A hilarious satire about college life and high class manners, this is a classic of postwar English literature.Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial … history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics, with each of whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy post-war manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “if you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”
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When you first meet Jim Dixon, what strikes you is not only his penchant for mockery but his incredible ability to pull the most inventive faces. In fact, I counted no less than ten throughout the book, my favorite being his shot-in-the-back face. Those coupled with his irritatable mumblings, drunken ramblings, and blatant ignorance about women make for an antihero par excellence. And the highlight of these antics? A leaden, uninspired speech he must deliver to hundreds of students and faculty entitled “Merrie England,” whatever that means.
If you love scathing, satirical stories featuring romance, give Lucky Jim a try. And don’t worry that the book was published more than sixty years ago. Its razorlike humor is as fresh as ever. Try to decide which is your favorite Jim Dixon face. And imagine you had to deliver that ill-fated “Merrie England” speech. Hint: a few pulls of good Scottish whiskey and you will indeed be merry. Good luck.
Lecturer Jim Dixon’s future in the History Department looks set to blossom, so long as he can forestall the amorous advances of Margaret, while trying to stay on the right side of Professor Welch and his annoying family. But getting lumbered with delivering a lecture on Merrie England isn’t Jim’s only problem…
This edition of the classic comedy caper has an introduction by David Lodge, which I’m sorry to admit I couldn’t be bothered to read. The book itself is enjoyable enough, though the idea of it being ‘hilariously funny’ as some folk would have it, just isn’t true. Amis writes in a way that must have been refreshing and quite delightful at the time (1954), and though his hero is likeable, the dialogue is peppered with clunky phrases that went out of fashion (if they were ever in), many years ago.
The character of Jim is said to be inspired by the poet Philip Larkin, though in my opinion, Larkin had a gift for humour that is light years away from Amis’s creation. While the author’s comments on culture and, in particular, the pretentious nature of people like the Welch family, is mildly amusing, I’d have to say that the novel doesn’t hold up too well against contemporaries like Graham Greene.
All in all, a bit disappointing.
Rereading an old favorite, first published in 1954. This is Kingsley Amis’s first novel, his funniest and least curmudgeonly, and it can still make me laugh out loud in places. Much has been written about its place in modern British fiction (David Lodge provided an interesting introduction in the 1992 Penguin edition), but the main reason to read it is for the sheer fun of it.
Jim Dixon is a young lecturer in history at a provincial British university in the early fifties, not especially talented, not especially ambitious, not at all optimistic. He has a departmental head he detests, the absent-minded and overbearing Welch, and a girlfriend whose main hold on him is guilt, the neurotic Margaret. He is barely getting by on a paltry salary and can only dream of someday being able to move to London, where it’s all happening.
This miserable stasis is upset when he falls for the beautiful Christine, whom he meets at a weekend house party at the Welches’. She is, unfortunately, currently the girlfriend of Welch’s pretentious artist son Bertrand, down from London. The competition for Christine is the main plot driver of the book.
It’s difficult to convey just why this book is so funny; part of it is situation (Jim’s drunken haplessness at the house party) and part of it is language (Welch’s nose is “a large open-pored tetrahedron”). It has to be read to be believed. There is also plenty of seriousness; people are lonely, wayward, confused. They behave badly and fail. That’s what makes this more than just a comic novel. But ultimately it’s the funny bits we remember and go back to, and there is a happy ending. Amis never wrote anything else that was quite so much fun.
Heartily agree with the many who consider Lucky Jim the funniest book of the 20th century.
“Lucky Jim” remains my all-time favorite book, ever. I’ve read it at least six times and it still makes me laugh out loud.
A Classic in humour.