‘Chuckleheaded’ Amis attacked in NYT

Martin Amis, enfant terrible turned grumpy old man of Brit lit, whose recent anti-Islamic pronouncements have excited feuds in Britain, has now come in for a savage kicking in the US courtesy of the New York Times's star reviewer Michiko Kakutani.

Writing about his collection of journalism, fiction and deep thoughts The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom, Kakutani dismisses Amis's arguments as "pretentious and formulaic", accuses him of "prattling on" and brands the collection of essays "chuckleheaded" in her very first sentence.

More damaging still for the author is Kakutani's contention that Amis's stance on radical Islam isn't even original. "On the irrationality of religion, he leans heavily on the work of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris," writes Kakutani. "Amis adds nothing illuminating to these writers' thinking, while blindly accepting some of their more debatable assertions."

The reference to Christopher Hitchens, an old pal of Amis's from their days on the New Statesmen in the early 1970s, is particularly damning. Both men are regarded as one-time left-wing firebrands who have drifted rightwards as they have aged.

Amis is still reeling from a series of bruising encounters with critics including the Marxist Professor Terry Eagleton, who said the 58-year-old author had learned a lot from his father Kingsley, "a racist, anti-Semitic boor; a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals".