The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom

In "The Second Plane, Martin Amis has produced an excellent book. It is a collection of his journalism since the events of 11 September 2001. The collection is coherent, well researched and a compelling read. Amis has no sympathy for the barbarians of the Islamic world. In many respects, he is close to the views of his colleague, Christopher Hitchens. His perspective, however, is somewhat more European. He endeavours to see a bigger picture while, at the same time, calling a spade a spade. He sees modern Islam for what it is; namely, a pretence for barbarism. Perhaps the best chapter from the book is his reconstruction of the last days and hours in the life of Muhammad Atta, the pilot of the second plane to hit the twin towers in New York. Here, we see raw fanaticism. Atta was a psychopath, totally loathsome in all respects. Yet, there is little doubt that there are other such individuals who would love to emulate his "achievements". Amis has little time for such people. He sees them for the shallow but dangerous individuals that they are. He also has no time for the religious fundamentalism that they represent. Yet despite his views on Atta and his horrible clique, Amis has no sympathy for the likes of George W Bush. This is a man that he identifies as being incompetent at best and stupid at worst. However, by some strange means, this backwoods Texan came to be the leader of the free world. Surely, we can do better? I suspect that the far right in America will not like some of the arguments put by Amis. Too bad! Amis is a breath of fresh air in the modern political discourse. His book is time and money well spent.

Amis' foray into commentary on Islam's intrusion into modern western life drew opprobrium from many quarters. However, I believe his analysis is essential, accurate and true. The writing is exquisite, and the subject is of signal importance for those of us in the west. The torrent of criticism he attracted seems to have had it's desired effect in that Amis' writing on the subject has been few and far between since. I wish Amis would revisit and expand this topic. Very highly recommended.

Mr. Amis expresses the bile that many of us feel for these deformed, ugly, self-proclaimed 'religious' 'men.' The Islamists don't design planes, don't administer flight training, don't create or offer much of anything. They fail to evangelize as other religious people do in the civilized world - (i.e. by being nice and generous while INVITING others to join them in bowing and scraping, chanting incantations, eating special food and wearing special clothes...) Apparently they can only think to stab a 110 lb. stewardess in the back as item #1 on their 'to do' lists. Death cults are a little weak on subtlety and imagination. All in a day's work, one might suppose ...and in line with the tradition of heaving wheelchair-bound old guys into the Mediterranean ...or butchering Olympic athletes or reporters or diplomats in cold blood ...or strapping bombs on trusting young girls who happen to have Down's Syndrome... ...and on and on and on. Amis' prose, glittering with hatred for these September 11th Islamist creatures, is relentless. ('Critics' are usually uncomfortable with relentlessness.) We should thank our lucky stars for an honest, passionate good guy like Martin Amis. This fine collection of essays and stories is as stunning as his book a few years ago that tore into another vile bag of garbage: a certain Mr. Iosif Dzugashvili / Joseph Stalin.

Martin Amis's political books have typically been the least well received of his oeuvre. His 1987 collection of stories `Einstein's Monsters' felt too contrived and naively over heavy on the big ideas (nuclear weapons) compared to the two satirical masterpieces - Money and London Fields, it was chronologically sandwiched between, and his 2002 Koba the Dread, a book to honour the victims of Stalin, was a bit of a hash of an exercise that strained too hard for effect, comparing, at one point, the screams of his infant child with the millions that perished under Stalin in the Gulag. In this collection of essays and fiction, however, Amis has rather more success in mixing his personal life and concerns with the big political themes that affect us all. The book brings together a collection of Amis's writings on the theme of September 11, and the myriad fallout from the events of that day: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the wider concerns to assert American power more fully in the Middle East, and more generally (and this is Amis's real concern) the subliminal effects that terrorism has on us all: `it's mystery, its instability, and its terrible dynamism'. The publication of this collection comes after a long running media spat concerning Amis's views on Islam. Terry Eagleton, Amis's colleague at Manchester University accused him of being tantamount to a `British National Party thug'; the satirical comedian Chris Morris tagged Amis as `The New Abu Hamza'. All this following an interview Amis gave to the Independent in which he mused that `don't you feel the urge that the Muslim community must suffer in order to get its house in order. What measures? `Things like strip searching people who look like they come from The Middle East, or Pakistan.' Clearly, the old saw about all publicity being good publicity has worked in this case, as The Second Plane is already on its third print run. But what is Amis actually advocating in his views towards Islam? The reality, now that these pieces are all bought together under the same cover, and not merely the disparate fragments of journalism written over a variety of years and numinous publications, is an interestingly thought out, rationally developed view on the burgeoning problem of Islamism. Amis starts the collection with the title piece written immediately after September 11, the almost hallucinogenic quality of the prose bringing back memories of this period when everyone in the world was dealing with the shock of the event. The long term ramifications were unknown, but even then Amis was perceptive in turning his attentions to the terrain, mental and physical, he believed would be most keenly affected - the hitherto protected western liberal worldview, and the wrecked, Taliban crippled badlands of Afghanistan, `they should be firmly bombarded with consignments of food, firmly marked LENDLEASE USA', was his recommendation then. Now, six and a half years on, we know a lot more. Amis states in the introd

Martin Amis, best known for his outstanding fiction, here offers a collection of previously published essays, as well as a couple of short stories, on the topic of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The works range (in their original date of publication) from just after the horrible attacks through September 11, 2007. In his forward to this slim collection, Amis admits he was tempted to revise essays which, over time, show their flaws. But bravely, he allows us to see his original work untouched by the corrective pen. As such, these materials afford Amis' fierciest critics ample opportunity to selectively slice quotations out of context in an attempt to show the writer in deceptively unflattering light (NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani immediately comes to mind). But chuckleheaded critics' opinions notwithstanding, Amis' gift for turning a phrase and cutting to the essence of an idea is without peer. If there is a living writer who matches Amis' vocabulary, stinging humor, poetic nuance and worldly insight I have yet to read him or her. Take, for example, this excerpt: "It is by now not too difficult to trace what went wrong, psychologically, in the Iraq War. The fatal turn, the fatal forfeiture of legitimacy, came not with the mistaken but also calculated emphasis on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: the intelligence agencies of every country on earth, Iraq included, believed that he had them. The fatal turn was the American President's all to palpable submission to the intoxicant of power. His walk, his voice, his idiom, right up to his mortifying appearance in the flight suit on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln ("Mission Accomplished") - every dash and comma in his body language betrayed the unscrupulous confidence of the power surge." Bloody brilliant. This excerpt alone makes "The Second Plane" worth the twenty clams. Still, it is in his short stories that Amis' dark humor and unmatched skill as a fictionalist comes most alive. "In the Palace of the End" genuinely evokes Kafka, and was, in places, as haunting to read as "House of Meetings."