Novelist Martin Amis on "Inside Story"

this week as we continue to focus on the best new books martin amos he was already a legend in england before he moved to america 10 years ago over the past five decades both here and abroad amos has written books that have been thralled provoked and chastised recently we met amos here in new york city as he promoted his latest book a deeply personal meditation on love and loss if a novel isn't giving you a good time in whatever way throw it across the room over your shoulder don't waste your life reading stuff that isn't giving you pleasure martin amos has never been at a loss for words in person or on the page he grew up the son of one of england's greatest writers kingsley amos and was told by plenty he'd never measure up an early attempt at screenwriting didn't help the 1980 film saturn 3 starring kirk douglas harvey keitel and farah fawcett playing three astronauts stuck on a space station with a homicidal robot was widely panned let her go conform but that interaction with hollywood access helped lead to his first breakout novel money later adapted by the bbc building it's john uh i think i might run out of money that's just too bad i'm afraid there isn't any more what just kidding slick zero problem i'll send some ride over amos quickly joined a brilliant group of other contemporary writers including ian mcewen and salman rushdie rushdie was the one who spent the better part of a decade in hiding after iran's ayatollah called for his death claiming rushdie's novel the satanic verses was offensive to islam together all these writers kept turning out bold unpredictable fiction amos's latest is called inside story is it possible to say what this book is about well in the end it's about death but it's also a love letter to life yeah but that that just um sharpens the the strange difficulty of dying i always thought the pressure must come off and you must you must weaken into death but in fact it goes on being very hard to die inside story is called a novel but is more than anything a goodbye to both family and friends like another fellow author saul bello and christopher hitchens his best friend who died in 2011. hitchens was one of the 20th century's great rockin tours his excesses both in life and on the page were well documented amos has said hitchens is the only person he could ever be completely honest with is there a way for you to quantify who you miss the most whether it's christopher whether it's saul whether it's your dad i might too much miss my dad but it would have to be christopher who's an exact and contemporary and we worked in the same building in our early twenties we got married at the same time we got divorced at the same time we got remarried at the same time we had additional children at the same time you're going to get a few friends who seem to keep pace with you but not many in your life they're your twin in some way for the last four years amos has turned much of his attention to the outgoing american administration and says he's soured completely on the way democracy works i was profoundly disappointed that trump paid no moral price for his presidency there was no rejection of trumpism from it he lost the election i know but he was competitive i'm an insane optimist about america and i thought that would be some self-regulating mechanism in the american electorate that would say we actually we don't like that kind of government but you can't tell people how to vote you can and you can be shocked by it but also like well that's democracy yes yeah it is a system that has endured yeah amos's politics have never been predictable but his writing routine is now nearing the end of his career he's acutely aware of life's landmarks and also that as a novelist and human being documenting them and understanding them are not necessarily the same thing i went to a film with salman rushdie while he was still under police escort and so once we got in the cinema which was full there was no getting out of it and the film was four weddings and a funeral and you know no iranian torture could have put us through anything worse than that and on the street outside as i was sort of wiping away my tears and smoking cigarettes i said why is it so popular that film and salman said the world has bad taste haven't you noticed yikes before you nail me martin wasn't going after four weddings in a funeral i have bad taste no offense um but yeah never as we said never at never to loss for words and this uh this book really is um very personal you can see how much christopher's death and others have weighed on him as he evaluates his own life it was so interesting to see him go in on the election the way he did i loved watching the two of you yeah he's been outspoken for for years on it yeah yeah good stuff jeff okay

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 27,123

Keywords: martin amis, inside story, novelist, writer, british, books, new book, new novel, meditation, love, loss, personal

Id: eoltScpgmfA

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020