Visiting Mrs. Nabokov, and other excursions
(Book)

The best-selling author of London Fields and Time's Arrow visits Salman Rushdie, observes the making of Robocop II, ruminates on the death of John Lennon, covers the 1992 Republican Convention, converses with John Updike, and tells us about it all (and much more) in his dazzling, razor-sharp prose. Martin Amis on traveling with Elton John's soccer team: "When it comes to banqueting, the Chinese have something else to teach the West: speeches come first, at which stage sobriety and greed can be relied upon to keep them short." On Kasparov versus Karpov: "Stressful tales of venue-fixing, spy-planting, rule-bending - or cheating, if you prefer. The outsider, who thinks that chess is pure and cerebral, tends to be shocked by such suggestions. But the insider is not shocked, because he knows that chess, like the human brain, is partly reptilian." On Mick Jagger: "This well-put-together, vitamin-packed unit of a human being does not really dance anymore: it's simply that his head, his shoulders, his pelvis, both his arms, both his legs, both his huge feet and both his buttocks are wriggling, at great speed, independently, all the time."