User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Jim Dixon's reflection on old man Welch, the chair of the History Department at the provincial college where the novel is set: "How had he become Professor of History, even at a place like this? By published works? No. By extra good teaching? No, in italics."
― Kingsley Amis,
Lucky JimBritish literary critic and novelist David Lodge notes how those of his generation who came of age in England in the 1950s, men and women mostly from lower-middle income families having their first real taste of educational and professional opportunity, felt more than a little unease with the attitudes and values of the prevailing cultural and social establishment. Novels like
Lucky Jim really spoke to them: young Jim Dixon enters the world of academia and polite society and detests all the airs, posturing, snootiness, arrogance and pretense. Judging from the reviews and essays penned by British readers in the last few years, this Kingsley Amis novel continues to speak with power.
As an American, the novel also spoke to me with power; however, the power (and also the humor) is signature British – subtle and understated. Well, subtle and understated when it is not being Monty Pythonesque, that is. For examples we need only turn to the first pages. The opening scene has Dixon strolling the campus with Professor Welch, chair of the history department, the man who will approve or disapprove Dixon’s continuing within the department beyond the current term. Welsh is fussing over a local reporter’s write up of a concert where he, Welsh, played the recorder accompanied by piano. The newspaper said “flute and piano.” Welch pedantically details the difference between a flute and a recorder as if he is David Munrow, as if his recorder playing and the concert amounted to a historical event in the world of twentieth century performance. Hey, Welch – nobody gives a fig! And a recorder is a fipple flute, so the reporter’s mistake is hardly a monumental blunder.
Dixon and Welch continue walking together across the lawn in front of a college building, “To look at, but not only to look at, they resembled some kind of variety act: Welch tall and weedy, with limp whitening hair, Dixon on the short side, fair and round-faced, with an unusual breadth of shoulder that had never been accompanied by any special physical strength or skill.” In addition to providing the reader with telling physical detail, likening the two men to a variety act initiates a recurrent theme carried throughout the novel: very much in keeping with English society, nearly everyone moves and speaks as if they are acting on a stage; in other words, acculturated to play a prescribed, set role. Incidentally, I’ve heard more than once how the British are such natural actors and actresses since they are trained to act beginning as children. And this play acting really heightens the humor, especially as Jim Dixon seethes with rage as he follows the script and, fueled by alcohol, seethes with even more rage as he rebels against the whole stage production. Very British; very funny.
Ah, rebellion! Jim Dixon is a rebel with a cause, his cause being life free of hypocrisy and stupidity. But, alas, much of his rebellion is a silent rebellion. We are treated to Jim’s running commentary of what he would like to say and like to do, as in, after listening to more of Welch’s prattle: “He pretended to himself that he’d pick up his professor round the waist, squeeze the furry grey-blue waistcoat against him to expel the breath, run heavily with him up the steps, along the corridor to the Staff Cloakroom, and plunge the too-small feet in their capless shoes into a lavatory basin, pulling the plug once, twice and again, stuffing the mouth with toilet-paper.”
Again a bit later Jim hops in the car next to Welch as the professor drives home from the college and Welch presses him on the prospects of his history article being published. Dixon’s reply is cut short when Welch nearly causes a multi-vehicle crash: “Dixon, thought on the whole glad at this escape, felt at the same time that the conversation would have been appropriately rounded off by Welch’s death.” And this is only for starters – many are the zinger launched at the world of academe. No wonder Amis received a rather cool reception from the English faculty at Cambridge in the years following the publication of
Lucky Jim!
The humor escalates as Jim Dixon finds himself in a number of increasingly farcical and compromising situations, usually brought on, in part, by his own prankster antics and drinking, at such events as a stay, including obligatory singing, at the home of the Welches, a college sponsored dance and, finally, delivering a required public history lecture to a full house. Actually, the events prior to and during Jim’s grand finale lecture are the stuff of Monty Python. All told, the exquisite timing of Amis’ language and the string of outrageous quagmires Jim must face make for one comic novel.
However, it must be noted, the humor cuts deeper than the comic British novels of writers like P. G. Wodehouse. A prime example is Jim’s skirmish with Welch’s son Bertrand, a self-styled amateur artist. Events and emotions move apace until Dixon has developed his own relationship with Bertrand’s girlfriend Christine. Bertrand becomes progressively more infuriated at this unwanted development and at one point snarls into Dixon’s face: “Just get this straight in your so-called mind. When I see something I want, I go for it. I don’t allow people of your sort to stand in my way. That’s what you’re leaving out of account. I’m having Christine because it’s my right. Do you understand that? If I’m after something I don’t care what I do to make sure that I get it.” Oh, my goodness, a member of the wealthy, privileged class portrayed as a viscous, condescending, power-hungry scum.
Lastly, what would a novel by Kingsley Amis be without young ladies?
