The death of Martin Amis, last week from esophageal cancer—the same disease that felled his longtime friend and colleague Christopher Hitchens—did not come as a surprise. Reports of his decline came in regular dispatches from friends in London. He had moved to the house that he and his wife, Isabel Fonseca, owned in Florida. There had been treatments, but there had been no remission. With his death, he leaves behind a swell of grieving family members, chums, and fans.
I knew Martin, mostly through Christopher, a mutual friend. Between them, they left a body of combined work that all but defined the last half-century, both of their native Britain and their adopted America. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I preferred Martin’s early comic novels to some of his later ones. But his nonfiction, like Christopher’s, was as sharp and as observant as any among his contemporaries. Some 13 years ago, I wrote this review of his novel The Pregnant Widow for The New York Times Book Review. Some of the elements might seem dated, but as a general portrait of the author as a no-longer-young man, struggling against the tide of age, it might still hold some steam. Here it goes:
