The Amis Papers

Jan 30 2025 16 ep. 48 mins 3
The Amis Papers Podcast artwork

The Amis papers is a podcast reviewing Martin Amis's fiction and nonfiction one book at a time, from the Rachel Papers to Inside Story. The podcast is hosted by Martin Locock, a poet and author, who likes most of Amis's work.

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Ep15a Heavy Water updated version

Jan 30 2025 44 mins  
(updated file with the actual episode included)Amis's second short story collection is diverse in subject, style and antiquity - including a science fiction story that reveals that Earth is unimportant and doomed, a fantasy where poets make big money film deals and screenwriters starve, and a commentary on the way that society has left the old rules of status and masculinity behind

Ep16 Yellow Dog (2003)

Jan 29 2025 65 mins  
The publication of Yellow Dog was greeted with dismay by the papers, writers and fans. "Embarrassingly bad" was the memorable description by novelist Tibor Fischer. Tibor Fischer review Parts are aggressively unpleasant- the tedious brutality of old-style London gangsters, the extravagant cynicism and hypocrisy of the tabloid journalists, and the grimy business of the pornography i

Ep14 Out of Blue (film based on Night Train)

Nov 18 2024 17 mins  
Carol Morley's 2018 film adaptation of Night Train places the action in New Orleans. The podcast discusses how the book's mystery has been altered to make it more of a conventional noir, why it was filmed in 'Covid style' with empty rooms and few people, and why the viewer may find the ending unsatisfying. Worth watching if you like the book; there is a spolier section at the end o

Ep13 Night Train

Nov 11 2024 38 mins  
We jump across the Atlantic to a modern noir, with a disillusioned alcoholic cop investigating the death of her beautiful and successful friend. A comic novel light on jokes, with an emphasis on the meaninglessness of existence and the impossibility of happiness. The podcast ponders whether a work that shows the police as bigoted, lawless and incompetent counts as "copaganda", wher

Ep12 The Information (1995)

Oct 16 2024 72 mins  
We reach the halfway point of Amis's fiction, a long meditation on the realities of the writer's life and the futility of revenge. Some poetic allusions to Philip Larkin's The Trees and Wendy Cope's Tumps (typically useless male poets), and the mystery of what a planesaw is, enliven Amis writing at the top of his game on the sad and depressing life of Richard Tull, a novelist whose

Ep11 Time's Arrow (1991)

Aug 06 2024 37 mins  
Amis follows a Nazi doctor from his death as a respectable suburban physician in America back through New York to Portugal, Rome, and wartime Germany. On the way we discover the strangeness of eating and relationships told backwards, the significance of 1960, and whether those guilty of monstrous crimes are monsters or ordinary people.Diane LeBlond 2013 Etudes britanniques contempo

Ep10 London Fields (1989)

Jul 15 2024 75 mins  
Content note: the novel raises issues of sexual violence, domestic violence, child abuse, child sexual exploitation and disordered eating.Looking at Amis' London novel, or his darts novel, or his millenial novel (in the end-of-the-world sense not the avocado-toast-and-can't-buy-a-house sense). And the 2018 film based on it. On the way I discuss the strange parochialism of the metro

Ep9 Einstein's Monsters (1987)

May 27 2024 35 mins  
This episode discusses Amis's first short story collection, loosely themed on nuclear war and its aftermath, and concludes that the stories are unsatisfying. On the way I discuss what Amis might learn from Scooby Doo about narrative, the art of the literary backhanded compliment, and whether the Nuclear Age presents different challenges to the Age of Anxiety.There is a brief mentio

Ep8 Money (1984)

Apr 30 2024 81 mins  
A detailed discussion of one of Amis's best books, exploring the strange appeal of John Self, what it is that the character Martin Amis takes from him as reward for winning a game of chess, and why Self's limited reading includes the obscure Shakespeare play Timon of Athens. The podcast covers the novel's treatment of themes including suicide and physical and sexual violence.BBC in

Amis Papers 7 Saturn 3 (1980)

Mar 05 2024 21 mins  
A look at the science fiction Garden of Eden/ Frankenstein/ mad robot film Saturn 3 for which Amis wrote a screenplay, although nothing in the finished script bears much evidence of his style. It's chief interest is as raw material for the novel Money.Something is wrong on Saturn 3 websiteIndustry Podcast episode on John BarryWe Hate Movies podcast episode 127: Blame It On Rio