Customer Reviews (6)

delightful collection
wendy cope's delightful collection of poetry sparkles with wit and erudition. the highlight clearly being the title poem and the nursery rhymes. the typically sardonic brit humor shines through in most of her poems and make one laugh out loud. who ever thought reading poetry could be such a delightful experience?

however, one does wish there were a few more of her touching and sensitive poems like the one on her lover and the other one about a photograph. clearly the talent is there, maybe she will dish them all out in a separate collection one day.

till then enjoy finding out about the cocoa she made for kingsley amis.

Disappointed!
Having read Wendy Cope's poem 'He Tells Her'I was a little dissappointed in this book of her poems.
They are good but some are very similiar in nature.
I enjoy modern poetry and recommend Judith Viorst also a modern poet.

expected better
we don't get to see as much of wendy cope in the u.s. as i had hoped, so i ordered a couple of her books from amazon uk. the few poems i had come across of wendy cope's have been great poems. her touch of humor is excellent in those poems. but the poems in this collection are less than stellar. much of the time the rhymes are predictable and uninteresting. her repetition of styles and themes gets old (god knows she must love the villanelle). in this collection her nursery rhyme imitations are phenomena. i can just see wordsworth and eliot writing those. her strength seems to be in mimicry, which she didn't do much of here. i don't know, maybe the poems i like so much came from serious concerns. if you want to read someone who is a better formal poet, and has what is probably the greatest wit of any living poet, check out R.S. Gwynn's selected poems: No Word of Farewell. it's well worth it.

tump
I will be forever thankful for the day I picked up this book just for a look ,I read one poem then took it straight to the desk to buy. The next day I went back and bought Serious Concerns another collection of poems by Wendy Cope.
There just so damn good. Some are funny. Some are sad. Some are this .Some are that. Some are the other. Everyone I ever lent these books to loved them and then went out and bought their own copies. I cant lend you my copies (lost them moving to NewZealand) but I can recommend that you buy them now.

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
The fantastic Wendy Cope, with her glib wit and casual satire, has written a beautiful book -- funny, tender, and sarcastic, she turns the literary status quo (two hundred-odd years of pontificating males) on its head andleaves it hanging. She's just far too clever for the boys and we love it.Just buy it. Laugh out loud. ... Read more

Product Description
Essays on James Bond, Strange and interesting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Bit of Literary Nostalgia devoted to Ian Fleming's Creation
There are two books I find to be superior on the subject of examining Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and short stories. The first and definitive is "Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories" by John Griswold. It is an objective research and analysis of the highest order of Ian Fleming's total literary output that he devoted to his fictional hero who operated and existed in a factual and reality based world shaped for his hero's existence. The second book is Kingsley Amis' THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER, which for me was the first serious look of why many people were so enamored by Ian Fleming's James Bond books. Kingsley Amis states in the Preface to his THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER that he too was an Ian Fleming fan and that his book was a result of "a modest article of about 5,000 words" that grew into the essay that became his book. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining book subjectively examined in segregated elements of Fleming's books broken down into chapters by Amis. Written during the same era as O.F. Snelliing's 007 JAMES BOND: A REPORT, Kingsley Amis' book remains an endearing bit of literary nostalgia devoted to Ian Fleming's creation.

A Bit of Literary Nostalgia devoted to Ian Fleming's Creation
There are two books I find to be superior on the subject of examining Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and short stories. The first and definitive is "Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories" by John Griswold. It is an objective research and analysis of the highest order of Ian Fleming's total literary output that he devoted to his fictional hero who operated and existed in a factual and reality based world shaped for his hero's existence. The second book is Kingsley Amis' THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER, which for me was the first serious look of why many people were so enamored by Ian Fleming's James Bond books. Kingsley Amis states in the Preface to his THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER that he too was an Ian Fleming fan and that his book was a result of"a modest article of about 5,000 words" that grew into the essay that became his book. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining book subjectively examined in segregated elements of Fleming's books broken down into chapters by Amis. Written during the same era as O.F. Snelliing's 007 JAMES BOND: A REPORT, Kingsley Amis' book remains an endearing bit of literary nostalgia devoted to Ian Fleming's creation.