Lucky Jim features two such ladies: Margaret and the above mentioned Christine. Margaret teaches history at the college, is rather plain and uses emotional blackmail to tighten her grip on menfolk; Christine is both attractive and connected to an uncle in high places. To find out just how far Margaret will go with her blackmail and how lucky Jim Dixon will be with Christine and her uncle, you will have to read this comic jewel for yourself.
Kingsley Amis in 1954, age 32, year of publication of
Lucky JimJim upon waking up with a hangover. Would anyone doubt Kingsley Amis mined his own first-hand experience? - "Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”
Rating: really liked it
Honesty is the best policy!
And it’s the reason for Lucky Jim’s LUCK. He has a knack of endearing folks to himself by it. Yes, he’s candid; but he always takes shortcuts! And he gets even with all of his malefactors harmlessly - by zanily larfing.
In 1971 I started coasting at university. I had won two faculty awards and just decided to rest on my laurels a bit. BIG MISTAKE. My junior and senior years yielded meagre results. Twice lucky, and twice more shy!
I got my degree by the skin of my teeth in the end because I too took shortcuts.
I guess it was primarily because of two extracurricular novels I read that Sophomore year: Waugh’s Decline and Fall, and this one.
Waugh’s moral was religious and preachy.
Amis’ novel was neither - and it had a POSITIVE message. Both were outrageously funny books about COASTING university students like me, who survived.
I preferred Lucky Jim: it taught me to be bright and positive no matter how bad things got. And Amis gave me license to Fake It a little. Cause it was all a harmless game.
Funny, isn’t it, how kids take novelists as their main mentors no matter how dire the consequences may be!
Or fictional characters - like Holden Caulfield or even Duddy Kravitz. Too bad for them, if they never know better. Our gripes tend to cast anchor at such conveniently Self-aggrandizing literary rest stops. Too bad for us if that leads to the depressive Wormies!
At school, though - getting back to my own fraud - I could fake it reasonably well. I sang in the choir of the university choral society and I even faked that. I could never read music unless my fingers were on a keyboard (that’s how I oriented myself)!
But later, there was gonna be all Heck to pay for it all...
When, later on, I had to prepare budgetary estimates and forecasts of cash flow at work, I had to have all my ducks lined up and strictly accounted for, or I’d be OUTTA THERE!
And you can bet the Big Cheeses let me know that. Stress city! But just like Jim, Lady Luck was beside me.
So Jim’s only still a kid, and he’s honest.
Well and good so far.
But when eventually he’s married, managing the household budget and holding down a full time job on top of all that during his career, and a social misfit to boot, as I was, he’ll have to be PRETTY DARNED GOOD.
No more coasting!
Good AT it... and a GOOD PERSON at heart.
Yes, this is a funny novel, and Amis’ best.
But if you don’t want to pay the piper later, DON‘T imitate Jim and just try to fake it through life.
Take my word for it.
I learned the HARD way...
Cause the Bad Guys never stopped Watching me -
Just Shape Up, kid, or Ship Out!
Rating: really liked it
Lucky Jim reminds me of The Beatles. I like the Beatles. I enjoy the Beatles. I can recite all the reasons why The Beatles are supposed to be the greatest, most culturally relevant rock band in history. And yet... As a person who grew up post-Beatles, and who has heard The Beatles ALL THE TIME her entire life, the difference between the impact that I am told The Beatles should have on me, and the actual impact that The Beatles have on me, is a huge, yawning chasm of incomprehensibility.
Lucky Jim reminds me of The Beatles.
For years I've heard that this novel is the funniest of the 20th century, possibly of all time. It's had a huge impact on some of my favorite writers and comedians. It sets the standard for satires of class issues. And I did like it. I enjoyed it. It was amusing. And yet... There's huge, yawning Beatles-shaped chasm between my expectations of enjoyment of Lucky Jim and my actual enjoyment of Lucky Jim. And maybe it's just that I'm too young, too American to appreciate how radical Lucky Jim was when it was published. Maybe, like The Beatles, you just had to be there in order to really grasp the full impact of the work...
Rating: really liked it
This is a book packed with humor on every page. The blurbs tell us it is “Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century.” I’ll give examples but let me first tell you a bit about the story:
Jim Dixon is an adjunct faculty member at a British university. He’s under pressure to get something published and when he finds his title “It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article’s niggling mindlessness, it’s funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems.”
Jim isn’t a good-looking guy. He’s short and broad-shouldered but he looks odd because he’s so skinny. His doddering supervising professor essentially has Alzheimer’s and all kinds of quirks. The professor has asked Dixon to take care of an unattractive female professor who lives in the professor’s house. That leads to a pseudo-romantic relationship and no end of problems and entanglements with the woman and his professor’s elderly wife. The professor’s son comes to visit for a time and Dixon makes the mistake of going after the son’s woman friend even though she’s out of his class.
