The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017

by Martin Amis

Overview

As a journalist, critic, and novelist, Martin Amis has always turned his keen intellect and unrivaled prose loose on an astonishing range of topics—politics, sports, celebrity, America, and, of course, literature. Collected here is some of his best nonfiction work from over two decades. Amis writes about finally confronting the effects of aging on his athletic prowess. He revisits the worlds of Bellow and Nabokov, his “twin peaks,” masters who have obsessed and inspired him. And he turns his piercingly observant eye on Donald Trump, whom he finds “scowling out from under an omelette of makeup” in the run-up to the 2016 Republican Convention, and at a post-election rally, regarding his crowd of supporters with a “flat sneer of Ozymandian hauteur.”

Overflowing with startling and singular turns of phrase, and complete with new commentary by the author, The Rub of Time is a vital addition to any bookshelf, and the perfect primer for readers discovering Amis’s fierce talents for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400044535
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MARTIN AMIS is the author of fourteen novels, the memoir Experience, two collections of stories, and six previous nonfiction books. He lives in Brooklyn.

Hometown:

Oxford, England

Date of Birth:

August 25, 1949

Place of Birth:

Oxford, England

Education:

B.A., Exeter College, Oxford

Table of Contents

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

By Way of an Introduction
He’s Leaving Home

Twin Peaks
Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem from Hell
Saul Bellow, as Opposed to Henry James

Politics 1
The Republican Party in 2011: Iowa
The Republican Party in 2012: Tampa, Florida
The Republican Party in 2016: Trump

Literature 1
Philip Larkin: His Work and Life
Larkin’s Letters to Monica
Iris Murdoch: Age Will Win

The House of Windsor
Princess Diana: A Mirror, Not a Lamp
The Queen’s Speech, the Queen’s Heart

More Personal 1
You Ask the Questions 1
The Fourth Estate and the Puzzle of Heredity
On the Road: The Multicity Book Tour
The King’s English
 
Twin Peaks 2
Bellow’s Lettres
Nabokov’s Natural Selection

Americana (Stepping Westward)
Losing in Las Vegas
Travolta’s Second Act
In Pornoland: Pussies Are Bullshit

Literature 2
Don DeLillo: Laureate of Terror
J. G. Ballard: From Outer Space to Inner Space
Early Ballard: The Drowned World
The Shock of the New: A Clockwork Orange Turns Fifty

Sport
Three Stabs at Tennis
The Champions League Final, 1999
In Search of Dieguito Maradona
On the Court: My Beautiful Game

More Personal 2
Deciding to Write Time’s Arrow
Marty and Nick Jr. Sail to America
You Ask the Questions 2

Politics 2
Ivan Is Introduced to the USSR: All Together Now
Is Terrorism “About Religion”?
In Memory of Neda Soltan, 1983–2009: Iran
The Crippled Murderers of Cali, Colombia

Literature 3
Philip Roth Finds Himself
Roth the Elder: A Moralistic Investigation
John Updike’s Farewell Notes
Rabbit Angstrom Confronts Obamacare
Jane Austen and the Dream Factory  

More Personal 3
Christopher Hitchens

Politics 3
On Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition
President Trump Orates in Ohio

Twin Peaks 3
Bellow: Avoiding the Void
Véra and Vladimir: Letters to Véra
 
Index

Editorial Reviews

The range of topics—literary and sporting, personal and political—provides a map of what various editors over the years thought Amis might be interested in. Or (not quite the same thing) what they thought their readers might be interested in Amis on. I'm not snarking, I'm admiring. We can quibble about whether the ability to turn out a predetermined quantity of lucid, witty, sometimes moving, rarely boring prose on assignment and on deadline should be classified as a talent or a skill—I'm here to tell you it isn't easy—or about whether thinky journalism is an art or a craft. What seems to me beyond argument is that Amis is good at it. He is especially good at literary criticism. The best parts of The Rub of Time are devoted to his two favorite novelists, Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow…Amis's affection for them is hardly news, and there is some repetition among the essays, but they serve as vaccines against cynicism, as reminders that affection is a powerful engine of critical inquiry…His virtues as a reporter are a quick, adaptable intelligence and a willingness to do the necessary work—to read, think, travel, listen and, within the parameters of polite magazine discourse, to empathize.

