I found myself chuckling when I read The Elegant Variation’s weblog post on:
THE TROUBLE WITH KINGSLEY
My comment:
Thank you for this brilliant blog on Amis -Lucky Jim is just the best humorous novel there is and funnily enough whenever we had lectures by one David Conway :o) a brilliant sociologist lecturer, I kept thinking he’d do something remarkably hilarious as Jim in the novel!
Yes I’d also hope Amis would have produced another such remarkably superb novel - hence I didn’t read his other novels.
Posted by: Coll B. Lue June 19, 2007 at 05:30 AM
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I get a better perception of Kingsley the man now, who appears a ‘cad and bounder’ as a young man and then ‘a mean old sod, a woman-hater, and a reactionary bigot’ later on in life.
The novel, however, has so much going for its humour that I read it a second and third time just to get the laughter out of my system. It is extremely well written, humourous and appropriate a read at uni when you are surrounded by Drs and PhD profs who appear rather sensible in comparison. Although I envisaged the sociology lecturer to be like Lucky Jim, the former was a brilliant lecturer - with his lectures on Philosophy (compulsory in my first year of my English, Writing and Publishing degree course) and he was dedicated to his subject and book writing.
The humour lies in Jim’s apathy in lecturing students he didn’t want to lecture in a subject he didn’t want to teach. Throughout the book, we get the feeling he wanted ‘out’ of uni life and to be free of the burdens of a relationship he didn’t particularly want to be in. Ironically, his new job, after his drunken caricature of his boss, Professor Welch, suits his pocket and he gets to work for someone he admires and be with the girl he loves, so he was finally able to ‘laugh’ wholeheartedly at his former boss for making his life a living ‘hell’.
The humour of working hard at not making an effort seemed to have paid off.
literaryc