I doubt this is worth reading in full unless you're more interested in literary figures than I am. However Amis has a curious profile in the media: Both left-wing darling of a sort and a cheerleader for the neocon right of late.
To supporters, he's one of the few public figures brave enough to speak the truth about Islam and the failures of multiculturalism. To opponents, he's just a mouthpiece for racism. So who is the real Martin Amis?
Johann Hari comes to a similar conclusion;-
Amis's cognitive dissonance seems to squat in the room, like a physical presence. With the right lobe of his brain, Amis tells me he loves our multiracial society, and he says it with vigour and rigour. I don't for a second think he's lying. But then, with the left lobe he passionately praises a writer who seems to me to be an outright racist, one who damns virtually all Muslims as secret Sharia-carriers and brags that the "white" birth-rate is still higher in the US. It is as though Amis has been fractured by the kerosene blast of September 11 into two people - and they aren't talking. They continue to gabble over each other. Just a few minutes after wondering if feminism has drained women's will to reproduce and "lost us Europe", he tells me that his forthcoming novel - The Pregnant Widow - is a celebration of the sexual revolution and feminism. "I am a gynocrat," he says. "I think the world would be better if women ruled it." Feminism today is only in "its second trimester", he adds, and when it reaches delivery it will make the world an even better place. And beneath the sound of ideologies clashing inside him, I can still trace remnants of Amis's left-wing late youth. He continues to advocate nuclear disarmament, saying that the existing nuclear powers should immediately begin working towards "the zero option". He is proud to have opposed the Iraq War, where he says "we have created a fresh kind of Hell". As I stumble out into the Primrose Hill drizzle, I feel like I have been watching a boxing match in Amis's brain. He waves goodbye and shuts the door. I stand at the gate, wondering if the Steyn-hugging round-'em-up impulses will deliver a knock-out blow to the other Martin: the nuclear-disarming multiracialist who remembers his Muslim girlfriends with a sweet smile. I hope not. If the fantasies prevail, one of our best novelists will disappear, raving, into the long Eurabian night.
They continue to gabble over each other. Just a few minutes after wondering if feminism has drained women's will to reproduce and "lost us Europe", he tells me that his forthcoming novel - The Pregnant Widow - is a celebration of the sexual revolution and feminism. "I am a gynocrat," he says. "I think the world would be better if women ruled it." Feminism today is only in "its second trimester", he adds, and when it reaches delivery it will make the world an even better place.
And beneath the sound of ideologies clashing inside him, I can still trace remnants of Amis's left-wing late youth. He continues to advocate nuclear disarmament, saying that the existing nuclear powers should immediately begin working towards "the zero option". He is proud to have opposed the Iraq War, where he says "we have created a fresh kind of Hell".
As I stumble out into the Primrose Hill drizzle, I feel like I have been watching a boxing match in Amis's brain. He waves goodbye and shuts the door. I stand at the gate, wondering if the Steyn-hugging round-'em-up impulses will deliver a knock-out blow to the other Martin: the nuclear-disarming multiracialist who remembers his Muslim girlfriends with a sweet smile. I hope not. If the fantasies prevail, one of our best novelists will disappear, raving, into the long Eurabian night.
But people like Amis (and Hitchens) are above all stylists, as Hari surmises. Perfectly-marshalled pugnacious prose with a fucked-up upper-class English mind behind it. Time goes by and the atavism shows.
