Adam Mars-Jones

{{short description|British novelist and literary critic (born 1954)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Adam Mars-Jones

| image = Adam Mars Jones (8048688703).jpg

| alt =

| caption = Mars-Jones in 2012

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1954|10|26|df=y}}

| birth_place = London, UK

| death_date =

| death_place =

| other_names =

| occupation = Novelist and literary critic

| years_active =

| known_for =

| notable_works = 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

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.Graya: A Magazine for Members of Gray's Inn, issue 107, 1999, p. 110.{{cite news |last=Morton |first=James |date=25 January 1999 |title=Obituary: Sir William Mars-Jones |work=The Independent |location=UK |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-sir-william-marsjones-1076161.html |url-status=live |url-access=limited |accessdate=4 February 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121026114446/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-sir-william-marsjones-1076161.html |archive-date=2012-10-26}}Who was Who, St Martin's Press, 1996, p. 386.Robertson, Geoffrey (12 January 1999), [https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/jan/12/guardianobituaries "Sir William Mars-Jones obituary"], The Guardian. Mars-Jones attended Westminster School, and studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.{{Cite web |title=Adam Mars-Jones |url=https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/adam-mars-jones |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=British Council}}{{Cite news |last=Wroe |first=Nicholas |date=2015-08-22 |title=Adam Mars-Jones: 'When you're writing about the dead, you have the last word' |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/22/adam-mars-jones-books-interview |access-date=2023-12-24 |issn=0261-3077}}

Career

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.{{Cite news |last=Crown |first=Sarah |date=2023-08-16 |title=Caret by Adam Mars-Jones review – a semi-infinite novel |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/16/caret-by-adam-mars-jones-review-a-semi-infinite-novel |access-date=2023-09-10 |issn=0261-3077}}

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.{{cite web|url=http://www.rslit.org/content/fellows |title=Royal Society of Literature All Fellows |publisher=Royal Society of Literature |accessdate=10 August 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100305070326/http://www.rslit.org/content/fellows |archive-date=5 March 2010 }}

Noriko Smiling, a book concerning the Yasujirō Ozu-directed film Late Spring, was published in 2011.{{cite web|last=Cozy|first=David|work=Japan Times|title=An unserious look at the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu|url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fb20120325a2.html|date=25 March 2012|accessdate=31 March 2012}}

In 2012, he was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.Mars-Jones, Adam (23 January 2011), [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/23/by-nightfall-michael-cunningham-review "By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – review"], The Observer.

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.{{cite web |url=http://www.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/news/detail.asp?ItemID=2914 |title=University Challenge Victory |author= |date=2 January 2015 |website=Trinity Hall, Cambridge |accessdate=3 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150103233947/http://www.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/news/detail.asp?ItemID=2914 |archive-date=3 January 2015 |url-status=dead}}

Personal life

Mars-Jones' 1997 "Blind Bitter Happiness" re-tells the difficult life of his mother and his relationship to her."Blind Bitter Happiness" in Sons and Mothers, ed. Matthew and Victoria Glendinning, London, 1996, {{ISBN|1 86049 254 1}} 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.Kid Gloves: a Voyage Round my Father, London, 2015, {{ISBN|978 1 846 14875 0}}.

Bibliography

class=wikitable

!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{{cite book|first=Adam|last=Mars-Jones|author-link=Adam Mars-Jones|title=Noriko Smiling|publisher=Notting Hill Editions|date=2011}}

2015

|Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father

2020

|Box Hill{{cite news |last= Cummins |first= Anthony |date= 16 March 2020 |title= Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones review – the mystery of love |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/16/box-hill-adam-mars-jones-review |work= The Guardian |access-date= 4 May 2020}}

2021

|Batlava Lake

2023

|Caret