An Excellent Study: Dissecting James Bond
This book is very good to read after you have freshly finished the Ian Fleming's original 'James Bond' books (avaliable in a new edition from Viking and Penguin: order them now!). It allows readers to take a peak into the aspects of Bond they might have missed whilst reading. Amis has taken Fleming's original facts, ellaborated, and made his own humourous, sketchy, and facinating observations. As a literary master himself, and a long-time admirer of what he calls 'the Fleming affect', Amis expertly takes apart, not just the world, but the man, James Bond. Fleming veiwed the manuscript of this book shortly before he died, and approved every part save minor quibles of what James Bond ate, drove or drank.
As stated earlier, Amis was himself a bond-fan, and said to Fleming once: "Mr Fleming, You are the only author whom I can say 'I have read all your books, and have enjoyed them thouroughly'". A due credit. ... Read more

Product Description
"Fussell is a wonderful writer," according to The Washington Post Book World, "at once elegant and earthy."With such books as Wartime and The Great War and Modern Memory, he established a reputation as an incisive critic with a razor-tipped pen.Now Paul Fussell turns his attention to one of his own literary heroes, a man of similar acidic wit, Kingsley Amis.

In The Anti-Egotist, Fussell captures the essence of Amis as a man of letters--"a serious critic," as John Gross writes, "operating outside the academic fold."Part biography, part critical appraisal, The Anti-Egotist traces the influences that have shaped Amis's writing, ranging from his schooldays through military service to university teaching, as he emerged as a novelist, poet, and essayist.By drawing our attention to the details first of Amis's life, then of his writing, Fussell reveals the profound moral sense that expresses itself so wonderfully in Amis's fiction and criticism.He mixes affection with insight as he paints a highly personal portrait of Amis as writer who despises self-promotion in all its forms, savaging the world's show-offs and blowhards with a particularly sharp-toothed bite.Amis's criticism, too, shook the British literary world with his "no-nonsense, can-the-bullshit tone," restoring skepticism and honesty to postwar English writing.Fussell guides us through Amis's immense output--portraying him as a book reviewer, custodian of language, gastronomic critic, anthologist, and poet--showing how his overriding concern is always for the public, deriding pretensions that come at a cost to the audience.And the power of Amis's writing, from his humor to his deft characterization, rings through in page after page of Fussell's accurate and evocative assessments.

In recent years, Kingsley Amis has drawn considerable fire, thanks to his outspoken conservative opinions; many critics see him as little more than a crusty old curmudgeon.In The Anti-Egotist, Paul Fussell does the reading public a double favor in restoring the reputation of this important writer: he effortlessly captures the literary virtuosity that lifted Amis to fame, and he reveals the moral convictions that make this seeming curmudgeon more relevant than ever. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Remarkable book
"For all the sometimes rowdy comedy attending Amis's depictions of meanness, his understanding of its psychology is complicated and serious. It is, if funny, also immoral, so little and minimal, practiced by wee men only. And it betrays neurosis, implying constant "paranoid" watchfulness lest one be had. It keeps one on a constant stretch of attentive calculation, and this finally becomes a substitute for thought, as well as replacing an objective interest in things outside oneself."

"I feel STRETCHED", Bilbo Baggins after having the One Ring for a while.

Essential for Amis fans
I had to have this one - an intersection of two writers I've admired for some time. Fussel is probably the ideal person to write such an appraisal. As mentioned above, the lack of critical theoryspeak is most welcome. Theinterpretation of Amis as a moral satirist (which isn't a category that yousee very much) provides a useful key to most of his work (fiction, poetry,and prose alike.) If you're a fan of the work, you'll enjoy this - it'slike having a chance to sit down across from an intelligent, perceptivereader who likes the same things you do. ... Read more

Product Description
The legend continues! Stand by for more adventures with the world’s greatest secret agent, as his most thrilling missions are collected for the first time ever!

When James Bond’s boss, the enigmatic M, is kidnapped in Greece, Bond must race to his rescue — with only some local fishermen to help! But 007 uncovers a plan to sabotage a USSR summit... and the evil Colonel Sun is planning to frame the British Secret Service for the crime!