The title of the book gives us a theme. Joseph Conrad wrote “It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.” Dixon, down on his luck, understands better than most because lucky people tend to attribute their good luck to hard work, their great abilities, and so on. He’s tells us more than once the simple truism that we might forget: “It was one more argument to support his theory that nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”
“All that could logically be said was that Christine was lucky to look so nice. It was luck you needed all along; with just a little more luck he’d had been able to switch his life on to a momentarily adjoining track, a track destined to swing aside at once away from his own.”
“To write things down as luck wasn’t the same as writing them off as nonexistent or in some way beneath consideration… there was no end to the way in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones. It had been luck too, that had freed him … And now he badly needed another dose of luck. If it came, he might yet prove to be of use to somebody.”
Dixon is bright enough to realize that he often brings on his own bad luck. Smoking in bed gives us a hilarious episode and his excessive drinking gives us several others.
Some examples of the humor:
“Bertrand, Dixon had to admit, was quite presentable in evening clothes, and to say of him now that he looked like an artist of some sort would have been true without being too offensive.”
“There was a small golden emblem on his tie resembling some heraldic device or other, but proving on closer scrutiny to be congealed egg-yolk.”
“When she turned and faced him [to dance] at the edge of the floor, he found it hard to believe that she was really going to let him touch her, or that the men near them wouldn’t spontaneously intervene to prevent him.”
Of a couple dancing: “She permanently resembled a horse, he only when he laughed…]
“He reflected that the Arab proverb urging this kind of policy was incomplete: to ‘take what you want and pay for it’ it should add ‘which is better than being forced to take what you don’t want and paying for that.’”
His landlady at the boarding house serves soggy cornflakes, pallid fried eggs, bright red bacon, explosive toast and diuretic coffee. Of one of the other boarders he tells us “As so often, especially in the mornings, his demeanor seemed to imply that he was unacquainted with the other two and had, at the moment, no intention of striking up any sort of relation with them.”
An academic novel that’s a hilarious read and a break from more serious stuff.
(Edited 12/3/2021)
Photo of Oxford University from ox.ac.uk
The author from hyperallegic.com
Rating: really liked it
I laughed once – page 243! - and otherwise I barely smiled, but I could see exactly where I
would have been roaring and splurting had I been one of the 500,000 people who think this novel is one of the all time hootiest of hoots. (Wiki :
Christopher Hitchens described it as the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century and Toby Young has judged it the best comic novel of the 20th century. So there.)
There is no doubt that Kingsley Amis has a lovely deft deadly turn of phrase. Here our young medieval history lecturer is talking with his aggravating old fool of a professor :
An expression of unhappiness was beginning to settle on Welch’s small-eyed face. Dixon was at first pleased to see this evidence that Welch’s mind could still be reached from the outside
Now, as Dixon had been half-expecting all along, Welch produced his handkerchief. It was clear that he was about to blow his nose. This was usually horrible, if only because it drew unwilling attention to Welch’s nose itself, a large, open-pored tetrahedron.Lucky Jim is a rom-com, but comedy is always only the top level of what’s going on in comedy, and just under the surface of Jim’s vicious daydreams of stabbing the professor and vomiting on his dreadful son there is a very human, very sad and desperate picture of a guy who’s found himself in a job he hates and in a vague, not quite romantic relationship with a woman he only
very faintly likes but feels obligated to, and anyway, it’s not like there are any other female candidates around. His days are thus filled with a mixture of toadying, fawning, apologizing, being hedged in, hemmed in, feeling awkward, wrong-footed, socially inferior, and desperate to pass his probationary year so he can look forward to a career composed of more toadying and fawning and more lectures he dreads having to write. His situation is grisly, and I think, quite common, then and now. In a future decade he’d be ingesting pharmaceuticals for sure, but all he has to alleviate this inverted Vesuvius of bubbling suppression is beer and cigarettes, this being the very late 1940s; and so we get pages of extraordinarily detailed description of the pleasures and ravages of beer and fags. The women of every decade up to the last one have had to accept smooching from men reeking of beer and smoking. I guess people can get used to pretty much anything.
A rom-com has to have obstacles for the temporary thwarting of the young lovers, and these are often in the form of arrogant buffoons like Malvolio in
Twelfth Night or Daniel Cleaver in
Bridget Jones’ Diary or Pete in
Shaun of the Dead. Lucky Jim has two, the bearded painter Bertrand, and the “neurotic” Margaret. Bertrand is a stock figure of slapstick fun, and Margaret is far and away the most interesting , because most disturbing, character in the book.
