Jarv’s Favourite Books. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
It’s been a while since I delved back into my extensive library. Not sure why, really, other than that I was vacillating over which book to do next. Part of me thought that I’d review one of the more difficult Murakami books, and I did want to cover The Bonfire of the Vanities, but Droid’s just started reading it. However, in the end, Kingsley Amis’ debut novel, Lucky Jim, was looking at me on the shelf, and the choice was just obvious.
Jim Dixon is a lecturer at a fictitious British University in the 1950′s. Due to an inexplicable cock-up when he first arrived, he’s terrified that his position is under threat. However, given that he detests his job, his superior (Professor Welch) and his life in general, this isn’t necessarily a surprise for him. Nor is it a shock to him that almost all of his current travails are as a result of some ludicrous misunderstanding or other. He’s romantically involved with the truly dreadful Margaret, also a lecturer, and whiles his days away in an alcohol-driven stupor planning how he can get the three prettiest girls in the History department to take his course. Lucky Jim follows his disastrous escapades at the various fartily academic events he has to attend, his attempts to steal Welch’s son Bertrand’s girlfriend Christine and the novel culminates in Dixon getting completely plastered and butchering the lecture intended to save his career. I won’t spoil the actual end of the novel, but needless to say, Jim does indeed turn out to be Lucky.
Kingsley Amis is frequently referred to as one of the Angry Young Men of British Literature in the 50′s (others of note included John Osborne), but I think that does him a disservice. While Osborne wrote psuedo-comedy such as Look Back in Anger that dripped with venom and bitterness in a very Kitchen Sink setting, Lucky Jim is not so moribund. At the end of the day, Dixon is simply having a Generation X crisis: his job is crushing his soul, his relationship is in the absolute doldrums, and he’s simply frustrated at how his life has turned out, and he’s never got enough money for drink and cigarettes. It’s no surprise that I really, really empathise with him. Admittedly, his main outlet for his frustrations is to play a variety of practical jokes on his loathsome flatmate and make faces (“Sex Life in Ancient Rome”) behind the backs of those who incompetence plagues his existence, but, hey, what else can he do as it’s very clear that he’s completely powerless and at the whims of those he finds to be inept and ridiculous (Welch, usually).
Dixon’s internal monologue is the main feature that makes Lucky Jim sparkle. The big set pieces are all downright hilarious in their own right, but it’s the internal stream of bitterness that really brings the laughs:
Nor did he, on the whole, now intend to tie Welch to a chair and beat him round the head and shoulders with a bottle until he disclosed why, without being French himself, he’d given both his sons French names.
Who hasn’t felt like this? Dixon hates the ineptitude and the inanities of the History Department. He hates the personal failings of Welch and family, and he despises that he’s allowed himself to get into this position where he’s so reliant on the whims of a man he clearly loathes, not to mention that he’s tied himself into a relationship with an emotionally manipulative drama-addicted psychotic.
Aside from Dixon, all the characters are supremely well drawn. Bertrand is the psueds psued, and Christine is a wonderful, attractive pragmatic female character. She’s a shining beacon of normality in an otherwise farcical cast of characters. Margaret is a bundle of neurosis wrapped in a ribbon of lunacy, and Mrs. Welch is a harridan with a severe attitude problem. As well drawn as all the characters are, the key pleasure is that they drive the absurdist events of the novel- Jim cocks up at the arty weekend, which leads to deception to attempt to cover it up, which in turn leads to future deceptions as more and more mistakes are made. Eventually, the original mistake (a minor one) has become a gigantic Augean stable of a mess, and Dixon needs the cataclysmic tsunami of the final act to wash the shit away.
This is a truly hilarious novel, and after reading it, it did introduce the word “cockchafer” into my vocabulary for a good year or so (I’m thinking about bringing this word back, actually). Dixon is admittedly an Amis surrogate, but he’s spouting the vitriol that the man himself felt, and many of us stuck in crap jobs working under inept and incompetent morons that disguise their lack of talent behind bullshit analytical models and an obsession with meaningless statistics also feel. When something as insignificant about your superior as a faintly ludicrous hat has become their key identifier for you, then you’re dangerously near Dixon territory.
Dixon territory is a bleak and hilariously angry place, and my only suggestion if you’re stuck there, like me, is to follow Jim’s advice yourself: do as little as possible, consume as much alcohol as you can reasonably take, vent your frustrations by making stupid faces behind their backs, and above all else stay Lucky, Jim.
