A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an e...
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Apr 12, 2008
Mike
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Well, I ignored Kakutani's savage review but I still went in skeptical--having read a couple of these pieces before (and found them shaky). They are better than she says, and far less effective (funny, biting, beautiful, smart) than Amis should be.
At its best, there are moments of the kind of dizzy linguistic dazzle that characterizes Amis' signature contribution: showboat prose acrobatics which, even as the consonants and syllables tumble about, punch you in the face. He refers to More...
At its best, there are moments of the kind of dizzy linguistic dazzle that characterizes Amis' signature contribution: showboat prose acrobatics which, even as the consonants and syllables tumble about, punch you in the face. He refers to More...
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May 05, 2008
David
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The pieces written immediately after 9/11 are the best and most incisive, and one in which Amis tags along with Tony Blair, from Ireland to the Oval Office to Baghdad, is fairly entertaining. Much of the rest is exasperating, particularly "Terror and Boredom," the Guardian essay which led Terry Eagleton and others to denounce Amis for Muslim-baiting bigotry: Amis's description of his abandoned novella about Islamist terrorists doesn't convince me that literature is poorer for the loss
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May 01, 2011
Bigmike
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Avoid this drivel at all costs. Amis is an Idiot and a Racist. Not only does the book read like a money grabbing piece of trash that promotes Muslim bashing, heightening and using the fear produced from 9/11, it also misquotes (because of the rush to publish it before that fear wore off). I will never read a book by Amis for as long as I live.
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Jul 21, 2011
Elliot
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Martin Amis, the noted UK novelist, came under fire for remarks verging on anti-Muslim. This collection of his 9/11 themed essays, reviews and short stories attempt to clear the air about where he stands. This Big War of Big Ideas keeps Amis from being neatly slotted or totally agreeable; I doubt there are many Amis dittoheads. If there isn’t much original here—he relies too much on Paul Berman, Sam Harris, Bernard Lewis– he certainly has some electric phrases. He isn’t against Islam, but “Isla
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Oct 15, 2009
Judith
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Martin Amis is such a gifted writer and a brilliant man. Previously I had only read his works of fiction, so it was interesting to read his essays, though I just got depressed. I agreed with about everything he said, and it just reminded me once again how despicable our former president was, and how gullible and naive the American people who supported him were. His interviews with Tony Blair were also insightful. I particularly liked Blair's comment that it is the job of the British P.M. i
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Oct 31, 2010
Karen
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I found this book oddly entertaining in its weird mix of essays and stories elicited by September 11th and its aftermath. Martin Amis writes so well, so it was a pleasure to read. I didn't particularly care for the chapter about Tony Blair, given its tenuous association with the rest of the book. The chapter about Saddam Hussein's son's doubles was incredibly disturbing. I found the anti-PC bent of the book quite refreshing. But I also found Amis's general anti-religiosity humorous at times
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Dec 29, 2008
Kenneth
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You never fail to learn something new from Martin Amis, but more often you learn new words and not new ideas. (It's true, as the cliche-hating Amis might argue, that precision in language is a prerequisite of precision in thought, but precision doesn't necessarily make for originality.) Over a decade ago, when I read his /Einstein's Monsters/, even then I thought he was borderline paranoiac and obsessive: the least of my worries, really, is nuclear apocalypse. September 11 was traumatic indee
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Dec 20, 2008
David
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Haven't read this author before. Very high level of verbal fluency, and I have the nagging thought that I should have gotten more out of this collection of essays (with a couple short stories mixed in, oddly). Very little actually stuck with me, though. I'd finish one and then a couple hours later realize that aside from attitude and rhetorical flourish all I could recall was "waiting in line at airport security is boring and has gotten worse since 9/11", "if you follow a polit
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Aug 27, 2008
Jim
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Amis has the ability to create dazzling phrases while writing with insight that few others have. After reading criticisms that found Amis racist, I was surprised at how even handed he actually was.
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Jun 21, 2009
Arrogant Mancunian Martin Amis found his ability to write cuckolded by the terrorporn of That Day. This is his story.
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Jan 16, 2011
Denae
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Thought provoking. While, like nearly every collection of articles/essays, it has its weak spots, overall it is well worth the read. There are definitely areas in which Martin Amis & I disagree, but I can nearly always see the reason for his stance. In some ways, "Terror and Boredom," the central piece, was my least favorite. He strays a bit too far into ideology for my taste, without backing up his thoughts as well as in some of the other articles. I particularly liked his reviews. Ov
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Apr 17, 2009
Monte
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November 11 attacks proceed from initial bewilderment to coruscating contempt for radical Islam. Novelist Amis (House of Meetings) rejects all religious belief as without reason and without dignity and condemns Islamism as an especially baleful variant. Amis attacks Islamism's tenets as [a:]nti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic and characterizes its adherents, from founding ideologue Sayyid Qutb to the ordinary suicide bomber, as sexually frustrated misogynists entranced
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Apr 14, 2008
Brent
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I wish that this book was a new novel. And I wish that Amis didn't think, as he says early on in his second essay, that his and every author's "whole corpus. . . could now" (after September 11th) "be dismissed with a sigh and a shake of the head." I wish that because I wish what I've just finished reading was a new novel.
If you look at the Also By page in the front of this collection, you'll see that out of his last seven books only two have been novels; whereas n More...
