Martin Amis, The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Domains

Journalism

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Essay Collection

Resources

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The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America

(1986) is Martin Amis’s second nonfiction book after

Invasion of the Space Invaders

(1982).

Inferno

is, as Amis’s Introduction says, “a collection of peripatetic journalism” about the USA. It presents, not in chronological order, 27 pieces first published between 1977 and 1985, mainly in the

Observer

. Amis has added “links and postscripts”, combined pieces, and rewritten some passages (ix). He is amusing about the effort of compiling the collection in pre-digital times; it was “quite hard work getting all this stuff together (photocopying back numbers of journals can be a real struggle, what with the weight of the bound volumes and that Xerox flap tangling you up and getting in the way)”. The initial writing of the pieces was…

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2263 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30817, accessed 26 November 2024.]