logo
episode-header-image
May 2023
27m 4s

Remembering Martin Amis

The New York Times
About this episode

The writer Martin Amis, who died last week at the age of 73, was a towering figure of English literature who for half a century produced a body of work distinguished by its raucous wit, cutting intelligence and virtuosic prose.

On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with The Times’s critics Dwight Garner (who wrote Amis’s obituary for the paper) and Jason Zinoman (who co-hosts a podcast devoted to Amis’s career, “The Martin Chronicles”) about the life and death of a remarkable figure who was, as Garner puts it, “arguably the most slashing, articulate, devastatingly clear, pungent writer of the last 25 years of the past century and the first almost 25 of this century.”

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Up next
Yesterday
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Wild Dark Shore,' by Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, “Wild Dark Shore,” opens with an enigma: A mysterious, half-drowned woman washes ashore.The stranger’s name is Rowan, and she has arrived on Shearwater, a remote island near Antarctica. The island, which houses an important seed bank, was once ... Show More
43m 50s
Aug 15
The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: 'Pachinko' (Rerun)
Summer is slipping away and we are on break this week. But we have a fantastic rerun for you — our conversation with Min Jin Lee from last summer, when her book "Pachinko" was named one of the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" by a New York Times Book Review panel. She spoke a ... Show More
34m 35s
Aug 8
This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like
Imagine, if you will, that for unknown reasons North Korea has just launched a nuclear bomb at the United States. What happens next?The journalist Annie Jacobsen has imagined exactly that, and spent more than a decade interviewing dozens of experts while mastering the voluminous ... Show More
45m 40s
Recommended Episodes
Jul 2023
530 Martin Amis RIP (with Mike Palindrome)
Jacke and Mike discuss the life and works of novelist Martin Amis (1949-2023), who recently died of esophageal cancer. The son of writer Kingsley Amis, Martin forged his own path, writing fifteen novels and several other works of essays and memoirs, with a devotion to style that ... Show More
1h 11m
Sep 2023
Chapter 9: Grief and Loss
Close friend of Michael Silverblatt’s and Bookworm editor for 30 years, Alan Howard guest hosts this episode on grief and loss. When the two met more than 33 years ago, Michael’s first words were, “What are you reading?” It was a question that brought Howard back to literature. O ... Show More
41m 36s
Jun 2019
Martin Short
Comedian and actor Martin Short feels ashamed about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Martin and Conan sit down to chat about the best time to be 30, the production of Godspell that started it all, how Martin’s Irish heritage shaped his comedy, doing Bette Davis in front of Bette Dav ... Show More
57m 43s
Feb 2024
Michael Cunningham
American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham is best known for his 1998 novel ‘The Hours’, which became a ‘New York Times’ bestseller and won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Best American Short Storie ... Show More
27m 24s
May 2017
David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet
Though he was admired by some of the liveliest cultural figures of the twentieth century, David Jones is not known or celebrated in the way that Eliot, Beckett or Joyce have been. Thomas Dilworth's biography - the first full biography of Jones, and thirty years in the making - ai ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 2023
Margaret Atwood Reads Mavis Gallant, Live
Margaret Atwood joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Varieties of Exile,” by Mavis Gallant, which was published in The New Yorker in 1976. Atwood is the author of more than forty books of poetry and fiction, including the novels “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments” a ... Show More
1h 19m
Aug 2023
Steve Martin and Martin Short
Martin Short feels duped about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Steve Martin feels sad about being Conan O’Brien’s only friend. Martin and Steve sit down to talk with Conan about his cameo appearance in their live show, season 3 of Only Murders in the Building, the origin of their w ... Show More
1h 9m
May 2024
Revisiting a Conversation with Paul Auster
Last week, news broke that writer Paul Auster died from complications related to lung cancer. The New York Times called him “the patron saint of literary Brooklyn;” elsewhere he was dubbed "the dean of American postmodernists." He was the author of many novels such as The New Yor ... Show More
24m 49s
Apr 2021
The Sunday Read: ‘The Ghost Writer’
The author Philip Roth, who died in 2018, was not sure whether he wanted to be the subject of a biography. In the end, he decided that he wanted to be known and understood.His search for a biographer was long and fraught — Mr. Roth parted ways with two, courted one and sued anoth ... Show More
27m 57s