Kingsley Amis always claimed that his fiction was not based on his life, and he worked hard and quite successfully at obscuring the autobiographical threads that run through his novels. But they exist, and Richard Bradford traces the channels between Amis's experiences, his states of mind and his fictionalized versions of both. Bradford's biography shows that it is impossible to offer a comprehensive picture of Amis the man as husband, philanderer, friend, father, jester, son, boozer, agnostic, pseudo-socialist and club-land Tory without also considering how each dimension of his life tested and extended his literary skills. Sometimes he remodelled the present, particularly during the 1950s when his books reflected his double life as family man and prolific libertine. He revisited the past in novels such as The Riverside Villas Murder, a detective story that tells us much about his early relationship with his father. Less frequently he took revenge, notably with his cruel parody of his second wife Elizabeth Jane Howard in Stanley and the Women. Readers of Amis's books often feel as if they have had a personal encounter with a shadowy presence behind the words. Bradford's biography embodies this shadow.
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Kingsley Amis always claimed that nothing of his life found its way into his novels. Richard Bradford argues that his novels form 'one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking autobiographies ever produced.' It must be said that his argument is persuasive; he shows very clearly that (as one has always supposed) Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim, is a very slimly disguised description not only of his life at university in Swansea but a terrifyingly accurate and often vituperative portrait of his first wife's family, and that his last novel, You Can't do Both, is a re-visitation of his adolescence, with memories of his father and his best friend, Philip Larkin. And in between, all his novels seem to be clearly based on the events, difficulties, relatively rare delights of his life, with his political and social prejudices very much to the fore. The books adds considerably to what we know of Amis's life (from the biography by Eric Jacobs), and adds to the pleasure of re-reading his novels. Those who believe that a writer's work should only be enjoyed for itself, unrelated to its author's biography, may disapprove; but to those who look on all fiction as an attempt to explain 'real life', Bradford's book is not merely a pleasure, but a positive proof that far from devaluing an author's work, biographical reflection can greatly enrich it. (Kirkus UK)
Solid, well-written biography that sheds new light on the life and work of the famed British novelist. Kingsley Amis (1922-95) protested throughout his long career that his fictions were not autobiographical, though his readers, especially his students and university colleagues, took it as given that Jim Dixon, the protagonist of Amis's 1953 novel "Lucky Jim", was the author's doppelganger. In fact, writes Bradford (English/Univ. of Ulster), Amis drew liberally from his own circumstances and the private lives of friends and colleagues to populate his novels, and the biographer pores over his oeuvre to sort out thickly veiled reality from happy inventions, treating that oeuvre as "one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking autobiographies ever produced." Gently suggesting that Eric Jacobs's authorized biography ("Kingsley Amis", 1998) lent too much credence to its subject's claims, Bradford improves on it by offering both an entertaining narrative of Amis's life and well-reasoned commentary on his work, including his often-overlooked travel-writing and poetry. Though clearly an admirer, Bradford does not shy from recounting Amis's less than admirable qualities, including a fondness for the bottle, for womanizing, and for "conspicuously hedonistic" behavior, to say nothing of his general approval of Margaret Thatcher and his (perhaps) jealousy-sparked feud with his writer son Martin. On the positive side, he shows that Amis, though offhand in public, was a famously hard worker who devoted years (four, in the case of "Lucky Jim") to writing and rewriting each of his books, and whose work improved with age, yielding mature, graceful novels such as "The Old Devils "and "You Can't Do Both "that easily outshine his most famous book. Fans of Amis's work will enjoy Bradford's literary detection and unadorned, jargon-free style. (Kirkus Reviews) --...
