Children’s-Book Authors, Pipe Down! Martin Amis Has a Point

The writers responding so angrily to Amis’s statement “missed the fact that Amis was talking only about himself, about his own interests and limitations. Key to his avoidance of this genre is the phrase ‘conscious of who you’re directing the story to.’ Amis is saying that writing to a specific audience is a constraint on his art.”

Martin Amis: Only A “Brain Injury” Could Make Me Write A Children’s Book

“I say, ‘If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book’, but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you’re directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.”