She’s a 30-something spinster and by means of a suicide attempt has emotionally blackmailed our hero Jim into thinking she’s too fragile for him to suggest that actually, they aren’t involved at all, they just drift around social functions together as mates do. The book, in the form of Jim’s musings, is quite explicit about looksism here – if only she was the
slightest bit attractive, there might be something in it for Jim :
What a pity it was, he thought, that she wasn’t better-looking, that she didn’t read articles in the three-halfpenny press that told you what lipstick went with what natural colouring. With twenty per cent more of what she lacked in these ways, she’d never have run into any of her appalling difficulties : the vices and morbidities bred of loneliness would have remained safely dormant until old age.Well, that’s not what you expect from a beloved cosy comic novel. Amis places this character at the centre of the novel, next to Jim, and he says well –
he was lucky, in the end, and she …. wasn’t. Yes, bad luck that she didn’t have the wherewithal to accentuate even the meagre resources granted her by her bad luck face and figure, but you can’t waste your life sticking around trying to make such hopeless cases feel better. So just be grateful that you're not like her. Life’s for living. Hey ho. The fate of Margaret casts a retrospective coldness over the whole novel, and the glaring nasty attempt by Amis to say, in the end, oh well, she brought all her troubles down on her own head is unpleasant and a transparent attempt to blame the victim to allow the romcom couple to glow off into a cuddly future.
This book was discussed on a recent BBC Radio 4 programme “A Good Read” (not to be confused with a certain website). (I recommend this programme to anyone who can listen via the BBC website.) The two women and one man didn’t find any of this especially objectionable, just mentioned that this novel is very much “of its time” and grooved on the verbal humour, which, I agree, lies around in heaps.
The bit which did make me laugh was an anguished bus journey where Jim is in true romcom denouement style trying to make it to the train station in time before the gorgeous Christine legs it to London, and all these wheezy old dears and farm vehicles slow the bus down to a crawl
Far ahead an emaciated brown hand appeared from the lorry's cab and made a writhing, beckoning movement. The driver of the bus ignored this invitation in favour of drawing to a gradual halt by a bus-stop outside a row of thatched cottages. The foreshortened bulks of two old women dressed in black waited until the bus was quenched of all motion before clutching each other and edging with sidelong caution out of Dixon's view towards the platform. – the exact same scene pops up in the so very much funnier
Trainspotting where Renton and his pals are on a bus on their way to score and again old farts keep getting on and off and Renton’s thoughts, you may imagine, even more lurid and violent than Jim Dixon’s. So if you want to make me laugh with your novel, a scene where old people are getting slowly on and off a bus while the hero impotently gnaws the back of the seat in front will do the trick every time.
This was Kingsley's first novel and that's got to be impressive. In 1954 he was the one to watch all right.
Rating: really liked it
"His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum." (64)
Oh, that inconceivable wit! I love English literature generally for its whimsy & elegance combined. f"Lucky Jim" happens to charm the pants off readers. It is "Brideshead Revisited"-lite, K. Amis being an obvious disciple of E. Waugh (and, let me tell you, there is no better master than this English satirist). It's a romcom in which every single guy can relate to inglorious James Dixon (I certainly did, especially to all the departmental drama [i.e. student versus teacher & other such vapid rivalries]in the perilous voyage to MFA), whose truest intentions are good (&, like any modern man's, rather selfish) in spite of his constant tumbles and missteps in this engrossing comedy, subtitled "a rollicking misadventure."
Novels about the life academic--like the best of them in fact, "Rules of Attraction," "The Secret History," "The Marriage Plot", "Joe College" &, my personal fave, "The Art of Fielding-- are rare and to be dearly treasured. This one totally ranks highly among those aforementioned.
Rating: really liked it
Un roman mai mult sau mai puțin umoristic, o satiră a moravurilor academice provinciale. Subiectul în sine e valabil, dar efortul încăpățînat al autorului de a stîrni rîsul (cu orice preț) mi s-a părut de cele mai multe ori patetic. Romanul a avut ecou, semn că englezii s-au amuzat. S-a făcut și un film. N-am simțit nici o dorință să-l văd.
În romanul lui Kingsley Amis, există, de fapt, două povești amestecate. Prima s-ar putea intitula „Pajul cel sărman și pintenii de cavaler” și se referă la eforturile lui Jim Dixon de a-l convinge pe profesorul Welch că merită un post în departamentul pe care [Welch] îl conduce. Îi face curte, îi verifică articolele (și trimiterile), participă pios la seratele muzicale organizate de Magistru. Dar Jim nu are nici vocație și nici noroc. Arta profesorului Welch de a amîna pînă la calendele grecești un răspuns hotărît e fără cusur și mai presus de puterea de a rezista a ucenicului. Prin acest fir narativ,
Jim cel norocos este un „roman de campus”, în terminologia lui David Lodge. Autorul descrie o universitate mediocră, cu profesori mediocri, cu studenți mediocri.