'I found Bradford's approach refreshing. Rare among literary critics he writes clearly, doesn't show off and knows a lot about his subject. He presents a fascinating chronicle of Amis's brilliant ear for speech . . . He also brings out the full extent of the symbiosis between Amis and his best friend Philip Larkin: in a way, Larkin invented Amis' --Craig Brown - Mail on Sunday
'What Bradford contributes to the picture is a persuasive analysis of the autobiographical sub text running through the fiction. . . as a result of his painstaking and well written study, the reader is brought closer to the man and his work' --Simon Rae, Times Literary Supplement
Solid, well-written biography that sheds new light on the life and work of the famed British novelist. Kingsley Amis (1922-95) protested throughout his long career that his fictions were not autobiographical, though his readers, especially his students and university colleagues, took it as given that Jim Dixon, the protagonist of Amis's 1953 novel "Lucky Jim", was the author's doppelganger. In fact, writes Bradford (English/Univ. of Ulster), Amis drew liberally from his own circumstances and the private lives of friends and colleagues to populate his novels, and the biographer pores over his oeuvre to sort out thickly veiled reality from happy inventions, treating that oeuvre as "one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking autobiographies ever produced." Gently suggesting that Eric Jacobs's authorized biography ("Kingsley Amis", 1998) lent too much credence to its subject's claims, Bradford improves on it by offering both an entertaining narrative of Amis's life and well-reasoned commentary on his work, including his often-overlooked travel-writing and poetry. Though clearly an admirer, Bradford does not shy from recounting Amis's less than admirable qualities, including a fondness for the bottle, for womanizing, and for "conspicuously hedonistic" behavior, to say nothing of his general approval of Margaret Thatcher and his (perhaps) jealousy-sparked feud with his writer son Martin. On the positive side, he shows that Amis, though offhand in public, was a famously hard worker who devoted years (four, in the case of "Lucky Jim") to writing and rewriting each of his books, and whose work improved with age, yielding mature, graceful novels such as "The Old Devils "and "You Can't Do Both "that easily outshine his most famous book. Fans of Amis's work will enjoy Bradford's literary detection and unadorned, jargon-free style. (Kirkus Reviews) --...
'I found Bradford's approach refreshing. Rare among literary critics he writes clearly, doesn't show off and knows a lot about his subject. He presents a fascinating chronicle of Amis's brilliant ear for speech . . . He also brings out the full extent of the symbiosis between Amis and his best friend Philip Larkin: in a way, Larkin invented Amis' --Craig Brown - Mail on Sunday
'What Bradford contributes to the picture is a persuasive analysis of the autobiographical sub text running through the fiction. . . as a result of his painstaking and well written study, the reader is brought closer to the man and his work' --Simon Rae, Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
RICHARD BRADFORD is Professor of English at the University of Ulster. He previously has taught in the universities of Oxford, Wales and in Trinity College, Dublin. He has written twelve books on a variety of subjects, including two critical monographs of Kingsley Amis.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By T. D. Welsh
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Since Kingsley Amis was one of the most interesting and amusing 20th century English novelists, any book that closely examines his complete work is bound to be welcome. As well as the sheer gut-busting humour and insight of his first and best known novel, Lucky Jim, Amis was an excellent story-teller capable of serious reflection about the human condition. He just didn't believe in being pompous and self-important about it. Some of his books - The Anti-Death League, for instance, or The Green Man - serve up a fascinating blend of dry humour, drama, characterisation, philosophy and even suspense.
Obviously the man who wrote these books - not forgetting poetry, critical essays and biographies - was himself quite complex. The life and soul of any party, though many were hurt by his scathing wit, Amis was scared of the dark and even being alone, and was apparently prone to sudden attacks of pure existential fear. The tendency to identify him with Lucky Jim, his first and most famous anti-hero, was strengthened by the gradually spreading awareness of the chronic womanising which broke up both his marriages. Yet it seems that Amis much regretted these domestic disasters, conceivably having failed to understand that marriage offers real, though easily overlooked, benefits to husbands as well as wives.
