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Old 02-13-2011, 06:17 PM   #27
charleski
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Sure, Martin Amis is well-known to be arrogant and over-prone to self-importance, but I have a really hard time working out what is supposed to be rude about his remarks:
Quote:
...the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.

I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.
Amis' style (at his best) is quite complex. He's saying that he'd be unable to convert that to something that children would grasp. Some authors can do that (James Joyce wrote a children's story a few years before finishing Finnegans Wake), but some can't, and Amis is in the latter group.

This episode is typical Amis, though, and I bet he's laughing his pants off at all those who've chosen to take umbrage - although there's no actual insult, it's easy to infer one, but that's just falling into the trap.
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