The New York Times Book Review - A. O. Scott

Amis's new book, like the collections that preceded it, is the product of a ferocious yet sensitive mind. Even when he is considering writers he's assessed many times before (Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, John Updike, Christopher Hitchens), his aim is so unerring that he resembles a figure out of Greek myth, firing arrows through ax-heads lined up in a row.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

11/13/2017
The essays and journalism in this wide-ranging, rewarding collection take Amis (The Zone of Interest) from a pornographer’s mansion to the U.S. presidential campaign trail and consider the output of such writers as Don DeLillo and Philip Larkin. Over the 23-year period that the essays span, Amis is infallibly a lucid, linguistically precise commentator. Writing about Jane Austen, Saul Bellow, Iris Murdoch, and Vladimir Nabokov, he is admiring but not idolatrous; his coverage of poker tournaments and soccer matches is lively; his judgments on film range from a sympathetic, considered profile of John Travolta (in the wake of the actor’s comeback in Pulp Fiction) to amused horror at Four Weddings and a Funeral: “I was filled with a yearning to be doing something else.” Amis is an inimitable, devoted observer: tennis instructors “flowed toward with leisurely economy”; John Updike, observing fellow patients in a hospital cafeteria, is a “NORAD of data gathering and microinspection.” Occasionally, on politics and art, Amis can be critically uninspired: in an essay on J.G. Ballard, he writes that Steven Spielberg is an “essentially optimistic artist” and that David Cronenberg is “a much darker artist.” But largely, nonfiction Amis is a witty, welcome presence: a practitioner of “burnished technique and... sober delectation.” Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

09/15/2017
Smartly acidulous in his nonfiction as in his fiction, celebrated British author Amis (now based in Brooklyn) collects 30 years' worth of essays ranging from Trump and terrorism to the depredations of aging to his greatest literary influences, Bellow and Nabokov. Expect off-the-book-page coverage.

Library Journal

2017-10-30
A sharp, witty collection from the prolific writer of fiction, memoir, and acerbic essays.In his latest work of nonfiction, Amis (The Zone of Interest, 2014, etc.) gathers an enticing miscellany of short pieces—reportage, political and cultural commentary, book reviews, and personal reflections—published during the past 30 years, amended with occasional footnotes and postscripts and, writes the author, given "a great deal of polishing." In an affectionate piece on The King's English, his father's last book, on language and usage, Amis quotes a reviewer who admired the "tense, sly quality" of Kingsley Amis's prose. Certainly that slyness and linguistic precision has been inherited by Amis fils, whether he is praising the "invigorating intelligence" of Jane Austen or skewering the bumbling Rick Perry, recalling debonair Saul Bellow or denigrating narcissistic Donald Trump. Describing himself as "pallidly left-of-center," Amis reported on the Republican Party for Newsweek in 2011 and 2012 (calling Romney "an astoundingly proficient technocrat"). In 2016, he weighed in on Trump's ascension for Harper's, deeming his campaign manifesto, Crippled America, "emotionally primitive and intellectually barbaric"; and Trump himself, "insecurity incarnate" and, like the majority of Republicans, "a xenophobe and proud of it." Trump's "idiolect," writes the author, would serve as "an adventure playground for any proscriptive linguist." Among essays on writers, Amis warmly remembers the brilliant, eccentric Iris Murdoch, "the preeminent female English novelist of her generation," and poet Philip Larkin, "more than memorable. He is instantly unforgettable." Amis also offers a tender eulogy for Princess Diana, whose death, he writes, felt "so savage." Diana had a particular talent "for love. She felt that she could inspire it, transmit it, increase its general sum," and she both humanized and, finally, cracked the veneer of the monarchy. John Travolta, Philip Roth, Christopher Hitchens, and Jeremy Corbyn all come under Amis' sharp-eyed gaze. Several essays are disarmingly autobiographical; a few pieces compile brief, and sometimes-snarky, replies to readers' questions.Literate, perspicacious, and thoroughly entertaining.

Kirkus Reviews

"The book's heart [is] its literary criticism, labor that allows Amis to realize his most comfortable and integrated self: a novelist engaged in the scrupulous appreciation of others' style. . . . Amis cherishes the most cosmopolitan virtue of all, humor, [and] approvingly quotes Clive James's observation that 'common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing.' To be without one is to be without the other, a double lack that would doom a writer [to] the inability to rub up against human nature, to strike the sparks of awareness and style that here illuminate everything, especially the books in Amis’s firm grip." —The New Yorker

"The product of a ferocious yet sensitive mind . . . Amis's book is like hurtling down a black-diamond ski run. . . . His aim is so unerring that he resembles a figure out of Greek myth, firing arrows through ax-heads lined up in a row." —The New York Times

“Amis at his considered best, witty, erudite, and unafraid. . . . This collection is full of treasures.” —The Guardian

"Amis writes with buoyant and cutting authority. His vocabulary, cross-pollinated by his trans-Atlantic reading and life, is pinpoint and peppery; his syntax supple and ensnaring. The pleasure Amis takes in observation, cogitation, and composition is palpable, and he is acidly funny. . . Amis writes with agility, spirit, artistry, and a shrewd sense of the deepest implications." —Booklist

“Glorious. . . . Very few writers can surprise and delight in the way Martin Amis can.” —The Telegraph

“Martin Amis is a great writer and a great reader. . . . He is our sure-footed mountain guide, leading us gleefully from one delight to the next.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“A sharp, witty collection. . . . Literate, perspicacious, and thoroughly entertaining.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Certitude is the key to Amis’s superhuman flair—and what makes this collection so compelling.” —The New Statesman (London)

“Amis is infallibly a lucid, linguistically precise commentator. . . . A witty, welcome presence.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher