The writer Martin Amis, who died last week at the age of 73, was a towering figure of English literature. Amis was “arguably the most slashing, articulate, devastatingly clear, pungent writer of the last 25 years of the past century and the first almost 25 of this century,” Garner says. Just his way with words, his descriptions, the fact that he scorned cliché, scorned outdated language. In my own life as a writer, there are very few writers — of course I’m not a fiction writer, but I study writing — there are only a handful of writers that I think of in the category that Martin Amis is in, which is, if I’m stuck on a piece or I’ve just written a bad sentence, I think: Would Martin Amis ever let this sentence go to print? Not that I can hope to match his sentences, but I hope not to sink to this level where, don’t do that because Martin Amis wouldn’t do it.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

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