On thisday in Literary History

On this day in 1949, Martin Amis was born. In any history of the last half-century of English Literature, a chapter will have to be given to the Amis family's seventy books -- and still counting, in Martin's case. Two chapters might be better: one of father Kingsley's many 'failures of tolerance,' to use Martin's phrase, was his contempt for his son's postmodern novels, or the few he'd tried reading.