From: Irving Zelnik
Category: Amis
Date: 7/15/99
Time: 1:15:31 PM
Remote Name: 129.219.247.118
http://www.sn.apc.org/wmail/issues/990219/NEWS47.html That link is for a shortened version of Stephen Moss's interview of Amis from *The Guardian*.
Am I the only person here who thinks that Martin Amis was wrong to begrudge Eric Jacobs? Jacobs sold an excerpt of his Kingsley Amis diary to a newspaper right after Kingsley croaked. When Martin found out about the newspaper excerpt, Martin threw a shit-fit. Because the timing was supposedly tactless. But also because Martin was scared shitless about any unflattering revelations about himself that were contained in the diary.
If I were a psychiatrist (which---come to think of it---I am), I would say that Martin's behavior is a clear-cut case of hostility displacement. Martin was mad at Kingsley for Kingsley's insults & disclosures about Martin. But instead of thumping his own father, Martin took out his anger on Eric Jacobs instead.
It's not as if Eric Jacobs is the only mercenary vulture in this world. As Richard Cohen pointed out, Martin's own mother sold an interview to a newspaper right after Kingsley croaked. And Martin Amis himself didn't hesitate to accept blood-money from *Time* magazine after Princess Diana snuffed it. Martin begrudges the press for not siding with him. Martin said: "The press managed to rig up a kind of relativist echo chamber when the case was as open-and-shut as you could dream up." Amis is dead-wrong and so is his metaphor. Most journalists obviously don't see the case as a relativist echo chamber. What they see on one side is Eric Jacobs innocently taking advantage of publicity following the death of Kingsley Amis. And what they see on the other side is a hotheaded spoiled brat named Martin Amis. A thin-skinned overreactor who can dish it out but who can't take it.