Adam Mars-Jones
Adam Mars-Jones | |
|---|---|
.jpg?lang=en) Mars-Jones in 2012 | |
| Born | 26 October 1954 London, UK |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist and literary critic |
| Notable work | Lantern Lecture (1981) |
| Awards | Somerset Maugham Award |
Adam Mars-Jones (born 26 October 1954) is a British novelist and literary and film critic.
Early life and education
[edit]Mars-Jones was born in London, to Sir William Mars-Jones (1915–1999), a Welsh High Court judge, and Sheila Cobon (1923–1998), an attorney, daughter of Charles Cobon, a marine engineer.[1][2][3][4] Mars-Jones attended Westminster School, and studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[5][6]
Career
[edit]Mars-Jones is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He also participated in BBC Television's Newsnight Review.
His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture (1981), won a Somerset Maugham Award. In 1983, he edited the collection Mae West Is Dead: Recent Lesbian and Gay Fiction. His own short fiction was collected in The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1987), co-written with Edmund White, and in Monopolies of Loss (1992); both works address the AIDS crisis. His essay "Venus Envy", a polemic against Martin Amis, was originally published in the CounterBlasts series in 1990.
Mars-Jones' first novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993. His second novel, Pilcrow (2008), was followed by two sequels, Cedilla (2011) and Caret (2023), which together form the first three volumes of a projected series.[7]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.[8]
Noriko Smiling, a book concerning the Yasujirō Ozu-directed film Late Spring, was published in 2011.[9][10]
In 2012, he was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.[11]
On 2 January 2015, Mars-Jones was captain of the winning team on Christmas University Challenge, representing Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who defeated Balliol College, Oxford, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hull. His teammates were international rower Tom James, world champion cyclist Emma Pooley and actor Dan Starkey.[12]
Personal life
[edit]Mars-Jones' 1997 "Blind Bitter Happiness" re-tells the difficult life of his mother and his relationship to her.[13] His memoir Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father (2015) deals with his father's struggle to come to terms with his son's homosexuality and his father's later slide into dementia in old age.[14]
Bibliography
[edit]| Date | Title |
|---|---|
| 1981 | Lantern Lecture |
| 1987 | The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (with Edmund White) |
| 1990 | "Venus Envy" |
| 1992 | The Monopolies of Loss |
| 1994 | The Waters of Thirst |
| 1997 | "Blind Bitter Happiness" |
| 2008 | Pilcrow |
| 2011 | Cedilla |
| 2011 | Noriko Smiling[9] |
| 2015 | Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father |
| 2020 | Box Hill[15] |
| 2021 | Batlava Lake |
| 2023 | Caret |
References
[edit]- ^ Graya: A Magazine for Members of Gray's Inn, issue 107, 1999, p. 110.
- ^ Morton, James (25 January 1999). "Obituary: Sir William Mars-Jones". The Independent. UK. Archived from the original on 26 October 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2011.
- ^ Who was Who, St Martin's Press, 1996, p. 386.
- ^ Robertson, Geoffrey (12 January 1999), "Sir William Mars-Jones obituary", The Guardian.
- ^ "Adam Mars-Jones". British Council. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
- ^ Wroe, Nicholas (22 August 2015). "Adam Mars-Jones: 'When you're writing about the dead, you have the last word'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
- ^ Crown, Sarah (16 August 2023). "Caret by Adam Mars-Jones review – a semi-infinite novel". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
- ^ "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
- ^ a b Mars-Jones, Adam (2011). Noriko Smiling. Notting Hill Editions.
- ^ Cozy, David (25 March 2012). "An unserious look at the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu". Japan Times. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
- ^ Mars-Jones, Adam (23 January 2011), "By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – review", The Observer.
- ^ "University Challenge Victory". Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 2 January 2015. Archived from the original on 3 January 2015. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
- ^ "Blind Bitter Happiness" in Sons and Mothers, ed. Matthew and Victoria Glendinning, London, 1996, ISBN 1 86049 254 1
- ^ Kid Gloves: a Voyage Round my Father, London, 2015, ISBN 978 1 846 14875 0.
- ^ Cummins, Anthony (16 March 2020). "Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones review – the mystery of love". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
External links
[edit]- Adam Mars-Jones at British Council: Literature
- Living people
- 1954 births
- 20th-century British novelists
- 21st-century British novelists
- 20th-century English male writers
- 21st-century English male writers
- Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- British gay writers
- British LGBTQ broadcasters
- British male journalists
- British male novelists
- English LGBTQ writers
- English people of Welsh descent
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- The Guardian journalists
- LGBTQ people from London
- People educated at Westminster School, London
- Writers from London
- The Times people
- 21st-century English LGBTQ people