A few last thoughts re the amazingly talented Martin Amis, very much a legend in his own lifetime, and my own very tangential relationship to Oxbridge and espionage skullduggery
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Remembering Martin Amis: obituary
Celebrating the life of the iconic British author, 1949-2023According to the version of the story I was told by my landlord, a Georgetown University Philosophy professor, the house was raided by the FBI -quite unsuccessfully- shortly after Philby and company made their escape, but not before he left a fully-loaded and operational rifle in the top window, pointed at the street below, to scare off any and all FBI agents and interested parties, plus assorted angry and exasperated British officials.
Apparently, my English basement apt. is where they had constructed and maintained a fake wall behind a normal-looking bookcase that hid top secret documents that would later be communicated or spirited away somehow to Moscow.
The house is next to the immaculately-kept Japanese Ambassador's residence, a few blocks down from the-then Swedish Ambassador's residence, the Washington studios of NBC News, the campus of American University, and the huge Naval complex, which includes Naval Intelligence, where the Nazi sub codes were broken in the 1940's.
My last place in the DC area was a comfy north Arlington, Virginia townhouse on a cul-de-sac I lived in for 7 years, which had been President Ford's daughter, Susan's place.
I had her old bedroom, the largest, with a southern exposure, and we still had the 1970's-era Secret Service-installed wall intercom system, along with her trash compactor, both of which never worked.
I had her old bedroom, the largest, with a southern exposure, and we still had the 1970's-era Secret Service-installed wall intercom system, along with her trash compactor, both of which never worked.
Across the street from me lived a guy who worked at the Naval bldg. on Nebraska Ave. doing NCIS type work if I recall correctly.
He even had the Mark Harmon mustache thing going on!
This excellent Sky News video from yesterday features Sky commentator Adam Boulton, who is also an Oxford grad, and is well worth watching,
#MartinAmis wrote SO many of the best things I EVER read, yet was also the ever-compelling subject that so many others wrote abt, too, like this gem by @Alex_Bilmes in 2010, which I still have.
telegraph.co.uk/comment/713495"There's a passage near the beginning of The Pregnant Widow, Amis's substantial new novel of the sexual revolution and its aftershocks, in which the narrator remarks on the protagonist's prescience:
"Unusually for a 20-year-old... Keith was aware that he was going to die. More than that, he knew that when the process began, the only thing that would matter was how it had gone with women. As he lies dying, the man will search his past for love and life." In the final analysis, acclamation, money and success – even such blazing artistic achievement as Bellow's, or Amis's – count for little, if one's personal history is a cause for regret."
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This is genuinely amazing and definitely worth reading while you can!
The Paris Review
Martin Amis, The Art of Fiction No. 151Interviewed by Francesca Riviere
ISSUE 146, SPRING 1998
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1156/the-art-of-fiction-no-151-martin-amis
Martin Amis Remembered: Legend who was willing to examine the sordid side of his era
Sky News YouTube Channel
Uploaded May 21, 2023 #martinamis #author #skynews
Sky News YouTube Channel
Uploaded May 21, 2023 #martinamis #author #skynews
Martin Amis was very much a legend in his own lifetime. He summed up the period in which he lived so very well, of getting over the baby boom, of Britain rediscovering itself as perhaps not as important as it had been, but certainly as a country very proud of its literary heritage.
Read the full story here:
Dave
David B. Smith
Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://
