Martin Amis's Reading List

"anyone who doubts this has only to glance through Richard Wright's memoir, "Black Boy""

"there is Nabokov's "Pale Fire" and (more obliquely) the earlier masterpiece "Despair.""

"the earlier masterpiece "Despair""

"Anthony Trollope's magnum opus "The Way We Live Now." It's curious: Trollope seemed to specialize in drab and unalluring titles... but "The Way We Live Now" could adorn the cover of any social-realist novel of the last three centuries."

"it combines a novelistic level of perception with a phenomenal journalistic stamina, and I wrote a piece about "Homicide" in a series called "Books I Wish I'd Written.""

"I came late to Herman Melville — late, therefore, to "Moby-Dick" (wantonly dismissed in its day)"

""Billy Budd" will probably stand as the last tragedy in English."