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 literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970, with the possible exception of "The Old Devils", a Booker Prize winner. Several critics accused him of being old fashioned and misogynistic. His "Stanley and the Women", an exploration of social sanity, could be said to instance these traits. Others said that his output lacked the humanity, wit and compassion of earlier efforts. This period also saw Amis the anthologist, a role in which his wide knowledge of all kinds of English poetry was on display. "The New Oxford Book of Light Verse" (1978), which he edited, was a revision of the