Front cover, first U.S. edition (2018)
Front cover, first U.K. edition (2017)

The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994–2017 is a 2017 collection of non-fiction essays and criticism by the British author Martin Amis. It was his eighth nonfiction book and the final collection published during his lifetime.

The book was first published on 21 September 2017, by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. Its initial title rendered the years covered as 1986–2016.[1][2] The first United States edition, published by Knopf on 6 February 2018, added one essay and updated those years to 1994–2017.[3] Later U.K. editions include the new essay but instead use 1994–2016.[4]

Summary

Like Visiting Mrs Nabokov: And Other Excursions (1993) and The War Against Cliché (2001), The Rub of Time collects Amis' reportage and criticism for newspapers and magazines in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The 45 essays are divided into groups by theme, including politics, sports, literature, the U.S., and the British royal family. Many are on the generation of male writers who came before him: Philip Roth, John Updike, Don DeLillo, Anthony Burgess, J. G. Ballard, Philip Larkin, and his father Kingsley Amis. All editions but the first include a 2017 Amis piece for Esquire titled "President Trump Orates in Ohio."

Reception

The Rub of Time received generally positive reviews. In The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that "We can quibble about whether the ability to turn out a predetermined quantity of lucid, witty, sometimes moving, rarely boring prose on assignment and on deadline should be classified as a talent or a skill...What seems to me beyond argument is that Amis is good at it."[5]

In The Guardian, Anne Enright wrote: "The Rub of Time is Amis at his considered best, witty, erudite and unafraid...The hierarchy thing, that need to revere older writers, may be a little bit male for some, but male is the way that Amis rolls."[6]

In the Financial Times, Jon Day notes that Amis' "style, once so joyfully alive, has ossified slightly," but said the book includes "excellent essays on Nabokov and Bellow, the 'twin peaks' of Amis’s literary mountain range."[1] Leo Robson in The New Statesman found Amis' literary criticism "tiresome, and all too predictable," but finds that his "brisk generalisations, nurtured for decades, lend themselves to potent writing. Certitude is the key to Amis’s superhuman flair — and what makes this collection so compelling."[7]

The Sunday Times named The Rub of Time one of its 11 "Books of the Year" for 2017, calling it "erudite, eclectic and entertaining."[8]

Contents

By Way of an Introduction

Twin Peaks 1

Politics 1

Literature 1

The House of Windsor

More Personal 1

Twin Peaks 2

Americana (Stepping Westward)

Literature 2

Sport

More Personal 2

Politics 2

Literature 3

More Personal 3

Politics 3

Twin Peaks 3

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Day, Jon (22 September 2017). "The Rub of Time by Martin Amis — essays, reportage and criticism". Financial Times. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  2. ↑ Sexton, David (6 October 2017). "The Rub of Time by Martin Amis – review". Evening Standard. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  3. ↑ "The Rub of Time by Martin Amis: 9781400095995 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  4. ↑ Amis, Martin (21 September 2017). "The Rub of Time". Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  5. ↑ Scott, A. O. (28 February 2018). "In His New Collection, 'The Rub of Time,' Martin Amis Takes On Everyone From Travolta to Trump". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  6. ↑ Enright, Anne (21 September 2017). "The Rub of Time by Martin Amis – brilliant, except when it's not". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  7. ↑ Robson, Leo (28 September 2017). "Martin Amis's The Rub of Time shows it's possible to be foolish and brilliant". New Statesman. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  8. ↑ Lowdon, Claire (3 December 2017). "Books of the year: Literature". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
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