A doua poveste s-ar putea numi „Pajul cel sărman și Prințesa cea bogată”. La una dintre seratele din casa Welch, Jim o cunoaște pe Christine Callaghan. Din păcate, Christine e prietena lui Bertrand, unul dintre fiii profesorului, un „pictor pacifist”, lipsit de orice talent și plin de ifose. Jim e într-o relație fără cap și fără coadă cu Margaret. Cînd le compară pe cele două femei, tînărul aspirant la un post universitar constată din nou că n-a avut noroc. Inima îl trage spre Prințesă, Margaret îl trage spre ea. Dar, în spatele scenei, norocul (întotdeauna orb) stă la pîndă. Jim și Bertrand încing o partdă de box, învinsul (Bertrand) se prăbușește secerat la podea, Jim se alege cu un ochi umflat. Nu are rost să rezum mai departe, sfîrșitul se poate bănui. În pofida oricărei logici, Prințesa îl preferă pe bietul paj.
Mai puțin convingătoare mi s-au părut tentativele repetate (și disperate) ale lui Kingsley Amis de a trezi în cititori buna dispoziție. Umorul prozatorului englez seamănă, mai degrabă, cu strîmbăturile lui Louis de Funès. Nu există descriere fizică fără comparații caricaturale: fața cuiva e „palidă ca o bucată de slănină”. Același sau altul are fața de „culoarea brînzei cu cheag”. Cutare „eliberează un lung hohot de rîs anarhist, ca sunetul unui trombon”. În fine, Jim „își rostogolește ochii în cap ca pe niște bile și își suge obrajii, căpătînd expresia unui tuberculos”.
Ăsta nu mi se pare umor englezesc...
P. S. Nu pot nega însă că fraza care o caracterizează pe Christine e scrisă de un meseriaș: „Îşi aminti stingherit groaznica strălucire a pielii ei, limpezimea demoralizantă a ochilor, albeaţa nesăbuită a dinţilor uşor neregulaţi”. Mi-aș dori și eu o femeie cu astfel de ochi, deși nu m-aș simți cîtuși de puțin demoralizat...
Rating: really liked it
In this comic classic from 1954, an...oh God, I can't. I can't muster the fucks for one more book about a white guy who works at a university. I can't. I don't want any more.
Here is the plot: this white guy, I don't know, and then whatever. Here's how I felt about it: I felt ennui. I don't care, put me in a chair by the window, put on soft music, let me die.
Rating: really liked it
to celebrate labor day and fall and back-to-school, here is a list of campus fiction & stuff that i put together:
Two facts that are not related, but seem as though they ought to be:
1) Autumn is my favorite season
2) I love both campus novels and campus thrillers
What’s not to love: brisk weather, fresh notebooks, hungry, impressionable minds, maybe a murder or two… So, to celebrate the return of fall and all its academic possibilities, here is a back-to-school reading list for you: 52 adult fiction titles winnowed down through the same process of blood, sweat, tears, alcohol and research as defined my own years of academic rigor.
It’s a “something for everyone” bridge mix list of classic and contemporary titles in a variety of treatments: traditional campus novels having a laugh at pompous academics, nostalgic coming-of-age school days, comedies about the hopeless bureaucratic tangle of academia and politics, plus some murder and light cannibalism.
Whether you are going off to school yourself or are the proud parents of students, whether you remember your long-past school days with nostalgia or relief, there are bound to be a few books here with something to teach you, and you don't even have to get out of your pajamas for this class.
http://www.rifflebooks.com/list/24096...
Rating: really liked it
This book is invariably described as a comedy. Well, there's no doubt that it's often very funny, but to me it read more as a philosophical novel about the nature of love; in particular, about the question of whether it is better, in romantic matters, to behave selfishly or unselfishly. As you will see in my review of
Atlas Shrugged, this is a subject I find very interesting. Kingsley Amis's position is in some ways not that far from Ayn Rand's, but it's far more nuanced. In particular, Amis is clear that he thinks selfishness is only a virtue in romantic contexts, not in general.
I liked the following passage. Jim, as usual not quite sober, has been asked by Christine, the girl of his dreams, if she should marry a man whom Dixon loathes.
'Are you in love with him?'
'I don't much care for that word,' she said, as if rebuking a foul-mouthed tradesman.
'Why not?'
'Because I don't know what it means.'
He gave a quiet yell. 'Oh, don't say that; no, don't say that. It's a word you must often have come across in conversation and literature. Are you going to tell me it sends you flying to the dictionary every time? Of course you're not. I suppose you mean it's purely personal --- sorry, got to get the jargon right --- purely subjective.'
'Well it is, isn't it?'
'Yes, that's right. You talk as though it's the only thing that is. If you can tell me whether you like greengages or not, you can tell me whether you love Bertrand or not, if you want to tell me, that is.'
'You're still making it much too simple. All I can really say is that I'm pretty sure I was in love with Bertrand a little while ago, and now I'm rather less sure. That up-and-down business doesn't happen with greengages; that's the difference.'
'Not with greengages, agreed. But what about rhubarb, eh? What about rhubarb? Ever since my mother stopped forcing me to eat it, rhubarb and I have been conducting a relationship that can swing between love and hatred every time we meet.'
