Visiting Mrs. Nabokov And Other Excursions

by AMIS, MARTIN

• ISBN13: 9780679757931
• ISBN10: 0679757937
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-05-02
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

To this tantalizing nonfiction collection Martin Amis brings the same megawatt wit, wickedly acute perception, and ebullient wordplay that characterize his novels. He encompasses the full range of contemporary politics and culture (high and low) while also traveling to China for soccer with Elton John and to London's darts-crazy pubs in search of the perfect throw. Throughout, he offers razor-sharp takes on such subjects as: American politics: "If history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, then the Reagan era can be seen as an eight-year blackout. Numb, pale, unhealthily dreamless: eight years of Do Not Disturb." Chess: "Nowhere in sport, perhaps in human activity, is the gap between the tryer and the expert so astronomical.... My chances of a chess brilliancy are the 'chances' of a lab chimp and a type writer producing King Lear."

Author Biography

Martin Amis is the best-selling author of several books, including <b>London Fields</b>, <b>Money</b>, <b>The Information</b>, and, most recently, <b>Experience</b>. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgments	vii
Graham Greene	1	(7)
Emergency Landing	8	(5)
Nuclear City: the Megadeath Intellectuals	13	(21)
Watford in China	34	(13)
John Updike	47	(13)
Tennis: the Women's Game	60	(9)
St Lucia	69	(7)
J.G. Ballard	76	(7)
Chess: Kasparov v. Karpov	83	(11)
The Rolling Stones at Earls Court	94	(5)
Phantom of the Opera: The Republicans in 1988	99	(14)
Visiting Mrs Nabokov	113	(8)
V.S. Naipaul's India	121	(6)
`Frankfurt'	127	(5)
More Die of Heartbreak	132	(22)
Snooker with Julian Barnes	154	(5)
RoboCop II	159	(11)
Salman Rushdie	170	(9)
Poker Night	179	(3)
John Lennon	182	(4)
Expelled	186	(3)
Nicholson Baker	189	(8)
Short Stories, From Scratch	197	(4)
Philip Larkin, 1922-1985	201	(6)
Cannes	207	(10)
Isaac Asimov	217	(6)
Darts: Gutted for Keith	223	(8)
John Braine	231	(7)
Carnival	238	(3)
Anthony Burgess	241	(5)
Roman Polanski	246	(9)
Madonna	255	(10)
V.S. Pritchett's Century	265