Martin Amis

During a 1995 television interview on Charlie Rose soon after the publication of Martin Amis’s The Information, another long novel, there is a moment when, as Rose begins to read the opening passage, Amis’s mouth visibly slackens. Silently he intones the first lines. His hand (often tentatively raised toward his chin in interviews) searches out his forehead. There is a spectral waver in his gaze, a registering (as if accommodating, or incorporating, new information). He looks adrift, unmoored. Free-floating. One has the sense of a man assimilating his own self as it is spoken back to him. For a moment, he seems precarious.

I once had a vague fantasy that Martin Amis and I should get married. He was cool and handsome, and we had so much in common. We were about the same age; we had both read English at Oxford. My father worked as a cartoonist at the New Statesman when Martin was literary editor. I was mad about books and writing; Martin, in his early twenties, was already a famous novelist. Perfect match.