To Kill All Day 
Frank Kermode
- Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million by Martin Amis
This book is primarily the product of some fiercely hard reading, a reaction to the shock of finding something out from books. It has some directly autobiographical elements – a letter to the author’s father, reminiscences of a dead sister, chats with Christopher Hitchens, tales of Oxford and the old New Statesman office, and so on. But fierce reading is what this book is about, and these other passages seem intrusive. It would have been enough to observe a good writer wrestling with material that clearly tested his nerve.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Savage Life · The Adventures of William Empson
Point of View · Atonement by Ian McEwan
At Tate Britain · William Blake
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Complicated Detours · Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
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