There is one book which was not written Martin Amis. And yet his name is on the cover. It may be what “in my village” is called a handbook. Photo album. But, again, it is too thin for a table book. But this is not the main thing. The real problem is the theme of the book. Its name is for example: pornland. Or, in other words, in the country of porn. Or: in the land of pornography, in the realm of pornography. In California. Somewhere behind the famous hill with the inscription “Hollywoodin the San Fernando Valley. “Mecca” of the porn industry.

You are probably getting better slowly because the book is not (cannot) be a coffee table book. Photographer Stefano De Luigi wanders through the living rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, pools where American porn is filmed, and takes pictures: his lens, his frames exclude anything hardcore. They’re like Polaroids of hardcore porn without technically hardcore.

The photographer is accompanied by Martin Amis. His name appears just below the title, which is intended to refer to the neon sign. “Text: Martin Amis,” we read.

Extensive reporting, narration, interviews, anecdotes with producers, directors and porn stars, in the shadow of the author’s view.

This is an extensive report. Narrative, with interviews, stories with producers, directors and porn stars, all in the shadow of the gaze author who in Britain attracted interest early on with his writings. Sometimes with your own opinion. And not always for the best: two years after the publication of Pornoland, in 2006, Amis caused controversy when he lashed out at Islam in an interview. He did not say anything terrible, but political correctness had already begun to show its teeth everywhere. Does not modern Islam kill and persecute women who want to live their lives? (Obvious, that is?) But that doesn’t make you say that.

Before his series of American porn reviews was printed, along with De Luigi’s raw and eerily promising photographs, Amis published excerpts in the Guardian. Like the one where the producer decides that “m…nothing.” In fact, this is his answer to Amis’ question about why the porn industry is so obsessed with anal sex. Because “pussy is bullshit,” replies the porn producer. Whereas in the old “artificial sex” the protagonist is “called to bring the animal out of her” as she says. Will something similar be written today? Amis could. Note: The image he gets from what he sees and hears in Hollywood porn is nothing sensual or embellished. On the contrary: it is a desert country. A land of pleasure without anything hedonistic. And without a shadow of didacticism on the part of the writer, who knew well the delicate balance between “telling” and “showing”.

Now Amis has died at the age of 73, also from cancer. They say he was violent and cold. An archetypal figure in the London literary scene of the 80s, he crossed the Atlantic, expanding his boundaries, which had always been something especially fluid for him: he saw that porn – often – was not only about sex. As an action writer, he figured this out a long time ago…