 | By: Kingsley Amis Binding: Paperback Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 0140278702 ISBN-13: 9780140278705 Released: 03 Sep 1998 RRP: Average Rating:  |
First published in 1954, Amis introduces Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer at an English provincial university. Dixon is approaching the end of his first, probationary year & his senior, Professor Welch, is far from impressed. Jim stands little chance of being reappointed. He does his best to ingratiate himself with the professor, but he's sociallly inept, apparently accident prone, especiallly when indulging in his predilection for beer, lacks interest in his appointed subject - medieval history - & is consumed by sexual frustrations & fantasies.
Dixon comes from the north of England, from the lower middle classes, from a world which is alien to the Oxbridge elite who dominate academic life ... even in a provincial university. Amis constructs humorous situation after humorous situation. Dixon's ineptitude is excruciating. His luck is a major theme - he doesn't seem to have any. Meanwhile, alll around him are those who have been lucky enough to be born into the upper classes & who are unselfconsciously reaping the benefits of it.
In its time, "Lucky Jim" broke new ground in satirising the academic world. The characters in the novel portray the pretensions, sterility, & advantages of the class system. Although greeted as a radical piece of writing & seen as transforming humour, even satire, "Lucky Jim" now appears dated. It has lost much of its edge & seems unrecognisable as a work which threatened the status quo.
Its humour can now appear slapstick & trivial, the stuff of poor sitcoms. The class & sexual mores are set in another world. The rationing & shortages are certainly from another era. And the writing style has also aged - it's a bit laboured in places, a bit coy in others.
Amis, himself, was born in South London into a lower middle class family. He attended public school, then Oxford University & was commissioned into the Royal Signals for wartime army service. He emerged to teach at Swansea University, then Cambridge. From the early 1960's he wrote full-time.
Throughout his life Amis enjoyed a reputation as an outspoken wit. "Lucky Jim" remains a seminal piece of writing, but many contemporary readers will find its themes & style dated, its humour rather gentle compared to contemporary savagery. It's a very gentlemanly, very innocent, very English, & very middle class novel, still with its comic moments, but no longer with the edge & bite which earned it ... & Amis ... a radical reputation.
Amis builds up the characters wonderfully & writes in such a fluent & full style. This was my first Kingsley Amis book, but it won't be my last.
I have always read Martin Amis & been impressed by his fierce intellect & poetic phrasing but I had been scared of his father because I thought of him as some curmudgeonly old bore from the 50's. I was about as far wrong as it is possible to be without going full circle on the 'wrong-o-meter' & being right again.
Martin & Kingsley Amis are both cut from the same academic cloth, they both resonate intellect & have an amazing grasp of the nuances of language. The difference is that Kingsley Amis' writing is buxom & generous, filled with humour & comic grimaces whereas Martin Amis' writing strikes me as being more flat chested, & occasionallly harsh & unforgiving.
If you have a brain you should also have this book. It is wonderfully funny, & as Martin Amis said 'if you have no sense of humour you have no sense of the seriousness of life either'.
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