This new, never-before-collected edition, features Kingsley Amis’s only James Bond story, plus a new introduction by Britt Ekland, and exclusive features examining the post-Fleming comics and Kingsley Amis’s Bond work! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Would be great to have Graphic Novel in the item name
Bought this for my husband's birthday having no idea it was the graphic novel version.Didn't realize it until I took it out of the box to wrap it.He'll be pretty disappointed tomorrow when he opens his gifts, because this is definitely not what he is expecting. Guess I learned my lesson about waiting until the last minute to wrap presents!

not what I expected
Nothing in the Amazon descriptions said this was a collection of comic strips from the newspaper. I was expecting the novel by Kinglsey Amis. All the others in the series (I now see) say "graphic novel" in their title.

An absolute "must-have" for all dedicated James Bond fans
Latest in a series of James Bond daily strip collections, James Bond 007: Colonel Sun by the team of Kingsley Amis, Jim Lawrence, and Yaroslav Horak is a graphic novel compilation of black-and-white daily newspaper strips that adapted Ian Fleming's classic James Bond action-adventure story "River of Death" and Sir Kingsley Amis' James Bond story "Golden Sun" to comic format. In addition to flawless reproductions of the original strips, James Bond 007: Colonel Sun includes an introduction by Britt Ekland, a summary of how Kingsley Amis came to continue the Bond legacy after Fleming's passing in 1964, and an interview with comic-strip artist and adapter Jim Lawrence. James Bond 007: Colonel Sun is an absolute "must-have" for all dedicated James Bond fans.

Thanks for the non-Fleming titles
Colonel Sun has always been my favorite non-Fleming novel and I've followed the Daily Express strip collections eagerly. I'm actually more interested now in the original stories for the paper, such as River of Death which is included in this volume. I think the art suffered after losing the original illustrator, however it's still great fun, especially since the strips haven't been movie influenced to a great deal, but stick very close to Fleming's concept. ... Read more

Product Description
Martin Amis is one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time. With Experience, he discloses a private life every bit as unique and fascinating as his bestselling novels.

The son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others. Not since Nabokov's Speak, Memory has such an implausible life been recorded by such an inimitable talent.Profound, witty, and ruthlessly honest, Experience is a literary event.Amazon.com Review
"We live in the age of mass loquacity," Martin Amis writes by way ofintroduction to Experience, thereby placing the reader in a curiousbind. How to feel about a memoir by a writer who deplores our currententhusiasm for memoirs? Can such a public appeal for private life beconvincing? The son of misanthropic comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Amis theYounger's life story is "a literary curiosity," he tells us, "which is alsojust another instance of a father and a son." He's spent his whole lifebathed in the dubious yellow glow of celebrity, from the cries of nepotismsurrounding his firstnovel's publication to the bizarre tempest in a teapot involving thesize of the advance for TheInformation, his choice of literary agent, and of course thatfamously expensive set of new teeth.

Here, finally, is Amis's chance to set matters straight--and if you're lookingfor his take on these controversies, you won't be disappointed. In fact, youshould turn right away to the end of the book. After all, how many memoirshave indices--and how many indices are this entertaining? In addition to movers and shakers like "Travolta, John," "Brown, Tina," and "Bellow, Saul,"one finds an extended entry for "dental problems," which includes "of animals,""sexual potency and," "Bellow on," and--more ominously--"tumour."

Yet it's as "a clear view of the geography of a writer's mind," not as acelebrity tell-all, that Experience succeeds. Organized not bychronology but by a strange thematic schema all Amis's own, this messy,tangential book moves backward and forward in time and comes studded withfootnotes and interspersed with schoolboy epistles. As a result, it's muchtruer to the actual texture of experience than anything more "novelistic"could possibly be. Amis's charming, quarrelsome, almost entirely helplessfather; the tragic disappearance of his cousin, Lucy Partington; thedaughter discovered only as an adult; those teeth--the narrativecircles around these events and personages in prose as virtuoso but oftenless chilly than that found in his novels. This is memoir as anatomy ofobsessions, and in the most profound way, it illuminates the source andpower of Amis's remarkable work. --Mary Park ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

It's not about the teeth
I'm going to quote at length:

"Some freak perihelion or syzyg caused the sun to hang unnaturally low in the late afternoons. A tennis balls would cast a shadow two yards long. As David and I, anticipating an evening snack, went to visit some new friends on the site, our hosts- two men sitting with their back to us around a fire- would start calling out greetings when we were forty feet away. We were growing boys. We were immensely proud of our shadows."

