The Complex Legacy of Martin Amis.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by UnHerd
Martin Amis, part of a talented group of writers including Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens, James Fenton, and Clive James, was a gifted writer with a mordant wit and a finger on the pulse of postmodern culture. However, his writing revealed a disparity between the sordid events it narrated and the tamely conventional views that underpinned it. Amis dismissed socialism and Christianity as obsolete ideologies, but in his view, all ideologies were obsolete, except for middle-class liberalism, which he saw as plain common sense. His response to the 9/11 tragedy exposed the limits of liberalism, which can move quickly into a violent defence of the status quo.