Martin Amis entered the literary life at a young age, supercharged by the colossal example of his father Kingsley. I batted .500 on the two novels of his that I read. Money, about the movie business, seemed artificial and lazily anti-American. The Information, about the writer’s life, particularly its two dark twins, ambition and envy, was more like it. (Fun fact: One plot twist turns on the fact that the English mnemonic for the spectrum of colors is not Roy G. Biv, but Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.) His essays and short stories when I came across them were always sharply written.

I note his passing here for Koba the Dread, his account of the crimes of Stalin, and of all his Bolshevik peers. Amis, unlike his friend Christopher Hitchens, was not a professional controversialist. He didn’t have to touch the great crimes of the 20th century. Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all, etc. etc. But he did. A big-deal writer ventured a piece of his reputation to tell a truth that is still, after all these decades, unpopular in certain circles, especially those in which big deal writers move. (But, if there was real communism . . .) There was. Koba presided over it. Amis said so.

R.I.P.