August 25, 1949

Martin Amis (August 25, 1949) is the son of a major British novelist, Kingsley Amis, and himself has been ranked as one of the major writers today. He has worked as an editor at Times Literary Supplement and The New Statesman,  and taught creative writing, while writing the novels which define his contributions---Money (1984), London Fields (1989) and  most recently, Lionel Asbo: State of England (2012).These titles just hint at the quantity of his writing.

His time in the states included a visit to the widow of Lionel Trilling, herself a formidable writer.

The Moronic Inferno,(1986), a book of essays, contains an account of meeting her. 

"In New York, Diana Trilling is regarded with the suspicious awe customarily reserved for the city's senior literary ladies. Whenever I announed my intention of going along to interview her, people looked at me with trepedation, a new respect, a certain holy dread. I felt I was about to enter the lion's den — or the den of the literary lionness, which is often just as dangerous."

I hope she slapped him.