Terry Eagleton - Criticism of Martin and Kingsley Amis

Criticism of Martin and Kingsley Amis

In late 2007, a critique of Martin Amis included in the introduction to a 2007 edition of Eagleton's book Ideology was widely reprinted in the British press. In it, Eagleton took issue with Amis' widely-quoted writings on "Islamism", directing particular attention to one specific passage:

What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...It’s a huge dereliction on their part

Eagleton criticised Amis for the passage, and expressed surprise as to its source, stating: " not the ramblings of a British National Party thug ... but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." Eagleton drew a connection between Amis and his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis). The younger writer, Eagleton went on to write, had learnt more from his father—whom Eagleton described as "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals" and "reactionary"—than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase". Eagleton went on to argue that "there is something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they find themselves for the first time on the sticky end of the same treatment".

The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Independent, wrote an editorial about the affair; Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict" who would be "unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx". Amis said that the view Eagleton attributed to him as his considered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a tempting urge, in relation to the need to "raise the price" of terrorist actions.

Eagleton's personal comments on Amis' father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, prompted a further response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard wrote to The Daily Telegraph, noting that for a supposed "anti-semitic homophobe", it was peculiar that the only guests at the Howard-Amis nuptials should have been either Jewish or gay. As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." In a later interview, Howard added: 'I have never even heard of this man Eagleton. But he seems to be a rather lethal combination of a Roman Catholic and a Marxist ... He strikes me as like a spitting cobra: if you get within his range he'll unleash some poison.'

Eagleton defended his comments about Martin and Kingsley Amis by article in The Guardian, claiming that the main bone of contention—the substance of Amis' remarks and views—had been lost amid the media furore.