- Paperback: 1280 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; New Ed edition (8 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006387837
- ISBN-13: 978-0006387831
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.2 x 6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 467,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
As well as being a prolific novelist, Kingsley Amis loved to write letters. And whether one views him as a comic genius or misanthropic bar-fly, his literary output alone justifies the publication of this comprehensive collection. Here are fulminations to the press, laddish porn-swapping with best friend Philip Larkin, along with numerous communications, charming and vitriolic, to editors and agents.
Those seeking revelations might be disappointed but browsers will find a treasury of poignant detail. As an undergraduate, Amis advises Larkin on girls; he's still doing so 30 years later. As a father, he cloaks pride with irony ("Scoundrelly Mart has sold his novel to the Yanks", he fumes, a propos of Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers). An avowed enemy of sentiment, he pens touching notes to his second wife, replete with pet names and illustrations. Later, he is vulnerable--terrified by alcoholism, widening waistbands and false teeth. This collection does not pretend to provide a key to his complex personality, but amply fulfils Amis's own prophecy: "What a feast is awaiting chaps ... when our ... letters come out". Not even appetites of Amis's proportions could digest this feast at one sitting--The Letters of Kingsley Amis is a book to be savoured over a lifetime. --Matthew Baylis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
‘You can put this book in front of people and watch them crack up’
David Sexton, Evening Standard
‘A bracing delight’
Julie Burchill, Guardian
‘Better than Evelyn Waugh’
Economist
‘A wonderful, wickedly enjoyable collection’
Andrew Vine, Yorkshire Post
‘Hugely entertaining’
Katharine Whitehorn, Observer
‘A feast’
Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
You either like Amis or you don't. I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with him buying this off the cuff. If you have read the Larkin letters, you'll have some idea what to expect; but Zachary Leader is a more censorious editor than Anthony Thwaite, or at least freer with the ellipse. A limerick about Christopher Ricks is 'unprintable', according to Leader. Whether or not it is due to editorial trimming, what is printed is fairly tame, compared to Larkin's unsound racial comments. (The previous reviewer who thinks Amis anti-Semitic can't have read the book properly.) Also, Leader makes some fairly unimportant but conspicuously unprofessional editorial errors, such as getting the name of an Amis character wrong. However, this is probably unavoidable in such a capacious volume. Prof. Leader has certainly produced a bumper tome. Obviously, the most 'important' correspondent is Larkin, and it's a shame that Amis lost many of the letters he received from Larkin, as a separate volume of Amis-Larkin correspondence would allow a reduction in the size of Prof. Leader's book. It needs it! The binding is of insufficient quality for such a large volume. It's surprisingly irritating to have to slap glue down the spine of a brand new book. A 5 star writer, a 4 star editing job, and zero stars for the bookbinding, gives an overall score of 3 stars.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
First are the early letters from Amis to Larkin when they are angry young men, although not really about anything so dull as politics. The letters from Amis to Larkin and the vividly implied letters from Larkin to Amis are vicious, voracious and hilarious about themselves, jazz, drinking, lust, and the state of English writing. This part is fireworks. Second are the love letters addressed to his second wife, when Amis was bowled over by her. The second set of letters was not meant to be read by us, but the first probably was - although in 2300 on Mars, with us uncomprehending - given many allusions to future fame and biographers. In the second set we are snooping, but we see an energetic complex man overcome by sexual love, and that's not so bad - even edifying. These letters could be the best of Amis' "words".
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
To anyone interested in Amis, these letters are indispensable. The core of this 1200 page book is his correspondence with Larkin. At some point Amis says the only pleasures in his life are talking to Larkin and listening to jazz. I am not a fan of Larkin's and haven't read his poems or any biography or letters so I am only getting Kingsley's side but what comes through is enormous enthusiasm and joy and brilliance in language play and especially a completely unsnobby love of the written word.
Amis doesn't like Chaucer, Milton, Keats, Shelley, D H Lawrence, Nabokov, Dylan Thomas and a lot of other lesser writers. But his written testimony for the trial of `Lady Chatterley's Lover' puts in the most cogent terms what he thought Lawrence was about and the moral value of it. Perhaps surprisingly made a trustee of Dylan Thomas's estate, there are here printed several letters in which he staunchly defends Thomas's caucus from attempts to commercialise it.
Amis once said in here that he would prefer a world in which there was too much reason rather than one in which there was too little, and perhaps he dislikes literature he sees as undisciplined - although in music he seems to have different tastes, liking Tchaikovsky and early jazz, for its tone if you don't mind. In literature he likes poems which are intelligible and he appreciates formal values. He is less vocal about what he does like but the list includes Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, John Dickson Carr, Dick Francis, Shakespeare, Yeats, Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, A E Housman and of course Larkin. Don't mention Ted Hughes.
If you enjoy Amis's unbelievably funny novels, you will have trouble putting this down. You will also have trouble picking it up but unlike one reviewer I had no problems with the binding of my 1200 page hardback.
Amis doesn't like Chaucer, Milton, Keats, Shelley, D H Lawrence, Nabokov, Dylan Thomas and a lot of other lesser writers. But his written testimony for the trial of `Lady Chatterley's Lover' puts in the most cogent terms what he thought Lawrence was about and the moral value of it. Perhaps surprisingly made a trustee of Dylan Thomas's estate, there are here printed several letters in which he staunchly defends Thomas's caucus from attempts to commercialise it.
Amis once said in here that he would prefer a world in which there was too much reason rather than one in which there was too little, and perhaps he dislikes literature he sees as undisciplined - although in music he seems to have different tastes, liking Tchaikovsky and early jazz, for its tone if you don't mind. In literature he likes poems which are intelligible and he appreciates formal values. He is less vocal about what he does like but the list includes Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, John Dickson Carr, Dick Francis, Shakespeare, Yeats, Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, A E Housman and of course Larkin. Don't mention Ted Hughes.
If you enjoy Amis's unbelievably funny novels, you will have trouble putting this down. You will also have trouble picking it up but unlike one reviewer I had no problems with the binding of my 1200 page hardback.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Early optimism, then disillusionment
This is a huge book, at 1200 pages. I read it, to be honest, because I found it in a bargain bookshop for £1. Per page, maybe the best value book I have bought. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Stephen Hudson
putting wrongs to right
This is a letter rather than a review which is to actually ask why in Martins bleakest moment ,after the unfortunate passing of his father , why he felt it deacent to ridicule mr... Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2003 by dan
The life and outpourings of an old devil
Here is the life of one of our most eminent novelist laid out in a series of letters. From the early 1940s to just before his death in 1995. Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2000 by Horatio
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