I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really have to buckle down to it, as you do with all forms of exercise. It's simply a question of willpower. Anyone who's got the balls to stand there and tell me that a handjob isn't exercise just doesn't know what he's talking about. I almost had a heart-attack during number three. I take all kinds of other exercise too. I walk up and down the stairs. I climb into cabs and restaurant booths. I hike to the Butcher's Arms and the London Apprentice. I cough a lot. I throw up pretty frequently, which really takes it out of you. I sneeze, and hit the tub and the can. I get in and out of bed, often several times a day.

Dead Babies (1975) more flippant in tone chronicles a few days in the lives of some friends who convene in a country house to take drugs. " He reports that he is disquieted by what he sees as increasingly undisguised hostility towards Israel and the United States. Other People: A Mystery Story (1981) about a young woman coming out of a coma was a transitional novel in that it was the first of Amis's to show authorial intervention in the narrative voice and highly artificed language in the heroine's descriptions of everyday objects which was said to be influenced by his contemporary Craig Raine's "Martian" school of poetry.

that constant demonstrating of his command of English" and that the "Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop". He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what the New York Times called "the new unpleasantness". Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011.