Cult of youth

Are publishers putting too much pressure on young writers, asks Carl Wilkinson in The Guardian.

Martin Amis is the archetype. The Rachel Papers was published in 1973 when Amis was just 24 and won him the Somerset Maugham Award. 'The event passed,' he wrote in Experience, 'in what now seems to be improbable tranquility. No interviews, no readings, no photo sessions.' Unthinkable today.