If you look at the Also By page in the front of this collection, you'll see that out of his last seven books only two have been novels; whereas n More...
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May 07, 2008
Chris
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This book is a collection of 14 pieces by Amis relating to 9/11 and its aftermath, starting with his initial reaction on 9/18/01 and ending with a piece published 9/11/07. Amis has provoked fellow liberals by throwing their ideology of restrained multicultural relativism in their face, accusing them of not seeing the stark reality of the Islamists agenda. He carefully explains that this is not crude Islamophobia but rather the more particular fear of militant Islam as jihad by Islamists bend on
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Jan 08, 2009
Janet
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This is a collection of essays (along with two bits of fiction) loosely tied around the theme of Islamism and 9/11 written between 2002 and 2007. Amis's assessment of Tony Blair, based on an unproductive interview, is witty and insightful. His portrait of Islamism is horrifying; his use of both fact and fiction makes that portrait unsettling, unreal, and alive. Perhaps he has gotten to the truth of terror. He is a great writer.
May 02, 2011
Ethan
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The late David Foster Wallace jumped to mind with this collection, in that Amis shines in the nonfiction essays and fails to deliver compelling fiction, despite the brand name. The good news is that the essays take up north of 150 of the 210 pages here, enough to make the book worth reading. The sad news is that Amis seems to have misplaced the energy and imagination that fired his fiction in the eighties and nineties. Here's hoping he finds it again. In the meantime, he's persuasive and mem
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Aug 20, 2010
Martin
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Sort of hit and miss...Amis is not an "authority" on many of the issues he tries to tackle here, but that has never slowed him down before (and why should it, really?), he at least brings some interesting/intriguing insights to the table most of the time...the guy can write, and I find myself fascinated even when disagreeing with some of his ideas/premises...never accused of being timid in this thinking or a man to shy away from giving an opinion, Amis walks the tightrope at times betw
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Jan 27, 2009
"If September 11 had to happen," he says in the introduction to The Second Plane, "then I am not at all sorry that it happened in my lifetime."
'After a couple of hours at their desks, on September 12,' Amis wrote, 'all writers on earth were considering the course that Lenin urged on Maxim Gorky: a change of occupation.'
Islamism, says Amis, desires "a world of perfect terror and perfect boredom", and nothing else: "a world with no games More...
'After a couple of hours at their desks, on September 12,' Amis wrote, 'all writers on earth were considering the course that Lenin urged on Maxim Gorky: a change of occupation.'
Islamism, says Amis, desires "a world of perfect terror and perfect boredom", and nothing else: "a world with no games More...
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Apr 27, 2011
Meghan
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I want so badly to like Amis - I find his ideas to be fascinating - but I can't get past his meandering, trite words. I find him rather inaccessible and not particularly entertaining. I will try again, however, with hopefully a better reaction.
Sep 26, 2011
Samuel
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Mesmo que Amis não seja uma autoridade em geopolítica internacional e a sua prosa, por vezes, pareça raiar o racismo, é inegável o seu poder de suscitar a reflexão e opinião pública acerca do 11 de Setembro. E escreve criminalmente bem!
Jan 28, 2010
Jessica
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I decided that I really enjoyed the fiction in this book. Amis's essays made sense, I guess, but they were nothing in comparison to how his fiction hit. I would recommend it to anyone.
Nov 16, 2010
Fred
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Essays and stories written over a few years after 9/11. Some trenchant commentary, and some repetition. Worth reading.
Aug 02, 2010
Vincent
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Lots of stimulating, some throw-away, reflections, but mainly sharp commentary concerning much of what flowed from the twin towers going down.
Jan 11, 2009
Lawrence
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While there are some good pieces here, Amis proves throughout that he knows as much about Islam as a fiction writer.
Dec 29, 2011
Nathaniel
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A mixture of essays and short stories about the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Aug 08, 2008
Pat
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A great discussion of Islamism and what 9/11 meant to the zealots who planned and carried out the attacks. This is more of a philosophy book with social factors than a terrorism history or how-to. The book wanders briefly towards the end into some nonsense about Tony Blair, something I'd skip if I were you. There is a great day-in-the-life of Mohammad Atta, a useful review of Islamism a la Sayyid Qutb, and an interesting discussion of terrorism vs boredom. The second plane of course ended the in
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Jan 29, 2012
Frank
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Un libro che può tranquillamente essere lasciato dov'è.
Restituisce poco o nulla per il tempo che richiede.
Avevo immaginato un qualcosa di molto diverso e invece mi sono ritrovato con un insieme di frasi, articolo, interviste che non portano a nulla di nuovo.
Tempo di lettura: 6h 04m
Restituisce poco o nulla per il tempo che richiede.
Avevo immaginato un qualcosa di molto diverso e invece mi sono ritrovato con un insieme di frasi, articolo, interviste che non portano a nulla di nuovo.
Tempo di lettura: 6h 04m
Sep 11, 2008
Brian
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Excellent reading. Amis is not afraid to call a spade a spade, so it's unsurprising that one or two thin-skins felt the need to hurl ludicrous accusations of "racism" at him. He's a tremendously gifted writer, astute observer and unrepentant realist.
May 18, 2008
Shameel
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The bastard's become a raging racist. Hugely disappointing for me, I've been reading Martin since I was 14, he shaped my literary sensibility, and now I am squarely in the demographic on which he has turned his racist gaze.
