Appearance
The third galaxy reader
I read this book roughly three times a year-- whenever the world of academia becomes intolerable. I know the plot and several pages by heart, but it never gets old.At first glance, it seems like an indiscriminate stab at any intellectual who, a la Welch, is wildly passionate about his or her subject-- Amis pissed off a lot of people that way. My father, a professor, refused to read "Lucky Jim" because he remembered all of the intolerable anti-intellectuals who hauled the book around in their back pockets when it was published in the fifties, and it's hard to blame him-- but ultimately, I think the joke is on the anti-intellectuals. Amis is an academic man himself. Once you drop below the surface of it, he isn't jabbing at intellectuals at all-- after all, Jim admits that history, "well taught," is a necessary discipline; it's just that he's not the one to teach it. Michie, for my money the one true intellect in the entire book, is only bad in that he makes Jim feel inadequate; he's revealed at the end to be a perfectly decent person. And the fact that Jim leaves academia in the end for a spot as a personal secretary doesn't necessarily reflect badly on academia; after all, he's simply going to be paid for doing what he already did for free at the college-- he's moving on to a new career as a "boredom detector."You could be upset with this book if you respect learning-- but I wouldn't bother. I am hyper-sensitive to that kind of thing myself, and I think that finally this comes down on the side of REAL intelligence, whether you find it in a college or in the private sector.Also, for those who think that Welch is an overdrawn caricature, I can report that I had a class from a man just like him. I used to sing the "Welch tune" in lecture, just to get through the day.
The third galaxy reader
"Lucky Jim" is Jim Dixon - who appears to be a most unlucky man. He recently landed a university teaching job, but he's miserable. Terrible at his job, Dixon is left wondering throughout the book whether his position will be continued. In addition to his job woes, he seems to have great contempt for most everyone around him, including his neurotic girlfriend, Margaret. Things worsen when he's invited for a weekend of music at a senior professor's home and he meets the professor's son - Bertrand. A buffoonish artist, Bertrand nevertheless has an alluring girlfriend, the lovely Christine. Dixon unsurprisingly is drawn to Christine, despite her stuffy manner and seeming arrogance. Embarrassing Bertrand and stealing away Christine become him main priority. In the meantime, he still needs to prepare a lecture on "Merrie England" that will be attended by his superiors and local town dignitaries. Will he survive?The novel is a model of dry British wit - at times laugh-out-loud hilarious. Dixon is a fantastic literary character - a cynic who personifies the scorn we all feel at times. As Amis writes about Dixon, "all his faces were designed to express rage or loathing." In addition to his cynicism, Dixon is incredibly irresponsible and engages in all sorts of mischievousness, resulting in hilarious predicaments. Nevertheless, you cannot help but root for him to succeed.The writing is spectacular - each scene bristles with detail and nuance. In particular, Amis beautifully portrays difficult interpersonal situations frankly and accurately, replete with requisite humor. Although the book drags at times, it's a first-rate read. Most highly recommended, particularly for readers who enjoy novels set in academia.
The third galaxy reader
Kingsley Amis has a brutally acidic wit and he has never employed it to greater effect than when he penned "Lucky Jim". For anyone in academia who has ever suffered through the nauseating condescension of a "venerable" colleague or for any reluctant guest who has ever peered in bewilderment at "the smallest drink they had ever seriously been offered", this book is an absolute joy.It's worth reading this book beside a mirror: Amis' wonderfully, ludicrously specific descriptions of Dixon's facial contortions during moments of irritation will have you twisting your countenance in the most extraordinary way.For me, though, it's the minor characters that really compound this book's status as an all-time classic. Atkinson, Dixon's partner-in-crime when it comes to winding up Johns, the oboe-playing sycophant, is a marvellous figure, whilst Michie's respectful yet slightly sneering insistence on learning more about Dixon's special subject is beautifully done.The scene in the final chapter in which Dixon, splashing at the ears in drink, tries and fails to cobble together a speech about "Merrie England" is a wonderful set piece, matched only in 20th century comic fiction (what I've read of it), for my money, by Augustus Fink-Nottle's address to the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School in P.G.Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves"
The third galaxy reader
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.
The third galaxy reader
because, most likely, it will provoke loud screams of laughter and you'll embarrass yourself. Lucky Jim is the story of Jim Dixon, a lowly lecturer at an English university. In order to keep his job, he must suck up to the fabulously annoying professor, Ned Welch. He's also saddled with an annoying and not very attractive girlfriend and he's given to playing immature pranks on people he doesn't like. Indeed, he divides all mankind into two great classes: people he likes and people he doesn't. Jim also likes his booze, which occaisionally causes him trouble, particularly after an arty-farty week-end party at his boss's house. If you want to read something that's light but intelligent then Lucky Jim is a good choice.
The third galaxy reader
There are hilarious moments in this book, particularly when Amis describes protagonist Jim Dixon when drunk or hung over. Starting chapter six, Amis writes: "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 secret cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad." At the same time, the social assumptions of the character seemed dated, with Dixon, an assistant professor, wondering, for example, what responsibility he would acquire by kissing a young woman. Bottom line, the humor is timeless in this campus novel. But the book captures the social dynamics of your parents or grandparents-provided they were English.