That description takes me back to being out there on a tennis court and feeling proud of my shadow (and knowing the pride was ridiculous and unmentionable). Talking about the shadow gives an insight into youth and tennis. This is what Martin Amis finds interesting- how he experienced it. It's not a typical biography and if a reader wants it to be a typical biography they're going to be disappointed.

They're also going to be puzzled by how much he talks about his teeth. It's not about the teeth. The reason he writes about them is that for him they are a window into his own thinking and that if he writes about the experience with honesty, discipline and intelligence that it will be interesting.

The other element I would like to point out about the passage is the rhythm of it. There's something beautiful about how the lenght of the third sentence leads into the fourth and fifth ones.

and the implied loss of innocence
How many opportunities is one likely to have to read a well-regarded literary author's memoirs about (among other things) his relationship with his well-regarded author father? (Has either Susan or Benjamin Cheever even come close to matching their father's achievemtents?) It was fascinating to read about this father-son relationship from the son's point of view. While Martin clearly admired Kingsley, he was not blind to his father's weaknesses (both as a writer and as a husband); and he was fully aware of their differences on political and gender issues.

But these memoirs cover Martin Amis's life up to the present, the present being several years after his father's death. While Kingsley is a key figure, he is not the only relationship that gets examined. (His portraits of his mother, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Philip Larkin, and Saul Bellow are especially vivid.)And although this is not a grim book, much of what Amis recounts is about profound losses--his own loss of innocence due to childhood sexual abuse, the loss incurred when his parents divorced, the death of a cousin at the hands of a serial killer, and the loss of friendships (especially Julian Barnes's) from the furor surrounding the publication of Amis's book, THE INFORMATION. Implied losses, delicately mentioned but never examined, are those of his relationships with the women in his life.

Toward the end of the book, Amis writes, "My life, it seems to me is ridiculously shapeless. I know what makes a good narrative, and lives don't have much of that--pattern and balance, form, completion, commensurateness...but the only shape that life dependably exhibits is that of tragedy." (p. 361) It is tragedy that Amis can accept but courageously, if futilely, seems to want to protect his own children from.

The fascinating Messrs Amis
"Experience" is the finest memoir I've read in a dozen years.It has a post-modern format with a variety of voice tones that range from witty to profound and poetic.Amis's narrative jumps back and forth in time and deals with his extended family and distinguished friends, among whom are: Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow, Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom and Robert Graves.The portrait of his father, Kingsley Amis, a hard-drinking, woman lover, dominates the book.The memoir, written by a man of great charm, held me absorbed from first page to last.

90 PercentProof
I gave Amis's memoir 5 stars because I have to---it is that good.("Pale as a Sex Pistol," is not nearly his best, and it's very, very good.) And, admittedly, I was nearly finished with the book before it hit me that Amis almost had me convinced that chronic alcoholism can actually put a spring in one's step if you only had a sense of humor!

The deepest impulse behind this memoir is to protect his father's image and reputation.It was a preemptive strike against future excavations by lesser sorts who write biographies, are too pc, etc., into Kingsley Amis's life.

Martin Amis is very clear that he was concerned about his father's reputation vis-a-vis posthumous publication of his father's letters.He didn't want his father to suffer the fate of Philip Larkin.

What is brilliant about this memoir is how Martin uses language that consistently plays down his father's behavior and incites (thereby diminishing) the behavior of others.Nothing is Kingsley's fault.Nothing.There is a near-Christ like depth of understanding and forgiveness that permeates his take on his father.

I am just doing this from memory but here are some examples.During abad time in the marriage between Kingsley and his second wife, ElizabethJane Howard, Martin Amis witnesses Jane doing all the work, including a lot physical work, in order to move house.While Kingsley sits around doing nothing but drinking, Jane's moving furniture is "maschochistic."Kingsley is "gently incapaciated."It's striking how Martin uses a perjorative term for Jane and obliquely soft language for his father.In this case, why wouldn't Kingsley be passive aggressive, or destructive?? Why is Kingsley's behavior described with utter homeliness and Jane's sent to the hells of pyschology?

