Martin Amis Amis's work centres on the excesses of late-capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what "The New York Times" called "the new unpleasantness". Inspired by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, Amis himself has gone on to influence many successful British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. Amis was born in Oxford, England. His father, noted English novelist Sir Kingsley Amis, was the son of a mustard manufacturer's clerk
Kingsley Amis "What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Essays", in which Amis's wit and literary and social opinions were on display ranging over books such as Colin Wilson's "The Outsider" (panned), Iris Murdoch's début novel "Under the Net" (praised), or William Empson's "Milton's God" (inclined to agreement). Amis's opinions on books and people tended to appear (and often were) conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of "the classics" and of traditional morals, but more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgement in all things. Amis became associated with Ian Fleming's