At its best, Martin Amis’s fiction broke open the locked door behind which our culture tries to keep its skeletons hidden

Matt Hanson in Quillette:

Maybe one sign of being an important writer is how much attention you receive when you die. Tributes to and remembrances of Martin Amis, who died last week at 73, have been appearing all over the place, like fresh bouquets of sympathy sent to a funeral. I almost found myself lazily inserting the phrase “after a long battle with cancer” to specify the conditions of his demise, but since Amis was famously at war with cliches, this would not do. Amis refused to hide his taste, his opinions, and above all, his style under a bushel, and this is why people loved him on both sides of the Atlantic.

Having Kingsley Amis as a father would be a blessing and a curse for anyone, though Amis generally chose to emphasize the former in his memoirs.

More here.