The breakup of the first marriage ("remember," his father intoned to Martin and his brother, "I will always love your mother")... Well, I grew up with an aloholic, too -- and not a literary one-- and by God if that's not the exact same words my father said to my siblings and me -- and you could be sure Kingsley was drunk.Yet, this statement is treated as if it comes from some fathomless well of love.All evidence suggests that Kingsley's behavior towards his first wife was serially cruel.

I defy anyone to find a passage where Kingsley is not held up in a better light than anyone else who walks through the memoir.

Martin Amis has been called the Mick Jagger of literature but he has more in common with the fictional/cinematic Michael Corleone.Amis is a genius and his talent is beyond dispute but he was gifted with something else -- he manages to stay stable under the most strange, difficult circumstances.His mother noticed this -- she said he was born under a lucky star; his father stated, "...he is sane."

As Experience draws to its close, Amis is sitting at his father's bedside in the hospice.He is working on a review of Gore Vidal's first memoir and he is able to write it, while is emotions are "woefully disordered."

Experience -- you can say that again!
If you are a reader with a capital "R", this book is a must read.Martin Amis' gift with language, his sense of humor, and the rich material of his family life come together to make the reading of the book an experience in itself.

I've literally read and re-read this book so many times the cover has fallen off.I like Mr. Amis' fiction writing but this book is, in my opinion, his best, and easily one of my alltime favorites. ... Read more

Product Description
Kingsley Amis, in a 40-year writing career which began with "Lucky Jim", has produced more than 20 novels, several collections of poetry and countless other writings. He is a controversial figure, a Communist in his youth, an "Angry Young Man" in his 30s, he is now often seen as the epitome of the choleric right-wing clubman. In this biography, Eric Jacobs delves deep into Amis's life, revealing the man behind the literature, his early childhood in south London, his school and university life, his marriages and his novels. It is a compelling study of the man and his work, revealing Amis to be a more fascinating, driven and complex man than the stereotype suggests.Amazon.com Review
A man who considered boredom the worst offense in fiction andnearly the worst offense in life, British novelist Kingsley Amis(1922-1995) is wrought larger than life in Eric Jacobs's engagingbiography. Through his student years at Oxford (where "drinking,smoking, and behaving badly" formed the basis for many afriendship), his marriages and simultaneous affairs, his less-than-stellar teaching career, and his highly routinized years as writer andpub dweller, Amis was a merciless raconteur both in print and inperson. He shunned all manner of things phony, fashionable, and, ofcourse, boring, and honed his intellect into the acerbic observationsthat run through all his novels, from Lucky Jim to You Can'tDo Both.

Jacobs plays to the Amis anti-academic mentality. The biographycontains no scholarly apparatus and is happily footnote-free. The manycolorful anecdotes are drawn from scotch-laced afternoon conversationswith Amis in his later years and from peppery correspondence betweenAmis and such lifelong friends as poet Philip Larkin (whom Amisbefriended because they were "savagely uninterested in the samethings"). Jacobs is diligent about forming connections betweenthe characters in Amis's fiction and the real-life sorrows andanxieties of their author: losing his virginity when an Oxfordundergraduate to a girl who primed him with a sex manual is closelyreplayed in the novel You Can't Do Both.The overall effect isa clear view into a man of outrageous wit and genius and into thelarge legacy of novels, poetry, and essays he bequeathed. --JoanUrban ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Classic
I know nothing of the reasons why Kingsley Amis wrote this book, but I'm certainly glad he did. A primer on what to drink and how, the book is wonderfully dated by the changes in drinking habits over the past thirty years. Amis's humor stands up though to the test of time though, as does his commentary on why people drink and what drinking signifies in culture. Includes recipes too. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

Product Description
The hero of Kingsley Amis's comedy is Stanley Duke. Attractive, prosperous and happily remarried, Stanley leads a life that is positively enviable--that is, until it becomes apparent that his teenage son, Steve, is going mad.

It isn't that Steve suddenly tears up a copy of Bellow's HERZOG, or cranks his stereo to ear-shattering levels...that's normal. It's his pursuit by cosmic forces that concerns his father. Stanley's confrontation with his son's madness give Amis the opportunity to pull off a comic masterpiece.

