In 1979, Martin Amis, whose death was announced on Saturday, gave an interview to Luciad, the arts magazine of Leicester University. It was quite a coup for the magazine, since he had no obvious connection to Leicester and was already the young “rock star” of the London literary scene. At 28 he had just published his third novel, Success, to acclaim. For its part, the magazine could proudly boast that paid-for circulation had risen to 250. Over a long lunch Amis’s thoughtful answers to an obviously starstruck interviewer included this: “I write in a tremendously mannered way sometimes, even though there are lots of swear words, but that’s what it’s all about, you know, girls and jobs and that sort of thing… I like the idea of writing about terribly unpleasant, venal, weak characters in a rather heightened literary language. It’s that, I suppose, that interests me most.”
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