Martin Amis: "The Zone of Interest" 

That voice, his brilliance, his wit, he is one of the very best, and will be missed.

That voice, that scathing wit, that incredible command of the language... I'm going to miss you Mr Amis.

Stanley Cohen's 'States of Denial' is a fascinating insight into how people can collude with or perpetrate unspeakable horror and yet genuinely deny any knowledge of it.

Lucky Jim, written by Martin Amis's father Kingsley Amis was the funniest and most scathing book I've ever read. I love his circle of friends which included the Great Contrarian Christopher Hitchens. I appreciate the subject of his novel: my mother, a Polish/German Berliner Jew survived Dachau but her father was murdered in front of her eyes. She was not a supporter of the state of Israel which she deemed an untenable solution to an untenable problem. She died of brain cancer some years ago and I wonder what she would have to say about the current political climate because she had a bullshit detector like a search light.

I'm listening to this late at night then looked him up out of curiosity, and learned that Mr. Martin Amis recently died May 19th 2023 and today is May 30th 2023. An Interesting man.

Truly one of the smartest books ever written.

this was one of the best nights of my life. i leaned over to my friend near the 34:20 mark and whispered "a shot rang out" and my laugh is the first that sounds in this video. i'm very happy that it was recorded so i can relive the night.

Rip martin, and thank you

Must have seen this about 3 or 4 times now - inexhaustibly inventive and interesting.

Martin, lucid as ever.

How marvelous this is!

Martin Amis' observations about Russia and Putin at the close of this (from about 50') is prescient.

With the film out now was the first time I had heard this title. After seeing the film I read the book. I had not read Amis before and thought it was a powerful, well-written book and how was it that I had not read Amis before?

@laRoz67- EXACTLY! You've hit the proverbial 'nail' on the head! Mr. Amis was totally unique in several ways, the voice, and OMG the absolute command of the language is superb. His cadence is breathtaking. Very few. If any, like him.. Will miss him and RIP Martin....

Very good conversation!

Thanks terribly for the upload. I'm always glad to find new words of Martin's, whether written or spoken.And zoot soot, I think he actually looks a bit better than he did three or four years ago. I have a video of him speaking with Charlie Rose in 2010 where he looks truly frail and sort of like his thoughts are elsewhere (though his mind is very much present in that interview); he does this odd thing with his mouth and so on, not sure if you know what I'm talking about. But that interview was two month's after Hitchens' diagnosis, so perhaps that's what it was. He does look a bit rickety for 65, but he seems every bit as perspicacious as ever. In fact, I'd say in some ways he's improving: he's a bit more measured, a bit less pugnacious, maybe. I don't know. Maybe this is wishful thinking. In any case, I've just managed to write about three times as many words as I should have in this post, but there we are. Our hopes are the same, yours and mine.

easy to reread ,, perfect writer

It all undoes itself that way

Unbelievable mind

Mr Amis' claim that the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930's beggars explanation is a rather dubious proposition. It might equally be seen as the logical outcome of a certain strand of European thought with it's origins in the Enlightenment. The work of Zygmunt Baumann is a good place to start for anyone interested in this angle.

Arise Sir Martin Amis.

Very good conversation. He was right about Russia, imho

the more i listen to amis the closer i become to hitch

His interlocutor does a very fine job of giving MA the space to do his thing. His take on the holocaust is quite moving.

I actually found the ending of the novel moving. No film can capture the poignancy of love extracted from the horrors of the holocaust.

Really interesting and great video etc. I found Amis broke his own rules about repetition and euphony in the reading from "zone of interest." lol,

51:00 that's some prescient conversation about Putinist Russia… But he was wrong about NATO membership for Ukraine as a provocation of Russia, and now we see what Russia does to small, non-nuclear countries of which it has pretensions to ownership.

I think the interview about this novel with Charlie Rose was much more incisive and revealing than this one.

Oh, how terribly we miss him now. In this terrible world full of zoological nightmares of antisemitism, never abating hatred. How pure and honest and humane his voice was. 😢

sadly, human nature is not what we like to believe about it. the degree of obedience and following a mad leader not blindly but willingly is so built into our psyche that not even two centuries of enlightment in the most refined European culture could remove.

💙

Why is she smiling?

Mart's looking a bit frail, hope he's got many years left to experience, for the sake of his own pleasures and those of his old mate Hitch.

Is that Zizek at 48:40?

Predicting the war in Ukraine at 51 m onwards.

I wonder if we could hear his eloquent thoughts on Russias invasion

"In the English language"

Only makes sense backwards

The implication that famine is a function of the socialist project when Russia had frequent famines before the 1930s - and then essentially ended them - is an odd assumption. Anything that happens under communism is seen as a feature rather than a bug; whatever unfolds under capitalism is just the weather.

Would've been incredibly interesting if he'd written about Churchill instigating one of the genocides in India & the Bengal famine. Among the several famines that happened because of England colonialism.

因為小小來看的

3xplaining Hitler book review. "It doesn't."

Came here because of the film; just seen that, haven't read the book. This talk alone convinces me that the book, as per usual, is superior -even if the movie is well-meaning. The whole question as to why Hitler did what he did, which surprisingly seemed to puzzle Amis, is connected to his genius to channel the frustration and humiliation Germans felt after Versailles, besides his issues of ego and megalomania: Two areas which perhaps were unfamiliar to dear old Martin,

No great fan of Mr Amis's fiction but do find he sometimes says something more than usually thoughtful. His point about poetry's measure being in its memorability is so true. Had a friend who was outraged at Seamus Heaney's winning the Nobel Prize. 'Quote Yeats or Pope!' and people would quote several things. 'Quote Seamus Heaney' and nada. Also very good his saying his father' had lowbrow taste in fiction: his father's own fiction was certainly not something worth re-reading. Again, extraordinary that a man so intelligent/knowledgeable and aware of history speaks as if unaware of the holocaust carried out by people of the country he so loves, the USA. Far greater numbers, comparably horrible, equally deliberate and equally official policy. And he speaks as if he doesn't even know about other 'slave-driving and murder' as in the Americas and in King Leopold's Congo, not to mention earlier history.

The Holocaust is without a doubt *not* the worst event in human history. It's disturbing that it happened in a modern country but genocide has been the norm throughout human history, and there are probably specialized genocide circuits in the human brain, as incredible as that might sound. Anyone who doubts this should read about the Assyrian empire, or some of the Hawaiian kingdoms, or reflect on the fact that the Aztecs are thought to have sacrificed 20,000 people a year. The nazi's were bad (I'm reading a book about the subject at the moment and it still shocks me) but they didn't ceremonially sacrifice jews on an alter in front of a cheering audience.

Half way through the book right now and rather disappointed. His use of German words to make the story sound more realistic is a cheap trick. To my surprise, he makes Höss' wife come across as a quite relatable person. His book is different, if not opposite, to the film's depiction in so many ways.

An interesting topic discussed and dissected by an interesting writer; my only issue were the copious chunks of dandruff clinging to Mr Amis' left lapel. I think the interviewer also found it both a distraction and nausea-inducing, as every so often her eyes would stray to the offending flakes and her throat would quiver with involuntary gagging motions.

Just watched ZOI and can only call it classic German---ponderous, pretentious, dull, artsy, so so deeply symbolic that it must have taken hours to come up with. It showed and told nothing that hasn't been done far better all over the place.

'The Zone of Interest', is far,far away from Martin Fucking Amiss.

Is Humanities-a-palooza still going on?

Never mind the Bollocks here comes the Amis!

One more comment, the boy in the striped pyjamas is better ❤

He was a cold blooded murderer ultimate serial killer