The problem with some writers is that, at a certain point in their careers, they start to raise expectations. If then, after a series of more or less spectacular ups and downs, the career ends abruptly, that expectation turns into a sort of claim and the works left behind by novelists and essayists who have passed away take on the contours of more or less reluctant. “Achieved a particular status,” he says The print the literary critic of New Yorker James Wood – we begin to expect writers to explain to us the past, the present and the future».
If then the writer in question was a master of opinion, a champion of the jab and stance like Martin Amis, then at his death the risk is to start reading much more than he actually wanted to say; and, it goes without saying, to almost completely misrepresent its intentions.
Amis’s relationship with critics has always been up and down, as well as – although he firmly denied it along with any other negative aspect of his professionalism – that with publishing. «He claimed that he didn’t need critics or editors-he says to The print the British essayist Geoff Dyer – in the first case I think it was the fear of being faced with the evidence of an unsuccessful work, in the second it was the certainty of finding oneself with one’s back against the wall. Of course he desperately needed both of them, like everyone else.’
Especially in the last years of his life – he died on May 19, the day after the publication in Italy of his latest memoir The story from within (published by Einaudi for the translation of Gaspare Bona) – Amis had become for public opinion a kind of judgment machine, for many even endowed with a certain foresight. “He had a very imperious public voice-comments Wood-perhaps for this reason he was expected that his answers were as definitive as sentences”. Undoubtedly he was endowed, and always had been, with a certain acute awareness of the world around him. “He had a sharp sense of the Zeitgeist – says Dyer – and this greatly fueled his drive to become a kind of public intellectual, like his lifelong friend Christopher Hitchens. For a certain period they both had the exact pulse of what was happening in the world and the right words to express it, to ferry it», not without a good dose of uncontrolled opinion, but not for this reason out of focus, at least for a good period of their lives. “After a while, though, I think there was a kind of disconnect: Amis was still perfectly capable of analyzing what was going on, but it’s as if linguistically he was left behind. Lionel Asbo – the state of England (released in Italy by Einaudi in 2012 and translated by Federica Aceto) was one of the fruits of that period of slowdown, and it was undoubtedly perceived».
Any novelist, especially if particularly prolific, can run into moments of tiredness, of creative fatigue. The 2000s were particularly troubled for Amis. Perhaps, also and above all, due to the weight of expectations that at that point, with the death of his perfect counterpart Hitchens and as he clearly analyzes in The story from within they were overwhelming him without him being able to focus as clearly as he had in the past. In the aftermath of the release of The pregnant widow (Einaudi, 2010, translated by Maurizia Balmelli) someone had the audacity to ask him if it was a return of form. “I’ve always been fit!” Amis thundered in response. «What is this history of form? I have no idea where you’re going, but I think my talent is absolutely vigorous.” Undoubtedly he liked to give himself an idea of solid and unshakeable security in the face of any situation. “And yet he was capable of great insecurity,” says Wood, “which leaked from the pages of him more personal than he.” He probably just didn’t like that this aspect of his character became a reason for public scrutiny.
“He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known,” recalls Dyer, “One must never forget that. This irony of him was often ferocious, publicly ferocious, and useful for masking the difficulty in truly speaking about oneself.’ Whether or not it was, as some have liked to put it, inscrutable British humor, Amis had a thunderous answer to any question and when it came to criticism he always knew which buttons to hit to pop the cap of indignation, especially with his amused US detractors. “These are people who agree to be billed for paper handkerchiefs in hospitals,” comments Dyer who, just like Amis and Wood, is British on American soil. “If there’s anything worth complaining loudly about and Marty never misses an opportunity to criticize, it’s America.”
In a powerful essay never translated in Italy, entitled The Moronic Inferno and published in 1986, Amis points the finger for the first time to what would become his home in fits and starts and the reason for all his lamentations to come. “The identical buildings crazily arranged on the freeway junctions, the motel signs, the silly glee of the Dunkin’ Donuts mascot winking at a billboard,” he wrote in his bombastic language. I find – Indiana, Illinois, Iowa – but this tireless repetition of childish clichés heartens me: I am certainly in America».
And it was precisely in that land of infinite repetitions that the claims of clairvoyance and omniscience were most unleashed. Like few before him, Amis had what it took to become the literary superstar critics wanted: he was always speaking out against something, had a diehard cult following, had an interesting accent, and never flinched when he did. the chance to fight. All qualities that, from Ernest Hemingway to Fran Lebowitz, have always immensely tantalised commentators from overseas.
“There was a writer and there was a character – concludes dry Wood, who has had a close relationship with Amis on and off the page for most of his career – and I think they didn’t know each other”. And even if they knew each other, it doesn’t mean that they liked each other. Both one seemed to be objective and orderly, systematic, while the other gave the idea of a categorical and fuzzy character. Undoubtedly, both have contributed to the definition of a literary myth which now, as per tradition, will be exalted, commented on and, almost certainly, misrepresented. The memories remain of those who admired the writer and got to know the man, in his complex simplicity.
«I would have liked to play a tennis match – is Dyer’s last thought – when we met he had already stopped. I think it would have been an interesting experience: that anger and that restraint together had to work wonders».