The Martin Chronicles

Dan Kois (Slate), Parul Sehgal (New Yorker), and Jason Zinoman (New York Times) leap into the 1980s, when Martin Amis made his living as a hack: a freelance journalist writing about America for British outlets. The Moronic Inferno, published in 1986, collects features about American politics (evangelicism, Reagan, AIDS); profiles of literary and Hollywood stars (Mailer, Spielberg, Bellow); and scathing book reviews. What does Martin Amis see when he looks at America? Why does his harshest criticism of other writers' work sound so much like anxiety about his own? And is he the original Short King?

The Martin Chronicles debuts with Dan Kois (Slate), Jason Zinoman (New York Times), and Parul Sehgal (New Yorker) discussing Martin Amis' first novel, The Rachel Papers, published in 1973 when Amis was just 24 years old. Why is Charles Highway so disgusting? Why isn't Rachel Noyes Jewish? And how does the son of a successful, controversial novelist secure his entrée into the literary world?