Bradford's thesis is simply that, denials to the contrary notwithstanding, all of Amis' fiction is drawn directly from his own life experience. All he manages to demonstrate, however, is the meaninglessness of this position. Of course every author draws on experience for material - otherwise all fiction would be fantasy. When Bradford is reduced to arguing that "Simona... has characteristics so completely different from Jane's as to virtually announce themselves as covering devices", the poverty of his basic idea is clearly revealed. If a character resembles anyone Amis ever met, he must have copied that character from real life. But if the character is completely different, the same inference is drawn.
Otherwise, the book is well written and evidently based on research as thorough as Amis' own (for a surprising rigour was one of his best qualities). This impression is hardly spoiled by occasional infelicities and repetitions - and at least when Bradford revisits the same text twice, he tells the same story each time. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it will surely encourage any reader to get hold of Amis' novels and read them (or re-read them, as the case may be).
Is it evil to smile at the thought of how Amis would have fumed if he could have read the manuscript himself? Not really - it is the sort of joke he himself would have appreciated, and perhaps accompanied by his famous "crazy peasant" face.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Biography But Arrogant Amateur Psychoanalysis
8 Nov 2003
By James Skrydlak
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
There were already at least two biographies of Kingsley Amis in print when Professor Bradford wrote this one. Professor Bradford's biography is both complete and well-written.
It is marred, however, by Professor Bradford's insistence that "Amis's fiction (is) one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking autobiographies ever produced." His point is not simply that Amis has modeled some characters on people he has known, nor that some events are paralleled in Amis's life. Virtually every writer of fiction draws from his life. He goes much further than that, claiming that nearly every character in Amis's novels and stories is intended to be Amis himself or somebody that Amis knew.
He starts with the contention that Jim Dixon, the protagonist of Lucky Jim, Amis's first and perhaps best-known novel, is Amis himself. Dixon, fresh out of college, is teaching in an obscure English college. Amis began teaching at University College of Swansea in Wales while completing his graduate thesis at Oxford. The parallels break down there, however. The plot of Lucky Jim involves Dixon's jettisoning his unattractive, somewhat mentally ill girlfriend and acquiring an attractive, nice blonde one. Amis married an attractive blonde woman while still at Oxford, more than a year before he began teaching at Swansea. Central to the plot of Lucky Jim is Dixon's status as an outsider, never explicitly stated but implied by many things, including the fact that he is from the north of England with an accent that immediately identifies him as such and the fact that he attended a university of no particular prestige (a passage in the third chapter hints that it may be the University of Leicester). Amis, by contrast, was born and raised in London, and, by Bradford's own account had a BBC accent. As already noted, he was an Oxford graduate. Whatever else Amis was, he was not an outsider, at least not by virtue of his birthplace, accent, or university education.
On and on it goes, with Bradford claiming that Simona Quick, the waif-like nineteen-year-old in I Want It Now, is really Jane Howard, Amis's second wife, who was in her mid-forties at the period in which the book was written and takes place, that Amis has split himself between two characters in Girl, 20, that the ten-year-old boy who is to be castrated to preserve his pure, youthful voice in The Alteration is in fact Amis in his mid-fifties, worried about declining .... prowess, and that Amis has split himself into four different characters in The Old Devils, attributing to them such unusual characteristics as the fact that they all drink too much.
Bradford and his editor also get some facts wrong, either by design or by laziness. On page 206, he claims that, in One Fat Englishman, "Micheldene is obliged to take part in a game of charades and is asked to become the embodiment of 'Englishness'". In fact, the other characters try to act "Britishly", and it is Micheldene who is to guess what the word is. This is not a very important point, but consulting the novel itself is all that is necessary to get it right.
