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Heavy Water and Other Stories

2000; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 74; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/40155400

1945-8134

Thomas M. Smyth, Martín Amis,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

Martin Amis's short stories make his novels look prim. They are also more frankly satirical. Whole world's are created - or invented. In 'Straight Fiction', everyone is gay (apart from the beleaguered 'straight' community); in'Career Moves', screenplay writers submit their works to little magazines, while poets are flown first-class to Los Angeles; in 'The Janitor on Mars', a sardonic robot gives us some strange news about life in the solar system. Largely absent in the novels, the middle classes get a showing in 'Let Me Count the Times', where a man had a mad affair with himself. 'Heavy Water' portrays the exhaustion of working-class culture; 'State of England' portrays its weird resuscitation. And in 'The Coincidence of the Arts' an English baronet becomes entangled with an African-American chess hustler. The earliest story, 'Denton's Death', was first published in 1975, but the bulk of the collection can be firmly labelled 'most recent work'.