The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America

First edition. 8vo. Pp. xi, 208, [4 (blank)]. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket design by Mon Mohan incorporating a photograph by Bill Carter. Introduction & Acknowledgments. 1/5,000 copies printed.

Signed by Author to title page.

A collection of twenty-six articles drawn from the author's numerous contributions to The Observer, the New Statesman, The Sunday Telegraph magazine, the London Review of Books, Tatler and Vanity Fair. Asked occasionally to write a book about America but finding himself cowered by this "monstrous enterprise," Amis realized he already had – "unpremeditated, accidental, and in instalments" – when he up-ended his desk drawers to prepare a selection of occasional journalism. Among the subjects covered are several pieces on prominent writers, such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, and John Updike.

"In journalistic mode, Amis is without peer: when he writes about writers...the long profile becomes, in his hands, a capacious, infinitely flexible form in which to combine reportage, criticism, humour, exalted phrase-making, and a clear-eyed, penetrating sense of purpose. –Jason Cowley, New Statesman

[Rees A7a]