The Magnificent Prose of Martin Amis

His heroes across the Atlantic were Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, but the American writer that Martin Amis — who has died aged 73 — most resembled was Norman Mailer. Both were comic prodigies; both emerged from their tyro years to become journalists of high style, bearing witness to political events and writing books about phenomena of youth culture that might seem sideways to their talents (graffiti for Mailer, video arcades for Amis); both had a weakness for punditry and a fertile capacity for self-absorption; both entered late-middle phases as novelists of Big Historic Subjects to mixed results.