SOURCE: "The Content of His Characters," in National Review, Vol. XLVII, No. 10, May 29, 1995, pp. 61-63.

In the following review, Bowman asserts that Amis's work is often lacking in plot but strong in prose.

Writers of fiction in the twentieth century can be divided into the champions of big texture and the champions of big content, and there can be no question that the texturalists have had the better of the conflict. The reassuringly Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end, which used to be thought a minimum requirement for a novel, have given way among the adepts of literary culture to what Ezra Pound called (and called for): "Beginning, Whoop! and then any sort of tail-off." Since Joyce at least, it has become a mark of the cognoscenti to admire prose fiction for its prose, rather than its fiction.

Martin Amis has become the star of his literary generation in...