Clik here to view.
Next Up: Lucky Jim
I’m ready to move on from the intensity of The Confessions of Nat Turner and read something a little lighter. Enter Lucky Jim. Lucky Jim was written by Kingsley Amis, and it portrays the sad but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That Time Tolkien Was Your English Professor
The introduction to Lucky Jim contains this little nugget that might interest you if you’re a literature nerd like myself. Kingsley Amis, who wrote Lucky Jim, went to Oxford with his friend and fellow...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lucky Jim Changed This Man’s Life
How often can you say a book changed your life? This outstanding article by Joseph Schuster at The Millions illustrates how Lucky Jim changed his life. Lucky Jim? The story of a sad, beaten-up,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Most Awkward Office Party Ever
Lucky Jim is a novel full of beautiful awkwardness. Amis’s style and tone remind me of Anthony Powell’s writing in A Dance To The Music Of Time. You might recall I absolutely loathed that novel—it’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kingsley Amis On Character Development and Language
This question The Paris Review asked Kingsley Amis reminds me of a discussion we had about Tolkien’s writing style back when I read The Lord of the Rings. INTERVIEWER Waugh was quoted in The Paris...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kingsley Amis: My Sex Scenes Are Kinda Lame
Here’s another clip from a great interview The Paris Review conducted with Kingsley Amis. Amis was asked about a professor who had called his work “pornographic.” INTERVIEWER But wasn’t that all wrong?...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Best Description Of A Hangover In Literature
Take it away, Lucky Jim. 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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kingsley Amis On Writing Humor
I keep going back to this Paris Review interview with Kingsley Amis, just because it has so many good nuggets of wisdom and insight. And, yes, I just used the word “nugget.” Be thankful I didn’t say...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book #76: Lucky Jim
Confession: I never got into Lucky Jim like I expected to. This was a novel I looked forward to since I first learned its premise. Lucky Jim is a short satirical novel. But despite its brevity, I took...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ranking The First 80 Novels
So now’s the time when I take a look back at the last several novels I’ve read and explain to you why I ranked them as I did. Here’s how books 76 through 80 break down: Book #76: Lucky Jim (Current...
View Article