"Tough, funny, tender and provoking. One of his fiercest and best." (Punch) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stan in 100 words
Stanley Duke's teenage son, Steve, has gone mad. Stan is a perplexed misogynist surrounded by women - ex-wife Nowell, Trish (Steve's doctor), his wife Susan and her snotty mother. Trish, as she treats Steve, thinks and speaks in a voguish but threatening psychobabble. The diatribes of Stan and his mates against this inability to call a madman a madman - indeed, all offences against common sense - and against the strangeness of 'females' provide the most enjoyment - a coherent but increasingly extreme rage. Stan finally loses all faith in women - and Steve ends the story as mad as he began. Rating 64.2% ... Read more

Product Description
Written by the author of "Stanley and the Women", "The Old Devils", "Difficulties with Girls" and "Crime of the Century", this novel focuses upon the lives of the elite middle-class community living on and around Primrose Hill. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Desultory, but nonetheless memorable
I've just re-read what has over the years become my favorite Kingsley Amis novel, and am again struck by these characters: the absent-minded Harry Caldecotte (whose insights occasionally roused him to action), the dominant lesbian and her malice, her ingenue partner and her ingenue-ness (their differences preventing genuine companionship), the statuslessness of the ingenue's ex-husband, and the lifelike quality of every last individual among the rest. It seems that I've met all these people, where was it? Cambridge, Mass? Chicago? Maybe I actually saw them on the streets in London, though how could I have known? I was only there for a month and knew no one. Yet they are now part of my memory of Primrose Hill, even more vivid than my memory of the view toward central London.

The articulate and perceptive reviewer of January 2001 refers, justifiably, to "a thin and hard-to-follow plot" and remarks, again with reason, that "Harry Caldecote, the main character, is fairly well developed but the many others appear and disappear with uncomfortable regularity". But isn't this characteristic of our own lives? It's true that the elder Amis concocted some striking plots in his day ("That peculiar feeling" and the "Anti-death league" come to my mind), and that "Folks that live on the hill" has almost no plot, other than the plot that arises from the mere affections and disaffections of the characters, but how many of us live in a plot? And isn't it true that most of the characters we've known have appeared and disappeared, without much regard for how we felt about it? Isn't that life?

Kingsley Amis has always struck me as an intensely realistic writer, the best creator of character in English literature since Shakespeare, rather than a clever master of clever plots. The girl-chasing wears out after a chapter or two, and you have to be in the mood for the drinking stories. His scenes of repartee, for all their sharpness of wit, are no more realistic than the trivial rubbish on American television. Unlike the latter, however, this call-and-response is based on genuine insight into real people; they are the l'esprit de l'escalier we didn't say, even when the fools and berks and nobs who provoked them were still in the stairwell with when we thought of them. For old Amis was a humane and kind-hearted man, for all of his sarcasm, and it's hard to imagine him actually hurling all those barbs, even when the targets were as irritating as he painted them.

I find that I've written a testimonial to the late Amis rather than a review of the book at hand, but let it stand. Let the old sceptic rest in whatever peace may be out there for a man with so little belief in anything other than his annoying but nonetheless lovable fellow man.

Hazards and haplessness in a London neighborhood
I picked up this novel with a preconceived notion about what I would find. After all, I had read the maverick son's works and assumed that their dark, contemporary atmosphere was a reaction to the father's stalwart British character. Consequently, just from the title alone, I gleaned an image of the happy goings-on of a small, gregarious community who might meet for tea and air their church-oriented disagreements at the local garden sale, tra la, tra la. NO WAY.

