Martin Amis, on being a writer:

Well, it is a sort of sedentary, carpet slippers, self-inspecting, nose-picking, arse-scratching kind of job, just you in your study and there is absolutely no way round that. So, anyone who is in it for worldly gains and razzmatazz I don't think will get very far at all.

Amis is himself the target of some of this nastiness at the moment, having dared to have views that don't coincide with his new colleague, Terry Eagleton. For that great crime, Eagleton has subjected Amis to so nasty a verbal lashing that UCL English professor John Sutherland thinks he may well have compromised Amis's ability to function in the classroom, which he has, for the first time, entered this fall.

Sutherland does not mince words, describing Eagleton's attack as the "Mother of All Academic Bombs" and characterizing the ensuing ruckus as a "shitstorm":

If the most authoritative political voice on campus labels a colleague (albeit on the rhetorical rebound) a bigot and a racist, is that colleague's position tenable? Can Amis, with Eagleton's taunts bouncing off the classroom wall, competently teach classes in which there will be Muslims, Jews, gays and women? What should his response be: dignified silence? Eloquent refutation? Beautiful indifference? Disgusted resignation? Protest to the Senate? Is Eagleton too big a beast on campus to be reprimanded for uncollegial conduct - if that is felt necessary by the university authorities? Or perhaps they agree with their professor of cultural theory.

The shit will keep on swirling yet awhile