thewayne | RIP: Martin Amis, novelist/writer

Martin is not a commonly known writer. The only way that I know of him now is I had an interlibrary loan request for one of his books today, and another title caught my eye: Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. I pulled that book and looked at its inside jacket, and it is a collection of essays, including visiting the set of Robocop 2, Kasparov vs Karpov, the title story, Isaac Asimov, etc. Lots of interesting things. Asimov was my first read, followed by the chess article. Both were quite good. Me having worked high-level chess tournaments, and having met both Karpov and Kasparov, it was especially interesting.

One critique of have of this particular book is they put the article publication information at the end of the chapter, I would have preferred it at the beginning. But that's me.

Several of his books were turned into movies, and at least one into a BBC TV program. And he had a curious distinction of his oral exam for his degree at Exeter: he received a Congratulatory First. He walked into the room for his voce, and the examiners all complimented him on how much they liked his work and there basically was no exam!

He passed away on the 19th of May from oesophageal cancer at the age of 73, a life-long smoker. Curiously, his father died at the same age. One of his great friends, Christopher Hitchens, also died of complications from oesophageal cancer.

I saw the obit in BBC news a couple of days ago, but had no other exposure to him until today. No idea if I'll read any of his books except for Nabokov, but I am finding this one interesting. I was doing a bunch of computer updates today and was able to polish off a couple of chapters.