STANDBY ONLY: Martin Amis: House of Meetings, In Conversation with Michael Silverblatt FREE January 23, 2007

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Martin Amis
House of Meetings
In conversation with
Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW 89.9’s “Bookworm”

A surprising love story set in 1946 Moscow and a camp in the Arctic Circle by the bestselling author of London Fields.

Martin Amis was born in Oxford in 1949, the son of the writer Kingsley Amis. He was educated in schools in Britain, Spain and the USA, and graduated from Exeter College, Oxford. He published his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973), while working as an editorial assistant at the Times Literary Supplement. The novel won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1974 and was followed by Dead Babies in 1975. He published his third novel, Success, in 1978.

Regarded by many critics as one of the most influential and innovative voices in contemporary British fiction, Amis is often grouped with the generation of British-based novelists that emerged during the 1980s and included Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes. A loose trilogy of novels set in London begins with Money: A Suicide Note (1984), a satire of Thatcherite amorality and greed, continues with London Fields (1989), and concludes with The Information (1995), a tale of literary rivalry. Time's Arrow (1991), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

Other books include Night Train (1997), a pastiche of American detective fiction, an acclaimed volume of autobiography, Experience (2000) - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - and Koba the Dread, a non-fiction work about communism in the 20th century (2002).

Amis is also the author of three collections of essays, The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986), Visiting Mrs Nabokov and Other Excursions (1993), and The War Against Cliché (2001), which includes essays and book reviews, as well as two collections of short stories, Einstein's Monsters (1987), and Heavy Water and Other Stories (1998).

A man who converses on an equal plane with writers of fiction and poetry, often surprising them with his insights, Michael Silverblatt has made "Bookworm" the country's premier literary talk-show. His secret, says Norman Mailer, who has subjected himself three times to the "Bookworm's" scrutiny, is that "he's the best reader in America." Silverblatt's formidable knowledge comes from close reading and analysis of a writer's entire oeuvre. Susan Sontag called him "a national treasure." As host and guiding spirit of the half-hour radio show, Silverblatt has reinvented the art of literary conversation, introducing listeners to new and emerging authors along with writers of renown.

A New York native, Silverblatt graduated from the State University of New York in Buffalo and later took advanced courses at Johns Hopkins. He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s where he worked in motion picture public relations and script development. He created "Bookworm" for KCRW-FM in 1989. As a student, he came under the influence of such cutting-edge author-teachers as Donald Barthelme and John Barth; as a radio talk-show host, he learned to appreciate a much wider range of writing-- making him, he hopes, "a person of ferocious compassion instead of ferocious intellect."

Official Website: http://www.lfla.org/aloud/php/a.calendar.bioText.php?month=01&year=2007&day=23