The Life of Kingsley AmisHere is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned for his blistering intelligence, savage wit and belligerent fierceness of opinion: Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation–having first achieved prominence with the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and as one of the Angry Young Men–but also a dominant figure in post—World War II British writing as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist. In The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader, acclaimed editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis, draws not only on unpublished works and correspondence but also on interviews with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of whom have never spoken out before. The result is a compulsively readable account of Amis’s childhood, school days and life as a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural commentator, professional author, husband, father and lover. Even as he makes the case for Amis’s cultural centrality–at his death Time magazine claimed that “the British decades between 1955 and 1995 should in fairness be called ‘the Amis era’”–Leader explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts and ambitions; the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements, domestic turbulence and personal disaster. Dazzling for its thoroughness, psychological acuity and elegant style, The Life of Kingsley Amis is exemplary: literary biography at its very best. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... novel , even if it's a real place , it isn't real any more . Not quite . " At times in the pages that follow ... novels , The Riverside Villas Murder ( 1973 ) and You Can't Do Both ( 1994 ) , Amis offers what look like thinly disguised ...
... novel , even if it's a real place , it isn't real any more . Not quite . " At times in the pages that follow ... novels , The Riverside Villas Murder ( 1973 ) and You Can't Do Both ( 1994 ) , Amis offers what look like thinly disguised ...
Page 8
... novel a char- acter sneezes : ' he shifted his shoulders around like someone having things thrown at him from different positions , rocking much more than before in the rocking - chair and making a string of short tearing screeching ...
... novel a char- acter sneezes : ' he shifted his shoulders around like someone having things thrown at him from different positions , rocking much more than before in the rocking - chair and making a string of short tearing screeching ...
Page 36
... novel ' . ' Good - bad ' novels had literary pretensions , unlike good bad books ' . Their readers , Orwell claims , were exclusively female ; males read ' either the novels it is possible to respect or detective novels ' . " In the ...
... novel ' . ' Good - bad ' novels had literary pretensions , unlike good bad books ' . Their readers , Orwell claims , were exclusively female ; males read ' either the novels it is possible to respect or detective novels ' . " In the ...
Page 37
... novel provided Amis with ' perhaps the greatest literary disappointment I have ever suffered ' . Having secured an entire afternoon free from parental interruption , he settled down with the novel for what I confidently foresaw as a ...
... novel provided Amis with ' perhaps the greatest literary disappointment I have ever suffered ' . Having secured an entire afternoon free from parental interruption , he settled down with the novel for what I confidently foresaw as a ...
Page 48
... novel , which as an adult he finds irritating : ' as a lad I thought the fault was in me a sadly dated reaction - or was reading too fast to notice'.49 It is over the novel's improbabilities or impossibilities , though , that ' boy Amis ...
... novel , which as an adult he finds irritating : ' as a lad I thought the fault was in me a sadly dated reaction - or was reading too fast to notice'.49 It is over the novel's improbabilities or impossibilities , though , that ' boy Amis ...
Contents
1 | |
35 | |
52 | |
71 | |
92 | |
The War | 128 |
Postwar Oxford | 161 |
Oxford and Eynsham | 204 |
Patrick and Dai | 426 |
Cambridge | 449 |
Waking Beauty | 471 |
Breakup | 500 |
Divisions | 521 |
Lefties Toffs and Bigots | 559 |
Lemmons | 600 |
Dissolution | 642 |
Swansea | 234 |
Making Lucky Jim | 257 |
Fame and Friendship | 279 |
Uncertain Feelings | 300 |
Fun | 317 |
Abroad | 330 |
Widening Horizons | 352 |
Princeton | 383 |
Nadir | 684 |
Return | 731 |
Ending Up | 766 |
Afterlife | 811 |
Notes | 827 |
Bibliography | 943 |
Index | 961 |
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Common terms and phrases
Amis and Jane Amis told Amis wrote Amis's Amises Anthony Powell Anti-Death League Archer asked Biography Blackmur Blake Morrison Bodleian boys called Colin College Conquest December Dixon drink Elizabeth Jane Howard Ellingham English Eric Jacobs Essays Faber father friends funny Fussell Gollancz Hilly Hilly's Huntington Ibid interview Jake's Thing Jane's January jazz John July June Keeley Kingsley Amis later lecturer Lemmons letter to Larkin literary lived London look Lucky Jim lunch March Martin Amis Memoirs never novel novelist November October Old Devils Oxford party Penguin Peterhouse Philip Larkin poems poet poetry political Princeton published Quoted recalls remembers Robert Conquest Russian Hide-and-Seek Sally Salwak September Slipstream sort stay story suggested Sunday Swansea Take a Girl talk tell things thought tion took Uncertain Feeling University Wain week wife women writing wrote to Larkin