Word's Worth

A long and Very Successful Writing Career Has Won British Author Martin Amis a Split Reputation—as a Controversial Sourpuss and One of Literature’s Greatest Living Stylists. Vatsala Chhibber Is Pleased to Meet Both
 

- 

f

In a 1990 essay on his literary hero Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis writes, “I assume we all have more or less shameful fantasies about our best-loved writers. We meet them, in our heads—and everything works out fine. Indeed, we become our favourites’ favourite…we out-drink Joyce in the bars of Paris; after an hour with us, JD Salinger is ruing his reclusive ways.”

If shameful fantasies had their way, this interview would begin in Martin Amis’ study in his four-storey Brooklyn apartment. I would have an unbound draft of his next novel in my hands, which we’d discuss for about eight hours (though we’d swear it felt like no more than two!), and at the end of our meeting, I would leave as my favourite’s favourite. It would be only the start of an enduring friendship and mentorship. Instead, the interview takes place in a makeshift authors’ lounge at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, with a rattling fan and a rigid 30-minute deadline. Amis, elegantly sipping an espresso from a cutting-chai glass, has concluded his third session at the 2016 TATA Literature Live festival, obliged admirers with a long spot of book-signing, and is now on schedule for his third interview of the day. He greets me rather less enthusiastically than I’d hoped.

At 67, Amis is slight, scanty-haired and wears a faint scowl. He’s not instantly recognisable as ‘The Mick Jagger of English literature’ or the disarming womaniser who was once the subject of the 30,000-word ‘Long Letter to a Short Love, or...’ by Germaine Greer. More than four decades have passed since the son of literary icon Kingsley Amis published his coming-of-age novel,