The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986) is Martin Amis’s second nonfiction book after Invasion of the Space Invaders (1982). Inferno is, as Amis’s Introduction says, “a collection of peripatetic journalism” about the USA. It presents, not in chronological order, 27 pieces first published between 1977 and 1985, mainly in the Observer. Amis has added “links and postscripts”, combined pieces, and rewritten some passages (ix). He is amusing about the effort of compiling the collection in pre-digital times; it was “quite hard work getting all this stuff together (photocopying back numbers of journals can be a real struggle, what with the weight of the bound volumes and that Xerox flap tangling you up and getting in the way)”. The initial writing of the pieces was also “hard work”. Distinguishing between two approaches to...
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30817, accessed 09 June 2026.]
