PROSPECT: Politics Essays Argument

[James Williams]

As quoted in Prospect magazine August/September 1997 in an
article-come-interview with English author Martin Amis.

"The task of the novelist is to interpert the present and the near
future, to ask where we are heading, how we are changing?" Amis says
through a haze of cigarette smoke. "I knew from an early life that i
wanted to write about everyday life; that i wouldn't write, say,
westerns or historical works. I would have been surprised if i'd set
anything in the past, unless as i did in Time's Arrow, i wanted to
explain something about the present. Looking at Thomas Pynchon's new
novel, i ask my self can i read anymore pastiche, can i get through
another novel that has as if it where, f's for s's and spells always
a-l-w-a-e-i-s."

Discuss

JIM.W