Amis agonistes

At the risk of turning into Prospect's official what's-Martin-Amis-done-today? correspondent (I already hold this title unofficially), I urge you to check out his missive to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and the article accompanying it, in today's Independent. Amis is responding to Alibhai-Brown's criticisms of his attitude towards Islam, themselves the offshoot of a spat between Professors Eagleton and Amis of Manchester University provoked by Eagleton's frank criticisms of Amis in the new preface to his book, Ideology.

I would like to think that I, in a minor way, helped shine the media spotlight upon all this via a curio in last month's Prospect (the Independent's initial coverage certainly bore more than a passing resemblance to ours). My working theory, anyway, is that a few years ago the real Martin Amis was kidnapped and replaced by some kind of crazed self-satirizing robot. It's either that or he decided that getting onto the front pages of newspapers is far easier if you don't try to make sense.

Amis's fiction has always been—delightfully—extreme and stylish. But now it's his real life that occupies a hyper-reality within which normal verbs and adjectives simply aren't good enough. "You enjoyed a Ribena," he remarks to Alibhai-Brown, "while I addressed myself to a powerful scotch." When was the last time he just had a drink? Although anyone who can write a phrase like "human beings, born of women, caressed such thoughts in their minds" and not then delete it out of concern that such ball-aching portentousness might detract from their argument certainly has chutzpah. And I can't even bring myself even to assess the implications of "I don't want to stripsearch you, Yasmin… "

In an effort to flog this particular carcass for as long as possible, I will be travelling to Manchester on the 3rd of December to hear Amis and Eagleton debate the topic of literature and terror. It will, I suspect, be an unedifying clash of egos and mutual offence peppered with vicious soundbites and references to mass-murder. At least, that's what I and every other journalist in the audience will be hoping for.