Martin Amis
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 1996
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's guest on Desert Island Discs today is the writer Martin Amis. He describes his books as comedies, but, like London Fields and Other People, they are frequently dark and disturbing.
He says that he has no choice as to the subjects of his books. "They come from nowhere and feel like a little gulp in your digestive system". Although he admits that he's sometimes appalled by the characters he creates, writing itself is something he loves.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Yesterdays by Buddy Rich Book: Complete Works by John Milton Luxury: Cable Television
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1996, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a writer, the famous son of a famous father, he left Oxford with a first |
| 0:36.3 | and wrote his first novel The Rachel Papers at the age of 24, promptly winning the Somerset |
| 0:41.4 | Morm Award for his efforts. |
| 0:43.0 | He seems to attract envy and admiration in equal measure. |
| 0:47.0 | His books, which include money, London Fields and Times Arrow, |
| 0:50.0 | have been highly acclaimed, and he's been called the cleverest and most entertaining writer of his generation. |
| 0:56.0 | Personally, however, he's attracted criticism. |
| 0:59.0 | As a result, he's dismissed the way the press have treated this aspect of his life as immoral, corrupt and arrogant. |
| 1:05.0 | Cool, witty and 47, writing is of overwhelming importance to him. Life alone does not offer enough, he says. It can only be redeemed by being reprocessed into |
| 1:16.3 | prose. He is Martin Amos. Is writing then Martin a compensation? Does your fiction make up for shortcomings in your reality? |
| 1:25.0 | I don't think so because when I started writing it was not out of any conflict |
| 1:30.3 | it was more out of a sense of play and wanting to join the dance. |
| 1:35.0 | What is being redeemed is the formlessness of life. |
| 1:39.0 | It would be intolerable to me to just be a passive liver of my life. It's only when you write that you can you can |
| 1:47.1 | impose form and pattern and humor, comedy. Otherwise the stuff itself would strike me as unendurably thin. |
| 1:54.0 | But does it matter then whether your life is going well or going badly? |
| 1:58.0 | Does the one or the other have an effect on how much you want to write? |
| 2:02.0 | No, it's a fairly constant daily urge. |
| 2:06.0 | So do you walk with the spring in your step to your study every morning, do you really want to get in there? |
| 2:11.0 | I really want to get in there? I really want to get in there and will snarl with |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.