Itemize Books Conducive To Lucky Jim
Original Title: | Lucky Jim |
ISBN: | 0140186301 (ISBN13: 9780140186307) |
Edition Language: | English |
Characters: | Jim Dixon |
Literary Awards: | Somerset Maugham Award (1955) |
Kingsley Amis
Paperback | Pages: 251 pages Rating: 3.78 | 24224 Users | 1728 Reviews
Describe Of Books Lucky Jim
Title | : | Lucky Jim |
Author | : | Kingsley Amis |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 251 pages |
Published | : | September 1st 1993 by Penguin Classics (first published 1954) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Humor. European Literature. British Literature |
Relation To Books Lucky Jim
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”
Rating Of Books Lucky Jim
Ratings: 3.78 From 24224 Users | 1728 ReviewsEvaluation Of Books Lucky Jim
I wasn't expecting to enjoy this, but I really, really, did. I found it funny, too. Not in a laugh-out-loud manner but certainly had me smirking at the pages I don't laugh much, so thinking something is funny, is a big deal. I'm going to stop saying funny now. Whilst reading it I said to my mum, 'I'm really enjoying this, I just love the old English humour, it's almost making me feel patriotic about being an ironic Englishman' (though, I'm possibly not that, but I can pretend.) And my mum said,Perhaps I'm a stuffed-shirted bore, but I didn't find Lucky Jim anywhere near as funny as it was made out to be. Granted, it did make me smile sometimes, and laugh out loud occasionally. But it doesn't seem to have much else going for it. There's wit enough, but much of the comedy is physical rather than verbal, with strong elements of farce, and would probably work better on stage or screen than in print. The language is gratingly formal and often feels mechanical, even when viewed as a parody
Jim Dixon's reflection on old man Welch, the chair of the History Department at the provincial college where the novel is set: "How had he become Professor of History, even at a place like this? By published works? No. By extra good teaching? No, in italics." Kingsley Amis, Lucky JimBritish literary critic and novelist David Lodge notes how those of his generation who came of age in England in the 1950s, men and women mostly from lower-middle income families having their first real taste of
I can't imagine how I have missed reading this hilarious book until now. I keep remembering some of the situations and laughing out loud all over again.James Dixon lurches from one comic disaster to the next, and yet somehow it all comes right for him at the end - which of course is what we want for him.Favourite moments have to include the matter of the bedclothes and the table while staying overnight at his Professor's home, and of course the wonderful lecture on "Merrie England" towards the
Lucky Jim reminds me of The Beatles. I like the Beatles. I enjoy the Beatles. I can recite all the reasons why The Beatles are supposed to be the greatest, most culturally relevant rock band in history. And yet... As a person who grew up post-Beatles, and who has heard The Beatles ALL THE TIME her entire life, the difference between the impact that I am told The Beatles should have on me, and the actual impact that The Beatles have on me, is a huge, yawning chasm of incomprehensibility.Lucky Jim
Many years ago, I briefly dated a guy whose favorite book was Lucky Jim. I'd barely heard of the novel at the time, but I made a mental note of it, and for whatever reason I've now finally gotten around to reading it. I wish I'd read it back when I was dating him, because this portrayal of a totally clueless dude who sometimes hurts people but is completely astonished to realize he's done so because he sees himself as a pure and honest soul just fumbling around would have given me quite an
I read John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956) a few years ago. The play was very interesting to me because it conveyed the sense of anomie felt by the British as their empire which once seemed to be unassailable was now crumbling to pieces. There was a sense of despair and purposelessness in British society. I couldn't help but feel that even the idealistic Jimmy (the angry leading man in the play) was in some ways longing for that kind of world where people had a reason to live (like
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