Disconcerting his readers has long been a speciality of Amis. Since Lucky Jim (1954) announced a talent for inventively comic writing, he has seldom been content to stay still. Even in that early novel, the memorable and splendid farce of the burnt bed-clothes and drunken lecture has to take its place alongside the developing relationship between Jim Dixon and the neurotic Margaret, where the writing is less assured and more tentative as the material is less scathing and more weighty. A disturbing co-existence of two distinct types of writing is often to be found in an Amis novel. In I Want It Now (1968), for example, satire of the trendy and corrupt world of chat-show television celebrities goes along with celebration of one such man's triumph over the predatory upper-class world. The character of Ronnie Appleyard is not strong enough to support writing which is now appropriately incisive and now rather pretentious.
Amis, however, is a game enough novelist to keep experimenting with ways of confounding the reader who hopes for a single focus. Accidental death and voluntary therapy for the male of the species loosely hold together the characters and theme of The Anti-Death League (1966). Maurice Allington, a whisky addict and ageing, but imaginative, lover, becomes involved in a ghost-story which oscillates between farce and seriousness; between the Reverend Tom Rodney Sonnenschein … and God (The Green Man, 1969). Most recently, a detailed analysis of the way of 'life' of a household of geriatrics is flauntingly and surprisingly ended with the almost simultaneous deaths of all the characters. This is narrated in six paragraphs: the sudden switch from intricate detail to authorial arrogance is extraordinary (Ending Up, 1974).
This is a free excerpt of 279 words. There are 1,854 words (approx.
6 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Amis, Kingsley 1922–: Critical Essay by W. Hutchings Access Pass.
