Second Thoughts

Second Thoughts on
Night Train

by Janis Freedman Bellow

reprinted by permission of

#4 May 1998: 25-29

(Editor's Note: Janis Freedman Bellow's essay "Second Thoughts on Night Train" is essential reading--one of few essays that does justice to the novel's humanity and complexity. I wish to thank Ms. Freedman Bellow and the editors of The Republic of Letters* for permission to reprint her essay on The Martin Amis Web--and editorial assistant Nicole Peeler for her assistance).

I have divided the essay into four parts:

*The Republic of Letters is a literary journal edited by Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford (to read samples from the journal, click on the graphic or title above). The editors describe the journal this way:

The Republic of Letters is an independent review of literature and the arts supported entirely by the Editors. It appears irregularly, whenever there are enough texts of sufficient quality, or roughly four or five times a year. It is tabloid in format, averaging between 32 and 64 pages, printed on quality newsprint, and is available nationally in selected Barnes & Noble bookstores as well as quality bookstores, such as the Gotham Book Mart in New York, Seminary Books in Chicago, City Lights in San Francisco and so on. Our distributors are Ingram and De Boer. We are slowly building our distributorship abroad. For the time being, U.K. readers may obtain copies at John Sandoe Books, 3 Blacklands Terr, London SW1, and readers in Italy from the libreria G. Casetti, via della Reginella 27, Rome.

To subscribe, click here.

For information and to order a copy of Saul Bellow & Keith Botsford Editors, which contains Martin Amis's essay "Cars and the Man," from The Republic of Letters volume 3, click here. From the Toby Press website:

"This rich feast of writing, the fruit of a 50-year journalistic collaboration, features over 80 works of fiction, commentary and essays by some of the finest writers of our period. Most of these works have never been published in book form. A profoundly personal collection from two of our generation's leading writers."

This site is featured in

BBC Education Web Guide

Site maintained by James Diedrick, author of Understanding Martin Amis, 2nd edition (2004).
All contents © 2004.
Last updated 10 December, 2004. Please read the Disclaimer