Similarly, Bradford, in claiming that Jake Richardson, the title character of Jake's Thing, is actually an older Jim Dixon (who, by Bradford's thesis, is Amis under a different name), asserts on page 305 that "Jake's given name is James", while, in the novel itself, Jake's given name is, in fact, Jaques, pronounced "Jakes". One might argue that the French "Jacques" (Richardson's ancestors came from France) is the equivalent of the English "James", but the chain of reasoning is now one link longer, and, once again, consulting the novel would have been sufficient to provide correct information.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating book, unconvincing thesis
28 Dec 2001
By T. D. Welsh
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Since Kingsley Amis was one of the most interesting and amusing 20th century English novelists, any book that closely examines his complete work is bound to be welcome. As well as the sheer gut-busting humour and insight of his first and best known novel, Lucky Jim, Amis was an excellent story-teller capable of serious reflection about the human condition. He just didn't believe in being pompous and self-important about it. Some of his books - The Anti-Death League, for instance, or The Green Man - serve up a fascinating blend of dry humour, drama, characterisation, philosophy and even suspense.
Obviously the man who wrote these books - not forgetting poetry, critical essays and biographies - was himself quite complex. The life and soul of any party, though many were hurt by his scathing wit, Amis was scared of the dark and even being alone, and was apparently prone to sudden attacks of pure existential fear. The tendency to identify him with Lucky Jim, his first and most famous anti-hero, was strengthened by the gradually spreading awareness of the chronic womanising which broke up both his marriages. Yet it seems that Amis much regretted these domestic disasters, conceivably having failed to understand that marriage offers real, though easily overlooked, benefits to husbands as well as wives.
Bradford's thesis is simply that, denials to the contrary notwithstanding, all of Amis' fiction is drawn directly from his own life experience. All he manages to demonstrate, however, is the meaninglessness of this position. Of course every author draws on experience for material - otherwise all fiction would be fantasy. When Bradford is reduced to arguing that "Simona... has characteristics so completely different from Jane's as to virtually announce themselves as covering devices", the poverty of his basic idea is clearly revealed. If a character resembles anyone Amis ever met, he must have copied that character from real life. But if the character is completely different, the same inference is drawn.
Otherwise, the book is well written and evidently based on research as thorough as Amis' own (for a surprising rigour was one of his best qualities). This impression is hardly spoiled by occasional infelicities and repetitions - and at least when Bradford revisits the same text twice, he tells the same story each time. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it will surely encourage any reader to get hold of Amis' novels and read them (or re-read them, as the case may be).
Is it evil to smile at the thought of how Amis would have fumed if he could have read the manuscript himself? Not really - it is the sort of joke he would have appreciated, and perhaps accompanied by his famous "crazy peasant" face.
Obviously the man who wrote these books - not forgetting poetry, critical essays and biographies - was himself quite complex. The life and soul of any party, though many were hurt by his scathing wit, Amis was scared of the dark and even being alone, and was apparently prone to sudden attacks of pure existential fear. The tendency to identify him with Lucky Jim, his first and most famous anti-hero, was strengthened by the gradually spreading awareness of the chronic womanising which broke up both his marriages. Yet it seems that Amis much regretted these domestic disasters, conceivably having failed to understand that marriage offers real, though easily overlooked, benefits to husbands as well as wives.
Bradford's thesis is simply that, denials to the contrary notwithstanding, all of Amis' fiction is drawn directly from his own life experience. All he manages to demonstrate, however, is the meaninglessness of this position. Of course every author draws on experience for material - otherwise all fiction would be fantasy. When Bradford is reduced to arguing that "Simona... has characteristics so completely different from Jane's as to virtually announce themselves as covering devices", the poverty of his basic idea is clearly revealed. If a character resembles anyone Amis ever met, he must have copied that character from real life. But if the character is completely different, the same inference is drawn.
Otherwise, the book is well written and evidently based on research as thorough as Amis' own (for a surprising rigour was one of his best qualities). This impression is hardly spoiled by occasional infelicities and repetitions - and at least when Bradford revisits the same text twice, he tells the same story each time. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it will surely encourage any reader to get hold of Amis' novels and read them (or re-read them, as the case may be).
Is it evil to smile at the thought of how Amis would have fumed if he could have read the manuscript himself? Not really - it is the sort of joke he would have appreciated, and perhaps accompanied by his famous "crazy peasant" face.
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