- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 Sep 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140278702
- ISBN-13: 978-0140278705
- Product Dimensions: 18.1 x 11.1 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 131,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Jim has fallen into a job at one of the new red brick universities. A moderately successful future beckons as long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend, deliver a lecture on "merrie England" and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm not one of those people who ever laughs out loud at any book. However, even I found myself emitting the occasional snort at the humorous situations that Jim Dixon gets himself into. Nearly fifty years on it's still all relevant: the English man's clumsiness with women, the academic pomposity and the battle with one's superiors.
Amis builds up the characters wonderfully and writes in such a fluent and full style. This was my first Kingsley Amis book, but it won't be my last.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Lucky Jim" was Kingsley Amis' first novel, effectively written in collaboration with his friend, the poet, Philip Larkin. The idea came during a visit to Larkin at Leicester University in 1948 - Amis sent drafts to Larkin, Larkin returned them, heavily edited.
First published in 1954, Amis introduces Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer at an English provincial university. Dixon is approaching the end of his first, probationary year and his senior, Professor Welch, is far from impressed. Jim stands little chance of being reappointed. He does his best to ingratiate himself with the professor, but he's socially inept, apparently accident prone, especially when indulging in his predilection for beer, lacks interest in his appointed subject - medieval history - and is consumed by sexual frustrations and fantasies.
Dixon comes from the north of England, from the lower middle classes, from a world which is alien to the Oxbridge elite who dominate academic life ... even in a provincial university. Amis constructs humorous situation after humorous situation. Dixon's ineptitude is excruciating. His luck is a major theme - he doesn't seem to have any. Meanwhile, all around him are those who have been lucky enough to be born into the upper classes and who are unselfconsciously reaping the benefits of it.
In its time, "Lucky Jim" broke new ground in satirising the academic world. The characters in the novel portray the pretensions, sterility, and advantages of the class system. Although greeted as a radical piece of writing and seen as transforming humour, even satire, "Lucky Jim" now appears dated. It has lost much of its edge and seems unrecognisable as a work which threatened the status quo.
Its humour can now appear slapstick and trivial, the stuff of poor sitcoms. The class and sexual mores are set in another world. The rationing and shortages are certainly from another era. And the writing style has also aged - it's a bit laboured in places, a bit coy in others.
Amis, himself, was born in South London into a lower middle class family. He attended public school, then Oxford University and was commissioned into the Royal Signals for wartime army service. He emerged to teach at Swansea University, then Cambridge. From the early 1960's he wrote full-time.
Throughout his life Amis enjoyed a reputation as an outspoken wit. "Lucky Jim" remains a seminal piece of writing, but many contemporary readers will find its themes and style dated, its humour rather gentle compared to contemporary savagery. It's a very gentlemanly, very innocent, very English, and very middle class novel, still with its comic moments, but no longer with the edge and bite which earned it ... and Amis ... a radical reputation.
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
How dismal that anyone could describe the humor in this book as "dated." (Of course it's as fresh and funny as the day it was written.) But then again, that's what the whole book is about: people without humor, and how annoying and ultimately destructive they are, versus people with humor, and how they deserve to prosper (but rarely do outside of books). As for the dreary review that primly praises the book's lack of "sexism" and "racism," it's enough to make you glad Kingsley checked-out--enough to make HIM glad he checked out. Anyway, this is one perfect book. Take it from someone who has re-read it countless times and committed much of it to memory. Incidentally, if the description of Jim's exquisite irritation in watching Welch wash his face at the beginning of the book ever does become "dated" in its humor then maybe the whole species should check out.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
not son of the father
I read exactly half of this book - I found it slow and pedestrian - not even remotely funny - perhaps over hyped?
Published 12 months ago by Wayne
Amusing enough- absolutly diabolical ending
There is a strong sense of the meanings of relations between people in this book and very little really happens otherwise. Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2002 by Alex Magpie
If you have a brain, you should have this book as well.
Lucky Jim was the first Kingsley Amis book I read. I am now a veritable Amis hound. I storm into bookshops and go straight to the A of the A-Z Fiction section and then to the... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2001
Hilarious
Amis' best book, and probably most atypical, in that it never descends into the vitriolic racism and sexism that was to become his trademark. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 1999 by ian@ievans18.freeserve.com
timeless
don't take any notice of comments that the humour is dated -- this is one of the funniest books ever written
Published on 15 Oct 1999
Good read, but understandably dated.
One of the reviewers quoted on the cover of this book says something about making her laugh out loud. Read more
Published on 22 Dec 1998
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