'That's all very well, Jim. The trouble with love is that it gets you in such a state you can't look at your own feelings dispassionately.'
'That would be a good thing if you could do it, then?'
'Why, of course.'
He gave another quiet yell, this time some distance above middle C. 'You've got a long way to go, if you don't mind me saying so, even though you are nice. By all means view your own feelings dispassionately, if you feel you ought to, but that's nothing to do with deciding whether (Christ) you're in love. Deciding that's no different from the greengages business. What is difficult, and this time you really do need this dispassionate rubbish, is deciding what to do about being in love if you are, whether you can stick the person you love enough to marry them, and so on.'
'Why, that's exactly what I've been saying, in different words.'
'Words change the thing, and anyway the whole procedure's different. People get themselves all steamed up about whether they're in love or not, and can't work it out, and their decisions go all to pot. It's happening every day. They ought to realise that the love part's perfectly easy; the hard part is the working out, not about love, but about what they're going to do. The difference is that they can get their brains going on that, instead of taking the sound of the word "love" as a signal for switching them off. They can get somewhere, instead of indulging in a sort of orgy of self-catechising about how you know you're in love, and what love is anyway, and all the rest of it. You don't ask yourself what greengages are, or how you know whether you like them or not, do you? Right?'
Rating: really liked it
This book is remarkable for the amount of physical humour; I sometimes felt that I was watching a Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd film. There are many descriptions of making (and imagining making) peculiar facial expressions, generally accompanied by suppressed rage ("...tried to flail his features into some sort of response to humour. Mentally, however, he was making a different face and promising himself he’d make it actually when next alone. He’d draw his lower lip in under his top teeth and by degrees retract his chin as far as possible, all this while dilating his eyes and nostrils. By these means he would, he was confident, cause a deep dangerous flush to suffuse his face."). This is paralleled by the making of odd noises ("he threw back his head, filled his lungs, and let loose a loud and prolonged bray of rage"). There is a wonderful description of falling asleep drunk.
Amis particularly mocks the provincial academic aspiration to high culture, exemplified in Dixon's supervisor, Professor Welch (‘Now a recorder, you know, isn’t like a flute, though it’s the flute’s immediate ancestor, of course. To begin with, it’s played, that’s the recorder, what they call
à bec ...’). Dixon's responses when dragooned into cultural weekends at Welch's home, or forced to give an public lecture on Merrie England, are shambolic.
One of the finest things about this novel is the ending. Amis paints Dixon into a corner where, dismissed from his job as history lecturer after a series of disastrous actions, he is rescued by the rich uncle of his girlfriend-to-be. It is a common thing in literature for a deserving poor hero to be redeemed from his distressing circumstances by the wealthy relative of a fair damsel the hero has rescued; that is the core Horatio Alger plot. Dixon is one of Alfred Doolittle's Undeserving Poor, which of course is why he is Lucky Jim.
Rating: really liked it
The party was a handsome piece of flatulent sobriety, JR noted to himself. Glitters fluttered all around, bandy shanks of a particularly smelly vegetation filled the bodacious hall. No doubt, the decorators in their sheer genius prioritized the visceral over the nasal. It was going to be one of those nights when he would have to pretend that he loved the smell of urine, which was the scent the cursed broccoli were emitting. He would have to endure much more than he thought. As if on cue, the band started playing a pop song he despised. Unlucky sonofabitch, he cursed under his breath. Then he saw them, the wretched little group he had come here for. The group consisted of Dixon, a louse; Bertrand, an asshole; Christine, an angel; Carol, whatever; Margaret, whatever; and Gore-Something, a damn hard name to remember. He started towards them when whack, a tray full of champagne engulfed him. Maconochie, serving as waiter, had somehow collided with him. Fortunately, he was mostly splashed in the face and not in his suit. Cursing Maconochie, who was full of apologies, he divined it a waste of time to skin the bastard so he moved on. Handkerchief in face, he approached the group.
‘Damn shame those wasted champagne, it would’ve been nice to have a lick at them,’ mused Bertrand.
He wanted to gouge the man’s eyes, the nerve of him to feel sorry for the champagne he thought, but instead he said smiling, ‘You can have a lick at my face, if you want. You might get a drop or two out of me, some sweat’s sure to come along with it though.’
‘Oh thank you very much, but I’d have to decline your tempting offer.’ Bertrand said this with a little smile.
JR whiffed a faint scent of a sexual advance in the overall effect of the remark and the smile. Was this Bertrand character flirting with him? he laughed. ‘So what do you guys think of the new novel?’ he started. Nobody minded his question. He had to find a better opening. Of course, they wouldn’t simply bite. He would have to work for it.
He moved to a spot beside Gore-Something and said “We’ve met a few days before, remember?”
Gore-Something replied “Ahh, yes. I remember you.. what was the name again, sorry?”