Until next time,
Jarv
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While your write up Jarv made the book sound somewhat interesting I think I would have to pass on reading it. It sounds to me that a person would get more out of the book if they are familiar with the peculiarities of the English style university system and the types that inhabit it. I’m not saying that there isn’t some crossover between the States and the UK in terms of personalities that make up instructors and some of the structural insanity that inhabit both systems. On the other hand each system has their own unique sets of bureaucratic and social perversity that to truly understand them you have to experience them first hand.
The other thing that makes me hesitate to read this book was that my college time was awful for me and I don’t like to revisit the thought of it in any way. For 3.5 years all I did was take a punishing course load year round, do reserve drills for 1.5 years and fight smokers or cage matches on other weekends. Any bit of free time I had was used to train so i could fight and not embarrass myself too much. If I didn’t fight I would have have killed somebody at the college eventually, probably an instructor, of which i did not fare to well with after they found out I was/still a soldier. In fact one crazy bitch was so far around the bend we routinely got into shouting matches that devolved into obscenity laced personal attacks. It got so bad that near the end of the term I started to wear my active duty class A uniforms to class. That is the one I stuck on every ribbon and qualification badge and combat award i earned, wore bloused jump boots and had the combat patch of a particularly hated type unit flying proudly on the right shoulder which in the Army denotes your most prominent combat unit assignment..
Lastly since my career path is at odds with everybody else I think I would end up not liking the main character very much so I think I wouldn’t enjoy the book. Still, your review is well written, and makes me think I should give it a go. Maybe someday I will give it a shot.
It is a period piece from the 1950′s. True, and there is an implicit class problem in the system. However, Dixon isn’t one of the usual man-child types that would upset you. He’s frustrated, drinks too much and holds the upper echelons in contempt.
There’s a particularly telling bit later on where he attributes the problems in the University to Bad Teaching over anything else, and I think that is pretty universal. Plus, half his struggles with Margaret come from his attempts to do the right thing. He’s not passive at all- he fucks up royally through blundering around drunk, but he’s an angry observer. He’s also the least hatable character in the novel. Welch and particularly Bertrand want a proper beating.
They filmed it with Ian Carmichael in the Dixon role in the 50′s, and while not angry as the novel, it’s a pleasant-ish way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday.
In that Dixon and i are kindred spirits.
Universities are rife with stupid ideologically driven bad teachers. In fact it seems that the concept of teaching student to be able to think, comprehend and defend their ideas has been replaced by indoctrinating them in how to think. That has grown generations of students that become cynical in their learning and play the game of giving the instructor what they want to hear. I am very down on big education and the professional educrat establishment.I guess I am a right Tory cunt in that regard.
I am a firm believer in the idea that the best way to learn is audodidatic in nature and primary, secondary and higher education needs to embrace that concept a whole lot more. But hey what do i know I’m not a “processional” educator.
There are so many problems with education in the UK. Almost all of it is down to half-witted ideology
Drives me nuts.
At least you guys are half witted in the states it’s like 1/16th of wit at best.
Well, I pretty much follow Jim’s advice by the look of that final paragraph. With that in mind I probably should give this a go. I do feel intimidated by the subject though. I think I’m intimidated by every book you review!
Good stuff, Jarv – nicely written.
Don’t be intimidated by this one- watch the Carmichael film from the 50′s. It’s a milder version of the book.
Imagine that but with Jim ranting in his head- there are loads of little asides that make me cry laughing (When Welch says “My Word” and the next line is “Quickly thinking of his own word, Jim..”
I’m trying not to be overly literary in these. Adios Muchachos is gleeful trash, Abarat is Clive Barker for under 18′s, Quite Ugly is fun. Decline and Fall is Literary, as is South of the Border. King Rat and Wasp Factory fall somewhere in the middle.
I always like to tackle the book before the film version. Not always possible, but in this case that’s the way I’ll go.
One of my English teachers used to encourage me to read the classics and I’d say the same thing to him, about being worried I won’t ‘get’ it & not clever enough to follow “posh” writing. It’s just me being stupid.
This isn’t posh writing. It’s of its time- but not like Dickens.
Very accessible and very funny.
No, I know, I wasn’t trying to apply “posh” to Lucky Jim at all.
But ‘Kingsley Amis’ – that’s a really posh name!