The War Against Cliché

The War Against Cliché (2001) is an anthology of essays, book reviews and literary criticism from the British author Martin Amis. The collection received the National Book Critics Circle award in 2001.

First edition

Title

The book takes its title from one of Amis' essays, an encomium to James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Amis characterizes that novel as Joyce's "campaign against cliché". Amis writes,

To idealise: all writing is a campaign against cliche. Not just cliches of the pen but cliches of the mind and cliches of the heart. When I dispraise, I am usually quoting cliches. When I praise, I am usually quoting the opposed qualities of freshness, energy and reverberation of voice.[1]

Contents

Like Amis's previous collection Visiting Mrs Nabokov, the book is composed of many pieces written over the course of the author's career, beginning in the mid-1970s as a journalist and following up to his period of recognition as one of Great Britain's most acclaimed novelists. Among the many authors considered are John Updike, Anthony Burgess, Saul Bellow, Iris Murdoch, Elmore Leonard and Philip Roth.

Many of the essays also touch on pet topics of Amis's, such as chess, poker, football (soccer), cue sports, masculinity, and nuclear weapons.

Awards

The collection received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 2001.[2]

gollark: Oh, and my city's subway system is running a reduced service, but for some reason the train network is running exactly the same as usual with probably a fifth of the usual passengers on my line.
gollark: My school is planning to try online learning or something, which I am sure will go badly.
gollark: ```What will happen about exams?In England and Wales, all exams in May and June have been cancelled, including GCSEs, A-levels and primary school national curriculum tests known as Sats.Mr Williamson told the Commons on Wednesday: "I can confirm we will not go ahead with assessments or exams and that we will not be publishing performance tables for this academic year."We will work with the sector and [the exams watchdog] Ofqual to ensure children get the qualifications that they need."```- from the BBC
gollark: Not really.
gollark: The wording is a bit ambiguous so in theory they might be planning to do them later, but it seems like they're being cancelled.

References
  1. Martin Amis, "Battling banality," The Guardian, 24 March 2001.
  2. National Book Critics Circle Awards 2001.


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