Diedrick Affirms Self
Frank Kermode concludes his review of The War against Cliché (LRB Vol 23, No 9, 10 May 2001) with the following query:
"The acknowledgments page states that the 'pieces in this book were compiled by Professor James Diedrick.' We thought they were all compiled by Martin Amis. A double, a nom de guerre? An affable familiar ghost? President of the Society for the Elimination of the Cliché? We need to know."
Needless to say, I was surprised and bemused by this confusion. Mark Sanderson, in his 8 April 2001 review of The War against Cliché for the Telegraph, had no trouble determining my identity, writing that assembling The War against Cliché "has been ably carried out by James Diedrick, author of Understanding Martin Amis and founder of The Martin Amis Web (http:/martinamis.albion.edu)."
Is Kermode, a retired professor of Renaissance literature, incapable researching my identity and c.v.? What about the LRB fact-checkers? Eager to set the official record straight, I wrote the following letter, published in the 24 May 2001 issue of the LRB (p. 5):
Scruples
In his review of The War against Cliché by Martin Amis (LRB, 10 May) Frank Kermode questions my existence. I want to assure him that I am not an Amisian nom de guerre. Nor a doppelgänger. Like the italicised John Self in the closing pages of Money, I enjoy an existence free from the designs of Martin Amis. As the author of Understanding Martin Amis, however, I have been urging publication of Amis's uncollected book reviews and literary essays for some time, and was happy to play a role in shepherding them into print.
James Diedrick
Albion College, Albion, Michigan
