My Martin Amis18 Jul 2025

"I hope writers today can rediscover the verve and energy of Martin Amis." Ross Barkan

Ross Barkan is a 35 year-old American journalist and novelist from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. His third novel, Glass Century, was published on 6 May 2025.

On a semi-vacation to London this summer, Ross and Jack met to speak about Ross's favourite Martin Amis novel, Inside Story.

This the first episode of the series to deal explicitly, and at length, with Donald Trump.

Looking beyond the playful concept of 'The Maggot Probability' (first coined by Kingsley Amis to explain the degenerative effects of an ageing brain), Ross and Jack discuss Amis's graver concerns about true impact of America's septuagenarian president on its politics and political culture.

As a New Yorker, Ross recognises what he calls Trump's "outer-borough mindset", an attitude of adversity towards the elites of Manhattan who famously paid Trump little serious attention before his meteoric rise to office in 2016 forced them to.

That mindset, he argues, became Trump's calling card to the left behind of America, for whom Washington had come to represent the same den of iniquity and aloofness that the gleaming towers of The Big Apple had to Trump in the 70s and 80s.

And yet, while Amis does not take Trump lightly, Ross says his criticisms of Trump lack the corrosive power of the pen that Amis was otherwise known for. Amis confesses to taking an arch tone on the subject in Inside Story, though says he does so only because Trump is a "sick joke".

It's suggested later in the conversation that while Amis excelled at diagnosing modern pathologies in characters like John Self, he may have bottled it when it came to confronting the real thing in Trump. Does it take a true New Yorker to satirise this century's most controversial Western leader? It may help to read Ross's new novel before answering.

Finally, listen to this episode to discover what Ross took as indispensable writing advice from Amis in Inside Story.

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Episoder(24)

"When you don't win The Booker, you know it's alright, because Amis didn't either." Kevin Power

Many a male Amis reader owes his smoking habit to the author.The novelist Kevin Power is one who thought he'd quit for good, until he spotted Amis and Isabel Fonseca walking on the grounds of Ireland'...

6 Mai 55min

"I wish Amis's Substack was landing in my inbox today." George Monaghan and Nicholas Harris

For this episode of My Martin Amis, we're plugging into the London recording studio of the New Statesman magazine.From the intro: "Founded by economists and social reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb a...

14 Mar 36min

"Amis's talent was to put words to things in ways both unobvious and inevitable." David Szalay

David Szalay won the Booker Prize for his sixth novel Flesh in 2025. In this tense, spare, frictionless work of fiction, he drip feeds us the story of the laconic male protagonist Istvan, who spends h...

12 Feb 44min

"Every page of London Fields has a sense of an author in absolute command." Rob Doyle

In the basement room of an East London flat one rainy January morning, Jack sat down with the Irish writer Rob Doyle to discuss the publication of his third novel, Cameo, and delve into his long and c...

23 Jan 51min

"I went to pick him up at Manchester Piccadilly Station and...he was doing Pilates." John McAuliffe and Ian McGuire

This episode takes Jack Aldane to Manchester, where he meets two men who knew Martin Amis in a rather unique setting. Ian McGuire and John McAuliffe, both esteemed authors, are the co-founders of The ...

3 Sep 202550min

"Amis wrote with precision of judgement, of observation, and with great linguistic ingenuity." Geoff Dyer

In this episode, Jack sits down with the award-winning author and novelist Geoff Dyer at his home to discuss the Good Book of Mart (as distinct from the Big Book of Mart), AKA The War Against Cliché.G...

5 Aug 202545min

"The Zone of Interest records the greatest phraselet in the English language." Vincenzo Barney

Vincenzo Barney travelled all the way from Massachusetts to join a panel of eight speakers at the My Martin Amis LIVE show in March this year. If you haven't listened to it already, do go back and hit...

6 Mai 202539min