British Author to Brighten Brooklyn by James Wolcott January 25, 2011, 2:05 PM
An uncharacteristically chatty email arrives from the normally stoic and uninflected Martin Amis informing me he will soon be moving to Brooklyn and wondering if I know of "any cool places to hang out" there.
I wonder if his email has been misdirected, since cool hangouts, Brooklyn or otherwise, are hardly my bailiwick. I live on the Upper West Side, after all, where buffalo roam free and poetry slams are never to be heard.
And yet I am happy to hear that Martin will be bringing his special brand of sunshine to one of our fine boroughs. And I feel confident he will find much to do in Brooklyn that will help take his mind off annihilation now and then. He once wrote a quite vivid article about visiting a hardcore porn set in California; perhaps he will likewise take voyeuristic dip into the moiling inertia of Brooklyn's mumblecore scene, where even less happens on the set, allowing him more head-space to reflect on art, fleeting youth, transient flesh, and what-not. Or check out one of those exciting "indie" bands that really know how to shake that tambourine.
Martin and his wife Isabel Fonseca are renowned for their dinner parties and their new house in Cobble Hill sounds as if it will be ideal for entertaining. I've never been invited to any of their wing-dings in their various abodes but I understand that after the plates have been cleared, Martin retires to the bedroom and emerges fifteen or twenty minutes later in a silk robe to sing German lieder.
I asked a friend fortunate enough to attend one of these recitals how Martin stacked up as a singer and she said, "His voice wasn't up to much, all that cigarette smoking made him sound a little Marianne Faithfull, but that purple robe was divine."
I must ask Martin where he bought it, and find out if they have one in "my size."