in defence of sentimentality

Martin Amis, in an interview with Prospect, admits to being a softie:

We are all quite sentimental, a word that Nabokov defended. He wrote of Dickens and the death of Little Joe in Bleak House, I will not allow you to describe this as sentimental: people who use that word have no idea what sentiment is. Also, the entirely pleasant feeling that I got after writing Experience was that we have all protected our emotion, it was the orthodoxy then that writing was tough. But writing Experience made me think that the emotion which I had always thought was present and detectable to a good reader should be given more room. It’s partly getting older and you just think, it’s all too plangent for words. As Kurt Vonnegut said, everyone thinks I’m tough and slick, but in fact I’m as soft as a sneaker full of shit. And you are, as a writer.