The War Against Cliché

Dan Kois (Hampton Heights), Parul Sehgal (New York Times), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' 2012 comedy about a violent lout and his sensitive ward.

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New York Times), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' 1997 mystery novel about suicide, motive, and the age of the universe.

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' 1984 book about sex, cash, and all the things the novel can do that the movies can't.

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' 2001 collection of criticism—and the state of criticism in 2024.

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' 2014 novel about Auschwitz—as well as Jonathan Glazer's 2023 film adaptation. 

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss Martin Amis' final novel, 2020's Inside Story, and Amis' death on May 19, 2023. 

Dan Kois (Slate), Jason Zinoman (New York Times), and special guest host Willa Paskin (Decoder Ring) discuss Martin Amis' 2006 novel about the Soviet gulag, House of Meetings. What are we to make of the novel's monstrous narrator, his pacifist brother, and the Amisian object of desire who divides them (and unites them)? And what is it about the horrors of 20th-century history that makes a novelist like Amis prick up his ears?

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) discuss the ambitious novel that upended Martin Amis' personal, professional, and dental life: The Information. Dan quizzes Parul and Jason about the details of 1995's wildest lit-world gossip, and the panel argues about a novel about literary envy that inspired £500,000 worth of literary envy before it was even published. 

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) leap into the 1980s, when Martin Amis made his living as a hack: a freelance journalist writing about America for British outlets. The Moronic Inferno, published in 1986, collects features about American politics (evangelicism, Reagan, AIDS); profiles of literary and Hollywood stars (Mailer, Spielberg, Bellow); and scathing book reviews. What does Martin Amis see when he looks at America? Why does his harshest criticism of other writers' work sound so much like anxiety about his own? And is he the original Short King?

The Martin Chronicles debuts with Dan Kois (Slate), Jason Zinoman (New York Times), and Parul Sehgal (New Yorker) discussing Martin Amis' first novel, The Rachel Papers, published in 1973 when Amis was just 24 years old. Why is Charles Highway so disgusting? Why isn't Rachel Noyes Jewish? And how does the son of a successful, controversial novelist secure his entrée into the literary world?