Martin Amis Weighs in on Terrorism

“Everyone’s entitled to his opinion!” How often do we hear this—and from those whose entitlement is most in doubt? Laura Ingraham squeezed an entire book out of the slight thesis that entertainers should Shut Up and Sing rather than soak us with their spittle-flecked rantings about international affairs. Curiously, she included “UN elites” in her herd of bêtes noires, though political figures aren’t generally known for their crooning abilities. Dancing abilities, maybe. But what about novelists?

That’s the question the Guardian poses in its review of Martin Amis’s The Second Plane, a collection of writings inspired, or perhaps fired, by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. (Amis disdains the use of the short form of the infamous date: “There is a long argument about the inappropriateness of the contraction ‘9/11’ to describe the enormity of that day.”)

I think the question is misguided, but not because I feel, in that most irritating formula, “entitled to my opinion.” There are those whose work never draws them into the realm of political thought—the Dixie Chicks, for instance—but the novelist makes his living considering what makes people tick, and no one ticks quite so literally as the suicide terrorist. As Amis writes, “Geopolitics may not be my natural subject, but masculinity is. And have we ever seen the male idea in such outrageous garb as the robes, combat fatigues, suits and ties, jeans, tracksuits and medics’ smocks of the Islamic radical?”

This is not to say that novelists invariably get it right, or even half-right. John Updike didn’t, though his attempt was more than admirable and nothing if not sincere. All the same, there’s a big difference between someone who sings other people’s words, and someone who’s always had his own keenly rendered psychological portraits at the ready, weighing in on the heaviest issues of our day. If novelists feel compelled to delineate this problem, I can think of few more qualified to do so than Amis.