Martin Amis – Samir Chopra

Writing Too Strong, Too Talented, To Endure

In Koba The Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (Vintage International, New York, 2002, pp. 230), Martin Amis writes (on Maxim Gorky‘s relationship with Stalin and his death following his return from exile in Sorrento to a period of ‘recantation’ and self-debasement): Writers were pushed, sometimes physically, sometimes spiritually, into all kinds of unfamiliar shapes byContinue reading “Writing Too Strong, Too Talented, To Endure”

Grieving For Others When ‘There Is Sobbing At Home’

In Koba The Dread (Vintage International, New York, 2003, pp. 258) Martin Amis includes in a footnote, a quote from Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn citing an alleged Russian proverb as follows: Why grieve for others when there is sobbing at home? The sentiment at the heart of this query about apparently misdirected grief may be summed up,Continue reading “Grieving For Others When ‘There Is Sobbing At Home’”