Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

First published in 1953; published by New York Review of Books Classics on October 2, 2012

Kingsley Amis' first novel is arguably his best and probably his funniest. While Lucky Jim is an amusing send-up of academia, it is also a wicked examination of sexual dynamics as they were evolving in the post-war world of the early 1950s. Amis generates laughs by dishing out example after example of the perennial inability of men to understand women. He is particularly adept at exposing the transparent shallowness of men -- but the likable man who is the novel's protagonist is never a total cad, and Amis pokes fun at men with such good humor that male readers can recognize a bit of themselves in his characters and laugh. (Female readers, I susect, will nod their heads knowingly.)

James Dixon is in his first (and possibly last) year of employment as a lecturer in the history department of a provincial college. Despite his position, Dixon is disinclined to do any work that might be considered academic. As he avoids preparing the "special subject" he is supposed to teach in his second year, his only concern is the number of pretty girls who will sign up for the class. Whether Dixon will be invited to return for his second probationary year depends upon his ability to keep Professor Ned Welch happy. Welch is the prototypical absent-minded professor, a model of the pretentious and dull academic, the kind of scholar to whom Dixon is incapable of sucking up, no matter how hard he tries.

Dixon begins the novel in a spotty relationship with Margaret Peel, a lecturer who is taking a paid leave after her unsuccessful suicide attempt (triggered by the news that, in her words, Catchpole was leaving her for his "popsy"). Despite Margaret's prim and earnest nature (quite the opposite of Dixon's), Dixon enjoys spending time with her as long as "the emotional business of the evening" can be "transacted without involving him directly." More to Dixon's liking is Christine Callaghan, the current girlfriend of Welch's son Bertrand, an untalented painter. But Bertrand is also having a go with Carol Goldsmith (behind the back of Carol's husband Cecil, another history department colleague of Dixon's). Bertrand is interested in Christine largely because Christine's uncle is Julius Gore-Urquhart, a wealthy arts patron who is searching for a private secretary, a position Bertrand covets.

Invited to spend a weekend with the Welches, Dixon makes a mess of it in an impressive variety of ways. He does the same at a dance and, finally, at a public lecture he has been invited to give on a subject ("Merrie England") dear to Welch's heart. Dixon spends the most of the novel mildly misbehaving while trying to sort out the relationships between the various characters as well as his own (mostly superficial) feelings about them. Should he stay with Margaret? Should he try to win Christine's affections? Should he punch Bertrand in the ear?

Amis was a master of understated humor enlivened by slapstick moments. He packed more wit into a single sentence that most comedy writers manage in entire chapters. Take this description of an incipient fistfight between Dixon and Bertram: "They faced each other on the floral rug, feet apart and elbows crooked in uncertain attitudes, as if about to begin some ritual of which neither had learnt the clues." Of course, the brief fight causes more damage to a china figurine than to either of the combatants. Among the many jokes Amis tells in Lucky Jim, my favorite is the formula for love: ignorance of the other person plus unsatisfied sexual desire equals love.

As obnoxious as Dixon can be -- he schemes and manipulates, he drinks too much, he hides the evidence when he burns his host's blanket, he's lazy, he hates everything -- Amis manages the astonishing trick of making the reader identify with him and root for his success. Unlike Welch and Bertram and many of the novel's other characters, Dixon is genuine. He isn't a snob, he's incapable of disguising his faults, and he's cheerily self-deprecating.

The New York Review of Books edition of Lucky Jim includes an entertaining and informative introduction penned by Keith Gessen, notable for its frequent quotations from correspondence between Amis and Philip Larkin. It's interesting to note the parallels in experiences and attitudes between the lives of Amis and Larkin and the fictional life of Jim Dixon. The introduction also provides context to the novel in its discussion of post-war England.

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