Gli altri scrittori ti danzano intorno, come amici, pazienti, intimi, infaticabilmente accessibili nei secoli. Descriptions like, “He is Thersites: a one-speech phenomenon in the Iliad, but a fully developed argument in Troilus and Cressida. But there seems almost nothing new here, and Amis' spin on what he presents seems so controlled and carefully dosed that more seems to be hidden than revealed. Whatever the peaks of candour, defensiveness and doggedness (and also, it should be said, sympathy, generosity and humour) scaled in Experience, it is nevertheless an extremely odd book. Parece que las relaciones entre hijo (hombre) y padre, o hija (mujer) y madre, siempre han sido más conflictivas y difíciles que las relaciones entre los dos géneros opuestos, y no digo que el señor Amis haya tenido la mejor relación con su padre, pero al menos a mi me cambia la perspectiva de lo que pueden ser las relación entre padres e hijos.

Though he had confidence in his intellectual strengths, he was worried that interviewers would misinterpret his odd styles of analysis and critique. But what I've read of both their fiction, while it provides the occasional chuckle, and in the case of Nabokov admiration, has left me cold, even queasy (yes, I have suspicions it's me, not Nabokov, though I feel fortified in learning on p.The narrative is notable for elaborate and complex time-shifts back and forth across the author's life, setting up echoes and parallels between incidents, playing variations on the themes of love and death, fathers and sons, innocence and experience. On his two good friends Saul Bellow, also a mentor, and Christopher Hitchens: "I am not [Bellow's:] son, of course. But Experience is not quite a memoir, nor is it quite a portrait of his father, nor is it really an autobiography.

He doesn't complain, as he could so easily do, of the downsides and disadvantages of such a connection.

This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. This memoir really isn’t for the women (the many women, it seems) in Martin’s life, but for his father Kingsley, his ‘twin peaks’ (Nabokov and Bellow), Christopher Hitchens, his mother Hilly, brother Philip, and his cousin Lucy Partington. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Amis does not 'deal with' or build a motif around this issue, but simply discloses it - it comes to light, but remains a shadow over their family's sense of stability and predictability - all things are incomprehensible, as experience itself when it happens - and life is only a continual contemplation of incomprehensible and incongruous experience. Experience was published in 2000, partly in reflection of his father (passed in 1995), and also in response to the discovery – decades later – of his cousin Lucy’s remains among the many victims of Frederick and Rosemary West (1994).