Experience (Martin Amis) Experience (Martin Amis) Experience is a book of memoirs by the British author Martin Amis. The book was written primarily in response to the 1995 death of Amis's father, the famed author Kingsley Amis, and was first published in 2000. Upon publication, "Experience" was serialized in the U.K.s "The Guardian" in four parts. Critical response to Amis's memoir was very warm. The critic James Wood wrote in the "Guardian", ""Experience" is a beautiful, and beautifully strange book, and it is unlike anything one expected. One feared a trough of plaint: either a sad, Gosse-like reckoning with the father; or an
Kingsley Amis could barely make it to the taxi." Amis was, however, adamant in his belief that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work." That this was certainly the case is attested to by Amis's highly disciplined approach to writing. For 'many years', Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule upon himself in which writing and drinking were strictly segregated. Mornings were devoted to writing with a minimum daily output of 500 words. The drinking would only begin around lunchtime when this output had been