Experience (Martin Amis) angry, journalistic reckoning with those journalists who have hunted Amis from tooth to tooth. But Experience is not quite a memoir, nor is it quite a portrait of his father, nor is it really an autobiography. It is an escape from memoir; indeed, an escape into privacy. In the very book which might, at first glance, seem most exhibitionist, most shamelessly metropolitan, Amis has softly retreated to the provinces of himself. His book often reads like a letter to his family and closest friends. It is sometimes embarrassing to read; the ordinary reader feels voyeuristic, at times almost uninvited, but
Kingsley Amis Lodge, Tom Sharpe and Howard Jacobson. As a poet, Amis was associated with The Movement. During 1958–59 he made the first of two visits to the United States, where he was Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing at Princeton University and a visiting lecturer in other north-eastern universities. On returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post; after 13 years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1961–1963). He regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment, and resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although