The writing is immediately engaging, especially the dialog which moves fasts and twists sharply. Nothing is what it seems. No one is content. Everyone is getting on with their daily business while covering a deeply discordant nature. The most dramatic example of this desolate irony is when the three very adult children take a taxi to lunch with their aged mother still living nearby where they grew up. It's an awful afternoon: no wants to be there, they don't enjoy each other's company; everyone participates in the charade of a happy family gathering. The author's voice is terribly, that is, fiercely, strong in his cynical and ironic commentary on these people. It is sometimes droll but never funny. In sum, the major characters are trapped in and dependent upon the machinations of their humdrum, small everyday lives. It's delightful writing in a very tough, nearly hideous story. There are wonderful and often scathing depictions: the widow Clare and the cumbersome dog left behind by her late husband, the desperate alcoholic Fiona, the bit-on-the-side Maureen and, most memorably, the more-English-than-the-English Pakistani shopkeepers. Just when I thought the whole things was going to end disastrously, these people are all gathered in the neighborhood pub (but of course, where else?) and accept or resolve their differences while Amis's authorial voice becomes almost paternal and loving. It worked for me: I heartily enjoyed this story with its fussy weave of banal hazards and haplessness, and its finely tuned emotional climax when Harry decides not to accept a promising job in the USA because he and his sister Clare, quite simply, need each other.

Not Amis' best
I have been a great fan of Kingsley Amis from the days of "Lucky Jim."Nothing is more refreshing than his dry wit, his cynicism, and his hilarious descriptions of various people in various stages of intoxication.Probably the best English writer since Trollope, although completely different.This book was, I believe, written in Amis' later years and it shows.It contains an overwhelming number of rather poorly defined characters and a thin and hard-to-follow plot.Harry Caldecote, the main character, is fairly well developed but the many others appear and disappear with uncomfortable regularity.The plot seems to have been formulated (to borrow one of Amis' favorite phrases) by "a group of high-grade mental defectives unacquainted with each other."Nevertheless, it does provide some very enjoyable moments but is not up to par with his normal 5 star work. ... Read more

Product Description
Soon after Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) published his first novel, Lucky Jim, in 1954, he became an object of literary and journalistic scrutiny. This attention would continue until his last days, four decades and forty books later. Conversations with Kingsley Amis includes both the first and last interviews Amis gave. Celebrated by reviewers and critics for his wit and irreverence, Amis rose to the occasion whenever interviewed. His clever and common-sense views covered everything from the state of the novel and current intellectual trends to the circumstances of his domestic life.

Not many writers can hold the interest of inquisitors from both Penthouse and the Economist as Amis does. Not many writers, for that matter, articulate views worth recording on sexual relations, about which Amis is something of a failed expert, and on the modern university, about which he could claim a greater authority. English periodicals of all varieties sought out Amis for his opinions on culture, both high and low. Along the way, Amis also entertained literary interrogators from the Paris Review and other journals, including talks with a number of distinguished men of letters such as Clive James, Michael Barber, and John Mortimer. ... Read more

Product Description
An innovative study of two of England's most popular, controversial, and influential writers, Father and Son breaks new ground in examining the relationship between Kingsley Amis and his son, Martin Amis. Through intertextual readings of their essays and novels, Gavin Keulks examines how the Amises' work negotiated the boundaries of their personal relationship while claiming territory in the literary debate between mimesis and modernist aesthetics. Theirs was a battle over the nature of reality itself, a twentieth-century realism war conducted by loving family members and rival, antithetical writers. Keulks argues that the Amises' relationship functioned as a source of literary inspiration and that their work illuminates many of the structural and stylistic shifts that have characterized the British novel since 1950. ... Read more

Product Description
Twaynes English Authors SeriesSeries Editors:Frank Day, Clemson UniversityJoseph M. Flora, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillPattie Cowell, Colorado State UniversityRuth K. MacDonald A volume in Twaynes Authors Series of literary criticism offers a critical introduction to the life and work of a particular writer, to the history and influence of a literary movement, or to the development of a literary genre.Primarily devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, the study not only takes account of major literary trends and important contributions in scholarship and criticism but also provides new critical insights and an original point of view.Authors Series volumes are rooted in the original works themselves and address readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors.The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work.A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading the Authors Series study, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.Here, for the first time, is a fascinating exploration of a prolific and influential writing career.Best known for his novels of popular culture and academic life, as examined in his 1954 publication Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis endures as a true Man of Letters.Bill Laskowskis study considers the complete writer examiningAmiss genre novels, poetry, essays, short and long fiction, and literary criticism.In addition to describing Amiss unique style, Laskowski illustrates his creation of comedic stereotypes by which Amis forces the reader to act as ultimate moral arbiter. ... Read more