Search -
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions
Visiting Mrs Nabokov and Other Excursions Author:Martin Amis 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 o... more »f 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."« less
Short journalism pieces and personality profiles from the 1980s and 1990s. Great if you like Amis, or at least that brand of opinionated, sometimes snarky reporting that is typically British.