Kingsley Amis: In Life and Letters

226 Pages·1990·21.64 MB·English

by  Dale Salwak (eds.)

KINGSLEY AMIS
Kingsley Amis
In Life and Letters
Edited by
DALE SALWAK
Professor of English
Citrus College, California
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20847-0 ISBN 978-1-349-20845-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20845-6
Editorial matter and selection© Dale Salwak 1990; Chapter 1 ©Bryan Appleyard
1990; Chapter 2 ©Anthony Powell 1990; Chapter 3 ©Robert Conquest 1990;
Chapter 4 ©Paul Fussell1990; Chapter 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 ©Dale Salwak
1990; Chapter 7 ©Betty Fussell1990; Chapter 8 ©Richard Porter 1990; Chapter
9 © Brian Aldiss 1990; Chapter 10 © Harry Harrison 1990; Chapter 14 ©
Barbara Everett 1990; Chapter 18 ©Peter Levi 1990; Chapter 19 ©William H.
Pritchard 1990; Chapter 20 ©Harry Ritchie 1990.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-49148-5
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-05365-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kingsley Amis, in life and letters I edited by Dale Salwak.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-05365-9
1. Amis, Kingsley. 2. Authors, English-20th century
-Biography.
I. Salwak, Dale.
PR600l.M6Z75 1991
828' .91409-dc20
[B} 90-43357
CIP
For his family
Contents
List of Plates ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Notes on the Contributors xiv
1 The Entertainer in Old Age 1
Bryan Appleyard
2 AmisCountry 6
Anthony Powell
3 Profile 11
Robert Conquest
4 Kingsley, As I Know Him 18
Paul Fussell
5 An I to I Interview about Kingsley Amis 24
Edmund Keeley
6 A Frank Man 31
John Arlott
7 Kingsley's Rituals 33
Betty Fussell
8 Kingsley in Nashville 36
Richard Porter
9 'im 40
Brian Aldiss
10 Amis vs SF 51
Harry Harrison
vii
viii Contents
11 Kingsley Amis: An Appreciation 57
Gavin Ewart
12 The 'Awfulness' of Kingsley Amis 65
Gilbert Phelps
13 Jim, Jake and the Years Between 76
Keith Wilson
14 Kingsley Amis: Devils and Others 89
Barbara Everett
15 The Language of Kingsley Amis 100
Norman Macleod
16 Changing Social and Moral Attitudes 130
James Gindin
17 Alternative Worlds: The Short Stories 149
John B. Vickery
18 Kingsley Amis (21 in 1943) 167
Peter Levi
19 Entertaining Amis 173
William H. Pritchard
20 An Outrageous Talent 183
Harry Ritchie
Notes 188
Select Bibliography 194
Index 199
List of Plates
1 The Amis family in Portugal (1954)
2 Kingsley Amis on the outskirts of Soho (1958); ©Anthony
Powell.
3 Hilary and Kingsley Amis, New Jersey (1959)
4 Kingsley Amis with Geoff Doherty, Hilary Amis, Margaret
Manson and Harry Harrison (Gloucester, 1961)
5 Kingsley Amis with Brian Aldiss, Philip Strick and Robert
Conquest (Peterborough, 1963)
6 Kingsley Amis with Betty Fussell (Eubia, summer 1966)
7 Kingsley Amis lecturing at Vanderbilt University (autumn
1967); ©Vanderbilt University, Special Collections.
8 Kingsley Amis with Edmund Keeley (Rhodes, summer 1969)
9 Kingsley Amis with Edmund Keeley (Kos, Greece, summer
1969)
10 Kingsley Amis (Rhodes, summer 1969)
11 Kingsley Amis with Elizabeth Jane Howard, the Fussell family,
Edmund and Mary Keeley (Rhodes, summer 1969)
12 Immersed in the Aegean (summer 1969)
13 Kingsley Amis at home, Lemmons (winter 1970)
14 Kingsley Amis (1980); ©Baron Studio, London.
15 Kingsley Amis with Patti Salwak Ouiy 1985)
16 Kingsley Amis (1984); ©Jerry Bauer.
ix
Preface
Over thirty-five years have passed since the hero of a remarkable
first novel assaulted the provincial university, shocked and enter
tained a generation of readers, and rocketed a young English writer
to fame. Jim Dixon was the comic, put-upon young man; Lucky Jim
the novel; and the writer, Kingsley Amis.
Never one to stand still, that author went on to write eighteen
more novels (all still in print), six collections of poetry, two
collections of short stories, twelve volumes of non-fiction, and
hundreds of essays and reviews. In 1981 he was awarded the CBE.
In 1986 he won the Booker Fiction Prize for his novel The Old
Devils. And he is still writing. A volume of essays to celebrate that
long and distinguished career seems very much overdue.
In 1987 I began to solicit essays from some of Kingsley Amis's
closest friends and avid readers. I had in mind a book that would
focus on both the man and his work, always with the general
reader in mind. One of the great joys of Amis's novels - apart
from their humour and shrewd insights- is their readability. We
go back to them again and again, each time renewing old pleasures
and finding new ones. In compiling this volume I operated under
the principle that if one cannot be reading Kingsley Amis, the next
best thing is to be reading about him!
'A wonderful idea', one friend responded. 'I would love to
contribute.' Another wrote: 'Kingsley is an extraordinary and
marvellous man whom I love and to whom I am extremely grateful
in a variety of ways. . . . It would be a great pleasure to record
some of my first-hand experience of his genius and generosity.'
And a third: 'It has always been a matter of slight regret to me
that Amis's sixty-fifth birthday [in 1987] was there before one
realised it, and that an opportunity was missed at that time for
some kind of celebratory volume.' The affection and generosity
with which each contributor responded to this project is a testimony
to Amis's character and to the richness of his art.
In America, Kingsley Amis is still underrated and undersung. I
have therefore solicited essays from several distinguished
Americans - and one Canadian - to balance the book. One of the
contributors wrote, 'I want to add how much I enjoyed doing this.
It gave me the chance to read and think through all of Amis' s
xi
xii Preface
fiction for the first time in years. A great pleasure, and I emerged
estimating him even higher and enjoying him even more than I
had.'
It is my hope that readers of this volume will find as much
enjoyment in reading these essays as the contributors seemed to
experience while preparing them. Certainly I had great pleasure
in compiling the volume. Lucky Jim was a book that I read in one
of my first undergraduate courses, and it struck a chord that
reverberates to this day. Since then, I have had the privilege of
meeting Kingsley Amis five t!mes, twice for extensive interviews.
In soliciting these essays I was as anxious as anybody to see what
they would have to say about him. Most of the essays were written
expressly for this volume.
As always with a project of this kind, I am deeply grateful, first,
to the contributors and, second, to the many good people who
gave me the encouragement and professional advice when I most
needed it. Among them, I would like to record my debt to Sarah
Roberts-West of the Macmillan Press; to my wife, Patricia, and to
my parents, Stanley and Frances H. Salwak. I should also like to
extend my gratitude to the following individuals for kindly helping
me to locate photographs for the book: Brian Aldiss, Jerry Bauer,
Betty Fussell, Paul Fussell, Edmund Keeley, Jean McAndrew,
Richard Porter, Anthony Powell.
Glendora and London D.S.