> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446401736
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

The Moronic Inferno

And Other Visits to America




A collection of essays on America by the author of London Fields, Money and Lionel Asbo.

At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.

Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and sanitised image are penetrated.

There can be little that escapes the eye of Martin Amis when his curiosity leads him to a subject, and America has found in him a superlative chronicler.

  • Published: 1 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446401736
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Martin Amis

Martin Amis was the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time’s Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. Amis died in May 2023.

Also by Martin Amis

See all

Praise for The Moronic Inferno

As a foreign journalist-cum-essayist on America, Mr Amis has no equal

The Economist

He writes brilliantly on novels and novelists. He has a laser-keen eye and an enviable descriptive power, using words with great originality and precision

Sunday Telegraph

Martin Amis's America is funny and horrific

The Times

Perceptive, witty and felicitously written... A terrific book

Frank Kermode, London Review of Books