Lora Kelley at the Paris Review:
Amis’s writing is stylish and screwy and grotesque and vulgar. The jokes come at an unhinged pace. He was an exquisite writer of the male body and the horrors of inhabiting one: “My hair hung on my head as if it were a cut-price toupée,” Charles Highway (Charles Highway!) reflects in Amis’s debut novel The Rachel Papers. That same character savages the “Big Boys” that are his pimples and speaks of “laundering my orifices,” as “they went all to hell if not scrupulously maintained.” A genital region is referred to as a “rig.” The names, across his books, are insane. Amis calls characters things like Spunk, 13, Fart Klaeber, Sod. A female cop (or as she calls herself “a police”) is named Mike Hoolihan. A quartet of violent dogs are Joe, Joel, Jeff, and Jon. That he called a writer-character Martin Amis, or so the story goes, caused his father to throw Money across the room. Famed for his antic satire, he was later unafraid to take on—in his novels, nonfiction, and short stories—genocide and the end of the world, too.
No one is doing it like Amis did. That the contemporary fiction landscape lacks his flavor of frenzied humor, chaotic storylines, maximalist characters, and full-throated play is a loss. But perhaps that’s how it should be, especially for a critic who championed writers whose work could not be mistaken for anyone’s but their own. He was an influence—the 92nd Street Y is planning more events featuring young writers affected by Amis—but he was also singular.
more here.
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