“J R, JR Bacdayan”
“So the letters J and R are both spelled individually without making use of their sound? Hmm.. a curious name. A curious name, indeed. I would have thought that a name with two letters would be easy to say, like Jo or Ty. Easy to pronounce, no? But to have to spell two letters, ahh, such hard work. Shall I call you Jay, for convenience sake, if you don’t mind?” Gore-Something said this with a bemused tone.
JR was a bit indifferent towards Gore-Something at first, he was a cheeky fellow but he didn’t look queer which was good though his name did suggest imbecility. But all this indifference towards Gore-Something developed into supreme hatred when the latter gave his little soliloquy about JR’s name. ‘The indolent fool,’ he thought to himself, ‘he doesn’t have the gall to pronounce my name does he? Well I won’t have it. I’ll make the limy bastard pay. I’ll make him spell the entire bloody alphabet.’
JR said in a loud booming voice, ‘Yes, I do mind, sir. I’d like to be called my name. I don’t like this lazy business about you, sir.’
Gore-Something looked wounded. ‘I was merely suggesting, old boy. You needn’t have to call me lazy. It was all for efficiency’s sake, see. All for efficiency.’
‘Do you not see the irony, my good sir?’ JR beamed, ‘You make everyone call you Mr. Gore-Urquhart!’ (Thank God he recalled the ridiculous name.) ‘A damn hard name to remember, much less say, sir. And yet you can’t pronounce a name as simple as JR?’ He ended this by giving a little smile, he hoped to dear God it wasn’t interpreted as a sexual advance.
‘Ha ha!’ laughed Gore-Urquhart. He was growing large beads of sweat on his gigantic amphibious nose. ‘I see you are quite the funny man, Mr. JR. A good joke. A good joke, indeed!’
JR got a bit confused, he wasn’t joking. At the very least he was partially glad that he didn’t offend Gore-Urquhart even if it was just what he intended to do. He would need the large-nosed bastard later on.
‘Why so serious, darling?’ chimed Margaret.
‘Oh I wasn’t, it’s as Mr. Gore-Urquhart said. It was a joke, nothing more.’ JR felt a bit thankful towards this distraction. A quick reconnaissance of Margaret suggested she was very drunk and very unrestrained. Not a very good combination considered JR. He would have to stay away from this trap, not that it was very hard. The poor woman wore mismatched colors and looked like the wretched offspring of a rainbow and a flamingo. He even noticed a bit of lipstick on one of her incisors. He flashed her a winning smile. Now this was unmistakably a sexual advance, he thought.
‘Mr. JR, what do you do exactly?’ inquired Carol rather out of the blue.
He felt a wave of nausea hit him. ‘Why did this woman want to know? She’s one of them smart alecks, I bet. Anyway, anyone named Carol must love Christmas, and people who love Christmas are the worst. God he could picture her sitting under a Christmas tree singing a bloody carol.’ He shuddered with the thought.
‘I write book reviews, Madame’ he said with a detectable trace of apprehension in his voice.
‘Oh, so you like books don’t you?’ Carol said this with a surging confidence as if such an original statement was never uttered before.
‘Oh, I abhor them. I’d rather read filthy magazines’ affable contempt pouring out of his voice now.
‘I see,’ replied Carol.
It took all he had not to break her neck. No she didn’t see, not even close. He gave her a slight nod.
Christine started laughing.
‘My my Mr. JR, you shouldn’t play with Carol like that,’ she said smiling. ‘She’s had a bit to drink so you musn’t take this obtuseness against her.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ he smiled back.
He felt himself staring at her. His affection for this woman was genuine. She was perhaps the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on. Luscious blonde hair, penetrating blue eyes, thick lips, perfect nose and high cheekbones on a perfectly symmetrical head and curvy body, he felt himself considering the word love. This was confirmed by his sweat glands, for he was now sweating rather profusely in the armpit area. He tried to maneuver a fake head tilt to disguise his attempt to smell it. His attempt failed, though he could see Christine trying hard to suppress a laugh. She moved beside him and whispered, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t smell that bad, let me have a whiff.’ He felt his heart stop. He couldn’t move. His body had failed him. ‘Dd.. dod.. don’t not.’ He stuttered. She slid a finger on his left armpit, rubbed it on her wrist and smelled it like she was smelling perfume. He was horrified.
‘I could get used to this smell,’ she smiled at him.
He recognized something in her look. This was his chance, he was going to roll the dice. He wished for luck.
He slid closer to Christine and kissed her. She didn’t push him away.
‘Oyy what do you think you’re doing to my girl!’ shouted Dixon.
‘I’m not your girl, Jim. I’m my own girl. I’ll kiss whoever I damn please,’ Christine looked quite flushed but the anger in her voice was discernible.
‘I’ll have a go at you, you wanker!’ cried Dixon. He jumped towards JR and tried to land a punch, but he was quite drunk and had double vision. He ended up fisting the air.
