Amis is a master of conveying Jim’s staggering disbelief at the foolishness he encounters every day. When you get up to speed you are thrilled to access to Jim’s worldview, even as the world conspires against him. But that makes it sound as if it’s an exalted enterprise: it’s not. Why is that? Like watching Shakespeare’s plotting villains or early episodes of Deadwood, it takes some time to acclimate yourself to the incredibly specific, rarefied language. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to take pause before they plow their way through it. Strangely, some Lucky Jim partisans struggle through the book’s opening the first time they read it. But Lucky Jim remains the benchmark for satire, misbehavior and the absurd demands of adult life. Yes, that’s an absurd statement (Jim himself would surely raise an eyebrow at such a sweeping claim). It may be the funniest book ever written. The novel is trenchant, knowing and audaciously misanthropic. Our hero, Jim Dixon, a young university lecturer, grapples with a stream of improbable academic cranks, pretentious artists, neurotic women, a vengeful oboist and his own self-destructive streak. It’s just been reissued by the invaluable New York Review Books Classics, which is the literary equivalent of receiving a case of Laphroaig. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis’s first novel, was published in 1954 and promptly entered the pantheon of British postwar literature.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |