By: Kingsley Amis Publisher: Penguin Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Penguin Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 272 Publication Date: September 01, 1993
Product Description: Kingsley Amis has written a marvelously funny novel describing the attempts of England's postwar generation to break from that country's traditional class structure. When it appeared in England, LUCKY JIM provoked a heated controversy in which everyone took sides. Even W. Somerset Maugham reviewed the book, happily with great favor: "Mr. Kingsley Amis is so talented, his observations so keen, that you cannot fail to be convinced that the young men he so brilliantly describes truly represent the classes with which his novel is concerned."
Amazon.com Review: Although Kingsley Amis's acid satire of postwar British academic life has lost some of its bite in the four decades since it was published, it's still a rewarding read. And there's no denying how big an impact it had back then--Lucky Jim could be considered the first shot in the Oxbridge salvo that brought us Beyond the Fringe, That Was the Week That Was, and so much more.
In Lucky Jim, Amis introduces us to Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer at a British college who spends his days fending off the legions of malevolent twits that populate the school. His job is in constant danger, often for good reason. Lucky Jim hits the heights whenever Dixon tries to keep a preposterous situation from spinning out of control, which is every three pages or so. The final example of this--a lecture spewed by a hideously pickled Dixon--is a chapter's worth of comic nirvana. The book is not politically correct (Amis wasn't either), but take it for what it is, and you won't be disappointed.
Merrie England, Miserable Jim Jim Dixon is in his first year as a college lecturer and he's been in trouble nearly from the second he arrived...unfortunately, since he's also on probation, he's panicking a great deal that he'll lose his job. He despises his boss - an elderly, absent minded and rather self important gentleman called Professor Welch - and doesn't even like his subject, Medieval History. (He only ever studied it himself because he'd seen it as the easy option when he was a student). He's had a few unfortunate encounters with his fellow academics since he started - he'd barely arrived at the college when he accidentally caught the Prof of English with a stone on the knee, and then knocked over the Registrar's Chair at his first Faculty Meeting. (If only the Registrar himself hadn't been on the verge of sitting down...) There had also been the essay submitted by one of Dixon's pupils had submitted an essay heavily criticising a book written by one of Welch's ex-pupils. What made this difficult to sweep under the carpet was the level of Welch's involvement - the book was written at his suggestion and under his guidance - while the essay was based heavily on Dixon's lecture notes.
Jim, however, does have a few allies - including Alfred Beesley, (who works in the college's English Department), Bill Atkinson (someone always happy to provide Jim with a cover story) and Carol Goldsmith (the wife of a colleague at the history department). However, Jim spends most of his time with Margaret - another member of staff at the university. It's not that he particularly wants to - rather, he more or less feels morally obliged to. The problem is things have now got to the point where they're widely seen as a couple. Margaret is now "recovering well" at Welch's house after a recent (apparent) suicide attempt. (Prior to Jim, she'd been spending some time with an utter cad called Catchpole...who, rather understandably, ran off with his new girlfriend to North Wales for a couple of weeks). Jim had been supposed to meet her for a pot of tea that evening , but had backed out to write the following day's lecture...it's something he feels rather guilty about that, bearing in mind what had happened. (This guilt is something Margaret shamelessly trades on throughout the book).
Since Margaret is staying at the Prof's house, Jim can't avoid visiting once in a while. One of the most significant - not to mention disastrous - visits is for a weekend long artistic gathering. Jim manages to set fire to his bedclothes, destroy his bedside table, and make an enemy of Bertrand - one of the professor's sons. Bertrand, a pretentious artist with an awful beard and a significant superiority complex, arrives from London for the proceedings with a very pretty guest called Christine Callaghan. Jim naturally is smitten - but is afraid to make any move...partly for fear of what it will do to Margaret, and partly because he knows stealing Betrand's girlfriend will lower his standing in the Professor's eyes even further. Still, at least he's interested in Christine herself...unlike Bertrand, who's only interested in her uncle - the noted art critic, Julius Gore-Urquhart.
An amusing and easily read book. Jim proves a likeable character - although the laughter comes mostly at his expense, as he lurches from one disaster to another.
neurotic intellectuals in a nerurotic world I enjoyed the clever satire of the absurdity of British academia where status and pretension can be valuable, and yet luck, both good and bad, can suddenly change everything. Very smart, but I just didn't feel the connection with the story personally.
A Dangerous Novel! This novel almost cost me my job. Many years ago I taught a seminar in satire, and one of the books on my reading list was "Lucky Jim." When a senior faculty member heard about this, he tried to rally others in my department to deny me tenure, proving, of course, that the novel's searing attack on academic snootiness was right on. I got tenure anyway, and the novel still makes me smile.
Fun Popular Fiction "Lucky Jim" borders upon enduring excellence as a novel. The writing is strong, but the characters and story are weak which makes this a "good read" or "light fiction" or "popular press" rather than literature. I offer this distinction at the outset since many reviews of this novel praise it so highly and it can lead one to expect something more than you get. When you read to pass time, this is good pasttime reading.
I was particularly struck by Kingsley Amis's strong observation and artful writing. He seems to observe the world closely and accurately, then comments upon it with strong writing. For example, he describes a character as disliking another couple so much the character wonders why the couple doesn't hate each other, too. A fabulous observation and conceit, too.
As other reviewers have noted the situation of the novel is highly specific - post World War II England with academics at a second rate college. The story revolves around a small set of characters most of whom are employed by a college. As someone who spent a lot of time at American universities, I can affirm that the stereotypes of academics appear on both sides of the ocean and it was painful at times to see myself and other colleagues in the characters in this novel. However, you can enjoy the book even if you know nothing about post World War II, England, or universities.
"O lucky Jim, /How I envy him." The British literary theorist Terry Eagleton characterized Kingsley Amis as a "racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays, and liberals." Well well! And what is the reader of "Lucky Jim" to think of such a venomous outpouring of contempt toward the author whose book he innocently holds in his hands? Indeed, Kingsley's famous offspring, Martin Amis, stands accused of following in his father's infamous footsteps. He has had his fair share of literary dust-ups too and is in the middle of a raging and anguished public argument about England's cultural identity. Like father, like son?
Certainly, no matter what anyone says about Kingsley, "Lucky Jim" stands up as a comic masterpiece. For me it's a memorable and complex characterization of British class differences as shown in the myopic world of academia. The tortured reflections of Jim Dixon, lecturer, as he tries desperately to appease the abominable and self-absorbed Professor Welch are at the crux of this classic. Dixon's troubles only begin with Welch. They also involve two women, one who's highly neurotic and rather plain, and another who's very young, very attractive, and very confused. Margaret and Christine are both unfortunately connected to the good Professor, which sets up drawing room comedy of the highest order. Hilarious confrontations and elaborately absurd schemes inundate the action. But what lifts this novel above the rest is the precise and brilliantly realized writing. Listen, for instance, to this passage about Dixon waking up the morning after an excess of drinking: "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 the morning." Wow! Then there's this passage about having breakfast early at his lodging house: "There was something about Miss Cutler's cornflakes, her pallid fried eggs or bright red bacon, her explosive toast, her diuretic coffee which, much better than bearable at nine o'clock, his usual breakfast-time, seemed at eight-fifteen to summon from all the recesses of his frame every lingering vestige of crapulent headache, every relic of past nauseas, every echo of noises in his head." Yes!
I read the Penguin edition with David Lodge's entertaining Introduction (a plot spoiler, by the way, which should be read after you turn the last page of the book). There you can find from Lodge a bit of an apology for Amis' 1950s "politically incorrect" characterization of women. From Amis: "Christine was still nicer and prettier than Margaret, and all the deductions that could be drawn from the fact should be drawn: there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones." But Lodge is generous about this rather simple view of things, since Amis later on found the "nasty" things inescapable. Lodge also places this work in the context of the British literary and theatrical scene of the late-1950s and points out "Lucky Jim"'s mold-breaking impact on that generation. No question this entertaining work cracked open some stodgily sealed doors and piquantly pointed out British academic and cultural absurdities.
O lucky me, to have found this book, warts and all. I highly recommend it.
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