this, fan-boys, or provide some evidence to back up this intellectually bankrupt claim!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.9.5.210 (talk) 11:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Britain's Best-Known Novels 

message: Substituted at 23:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: I tried to update the 2010s section to add the publication of The Rub of Time, but everytime I click edit on that section the section then appears blank. Can someone else give it a go? Tacyarg (talk) 09:04, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Update of most recent book needed

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 7 external links on Martin Amis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110606122132/http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-6732841-booker-snubs-amis-again.do to http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-6732841-booker-snubs-amis-again.do
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090119121646/http://www.granta.com/Magazine/100/The-Unknown-Known/page-1 to http://www.granta.com/Magazine/100/The-Unknown-Known/page-1
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110625030125/http://byliner.com/writers/martin-amis to http://byliner.com/writers/martin-amis
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070704052104/http://abc.net.au/reslib/podcast/lateline/20061101-late-amis_video4.wmv to http://abc.net.au/reslib/podcast/lateline/20061101-late-amis_video4.wmv
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110113190813/http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11163 to http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11163
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Martin Amis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080522125901/http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3052346.ece to http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3052346.ece
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081123045444/http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/books/451411/defender-though-not-of-the-faith.thtml to http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/books/451411/defender-though-not-of-the-faith.thtml
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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: I'd like to hear other editors views on whether it would be appropriate to add the category Category:British anti–nuclear weapons activists to this page. I don't have much knowledge of Martin Amis but he seems to mention nuclear weapons in his works in as far as I can see a critical fashion. Would this category be warranted? If he is against nuclear weapons could we regard him as an activist? Authoring works against something in my view could be regarded as activism. Please let me know your thoughts here and any citations that could be used to support this claim would be enormously helpful. Helper201 (talk) 22:26, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Anti–nuclear weapons activist?

message: I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section using cite templates for books and articles, as well as tables for organising short stories, poems and/or book reviews. Capitalization and punctuation follow standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, as much as Wikipedia templates allow it. ISBNs and other persistent identifiers, where available, are commented out, but still available for reference. This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 10:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: It's a minor detail which hardly deserves to be in the article of such an important writer, really, but it IS there so I've edited. The reference to Amis' salary was wrong and unecessarily justificatory. Its citation was not used correctly either, as it didn't say what was said on the tin. Amis was paid a salary (£80k) at the lower end of the professiorial range in return for 28 contracted hours. He didn't teach assessed units and didn't mark papers. The University was in (reasonable) PR mode when describing professorial workloads and salaries; they clearly didn't apply to Amis. Instead, universities across the world, and luckily in the UK, routinely have stars in on star-type contracts like Amis'. Students like it and it's an important link to the commerical world of creativity. In Amis' case, it's cheap at the price. There's nothing for anyone to be apologetic or justificatory about. So there. Emmentalist (talk) 12:13, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Manchester University salary

message: I don't know the precise location but he cannot have been born at the John Radcliffe Hospital, as that was opened  in 1972, when Amis was 23 years old. Another hospital named after the same 18th Century English surgeon - the Radcliffe Infirmary - was in operation at the time, and is the likely place of birth. The other maternity hospital in the city at the time was the Churchill, which, along with a home birth, is a possibility. Whole thing needs a citation, obviously. Johnnydeeagain (talk) 13:17, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Additionally, the links given do not support the claim to have been born at the JRH. One states Swansea, the other states Radcliffe Maternity Hospital [a wing of the old, now closed Radcliffe Infirmary]. Johnnydeeagain (talk) 14:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The biography states 'Radcliffe Maternity Hospital'. I have changed the article according to that source. Anna (talk) 01:21, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Place of birth 

message: Do we need a hatnote informing the reader: For the landscape and documentary photographer, see Martin Amis (photographer)? This seems to be overkill (somewhat opportunistic, and an unnecessary  distraction), as the photographer in question is clearly listed immediately after the writer in an ordinary Wikipedia search. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:30, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it's standard practice per WP:SIMILAR. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 12:12, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Understood, thanks. The question was really if in this case it is WP:NOTAMB (as there are no redirects which would justify WP:HATREDIR, etc.). [NB: I also just noticed that: , and I certainly didn't at all mean to go there!] Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:14, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

text: PS: Should there be one on the other article too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cl3phact0 (talk • contribs) 13:16, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No, WP:NAMB. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 14:21, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hatnote?