JR took the opportunity and shouted at Dixon ‘What do you think about the novel, Jim?’
Dixon cried ‘What? Are you trying to be funny with your novel, mate?’
‘It’s your novel.’ JR laughed at him.
‘Trying to be funny, are we chap? I’m bloody livid. I’ll wreck you and your nan and all this funny business.’ Dixon moved towards him.
JR took a swing and hit him perfectly at the bridge of his nose. Dixon fell moaning and didn’t get up. The group was looking at them, too drunk to care. They were smiling. Bertrand even shouted, ‘well done, fellow!’ Somehow the party went on like nothing of the fighting sort had happened. People were still dancing and cavorting like toads on a pond. ‘What an age,’ JR thought.
Tired of all this atrocity and fallaciousness he finally took his leave, Christine with him, and headed for the exit
Walking towards the door, Christine around his arm he whispered to her, ‘it’s my turn to be lucky.’
She kissed him on the cheek and they disappeared into the night.
Rating: really liked it
Jim Dixon is a university history lecturer with a growing feeling that he is not quite in the right place in life but economically can do nothing about it. Not only that, but he finds himself surrounded by people who he would prefer not to have surrounded near. So how will it persuade his professor Mr Welchto recommend that he be kept in his position after his trial employment period ends? He should listen avidly to him, no matter where he is or what he is talking over. To this end, he accepts all weekend and evening invitations from Mr Welch. This fact is a difficult thing to put up with, as Jim finds him incredibly annoying. However, the situation is made more tolerable by resorting to schoolboy tricks like writing insults in the condensation on the mirror and having a collection of stupid faces to pull behind his back. He meets the neurotic Margaret, and although he tries to persuade himself that a relationship with her is the proper and sensible thing to do, he ends up wishing he could make a loud, rude noise in her face or shove a bead up her nose. He finds John a snitch, and Bernard is annoying and hostile. There are upsides to his life, though. His friend Atkinson joins forces with him to outwit their wealthier colleagues, and he executes several plots to get even with the snitch Johns, giving himself a very satisfactory feeling. Then there's Christine. Once he gets to know her, she definitely should be his girl and not Bertrand's - despite the looks that old ladies give him because of their age difference. And maybe his upcoming Merrie England lecture in front of a vast audience, including students, senior colleagues, and the professor himself, will endear him to the higher classes. You will enjoy this book if you want a good laugh at what a university lecturer and his friends can get up. Jim Dixon finds a way to get even with the people he does not like hilariously.
Rating: really liked it
Meh.
What happened? I was really looking forward to reading this having become a fan of Kingsley Amis and his random assembly of hapless, oh-so-british characters after reading The Green Man (its on the 1001 books list so check it out!) and so I picked up Lucky Jim.
Meh.
The trademark and original (this was his first book) Kingsley characterisations were here but this time they all seemed flattened and thinly stretched. Like that last pan cake when you're running out of batter. All of the characters became a series of faceless, bodiless names floating around inside my brain and after 50 pages I was struggling to keep track of who was who and why I should give a damn. Dixon, Welch, Margaret, Bertrand, Christine and a whole cast of academic sub-characters, malingerers and hangers on swirled together in a sort of raspberry ripple (sticky, bland and atypically British) of socialising and snarking.
I know this book has a whole heap of admirable pedigrees and background with characters, situations and places being based on Philip Larkin- a homage - while the sending up of the academic community is something that I, as a fringe loiterer of said community, would whole heartedly applaud and encourage more of. Two stars have been begrudgingly awarded because maybe there was something that I overlooked here. Maybe I'm just too dumb? Maybe my satire button was switched off today? Whatever the reason, I think that if the characters were a) better described b) less interchangeable c) smarter then I'd have probably raved about this book.
Rating: really liked it
The gold standard for seditious British humor. As an old man, Kingsley converted to a Tory welcome at all the best clubs. However, when he wrote this diamond he was a Trotskyite undergraduate who had seen combat while most of his contemporaries had not. Most of his dons at Oxford sat out the war as well. He already decided he had had enough of rules & regulations in the Army. Yet he must get on in college somehow. Most of the book depicts Kingsley's sometimes clandestine, sometimes open warfare with the British class system.
In his Memoirs, Kingsley stated that one of his discoveries at Oxford was that he had "a head for drink". In this book, he does in fact drink a good deal, usually with rollicking results.
The book can easily coax belly laughs out of me forty years after reading it: the author accidentally sets fire to his bedclothes while staying overnight with his professor; he clumsily attempts to hide his accidental arson from the professor's wife; he brawls with the horrible Bernard (his professor's son); he boxes Bernard's ear while applying to Bernard an James Joyce oath; he romances Bernard's girl; finally he delivers his drunken lecture on 'Merrie England'to a huge frumpy audience, which finally ends his academic career.
