Celebrated author redefined British fiction in 1980s, ’90s
NEW YORK — British novelist Martin Amis, who brought a rock ’n’ roll sensibility to his stories and lifestyle, died Friday. He was 73.
His death at his home in Lake Worth, Florida, from cancer of the esophagus, was confirmed by his agent, Andrew Wylie, on Saturday.
Amis was the son of another British writer, Kingsley Amis.
Being the child of a well-known writer was, for Amis, a blessing and a curse. It helped put him on the map earlier than he might otherwise have gotten there. It made him familiar at an early age with London’s hothouse publishing world. It also helped make him a figure of fascination, resentment and envy.
“I’d be in a very different position now if my father had been a schoolteacher,” Amis told The Sunday Times of London in 2014.
Martin Amis’ talent was undeniable. He was the most dazzling stylist in postwar British fiction. He was a leading voice among a generation of writers that included his good friend, the late Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie.
Among his best-known works were “Money,” a satire about consumerism in London, “The Information” and “London Fields,” along with his 2000 memoir, “Experience.”
Jonathan Glazer’s adaption of Amis’ 2014 novel “The Zone of Interest” premiered Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, about a Nazi commandant who lives next to Auschwitz with his family, drew some of the best reviews of the festival.
The Holocaust was the topic of Amis’ novel “Time’s Arrow” and Josef Stalin’s reign in Russia in “House of Meetings,” examples of how his writing explored the dark soul.
Critic Michiko Kakutani wrote of Amis in The New York Times in 2000 that “he is a writer equipped with a daunting arsenal of literary gifts: a dazzling, chameleonesque command of language, a willingness to tackle large issues and larger social canvases and an unforgiving, heat-seeking eye for the unwholesome ferment of contemporary life.”
Amis was a celebrity in his own right, his life often chronicled by London tabloids since his 1973 debut, “The Rachel Papers.”
His love life, his change of agents, even his dental work were fodder for stories.
“He was the king — a stylist extraordinaire, super cool, a brilliantly witty, erudite and fearless writer and a truly wonderful man,” said Michal Shavit, his editor in England. “He has been so important and formative for so many readers and writers over the last half century. Every time he published a new book it was an event.”
“We are devastated at the death of our author and friend, Martin Amis,” Amis’ publisher, Penguin, tweeted. “He leaves a towering legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be missed enormously.”
Amis is survived by his wife, writer Isabel Fonseca; three daughters, Delilah Jeary, Fernanda Amis and Clio Amis; two sons, Louis and Jacob Amis; four grandchildren; and a brother, James Boyd.
Amis married Antonia Phillips, a widowed Boston philosophy teacher, in 1984 and had sons Louis and Jacob. He left Phillips for Fonseca in 1994.
Jeary was his daughter from a brief affair Amis had with artist Lamorna Seale in the 1970s. She did not discover that he was her father until she was 19.