Kingsley Amis | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 4 pages of analysis & critique of Kingsley Amis.

Kingsley Amis | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 4 pages of analysis & critique of Kingsley Amis.
This section contains 887 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by Philip Hensher

SOURCE: “Leader of the Hack Pack,” in Manchester Guardian Weekly, Vol. 151, No. 16, October 16, 1994, p. 28.

In the following review of You Can't Do Both, Hensher, a novelist, criticizes Amis's writing, arguing that his novels are no longer funny and that this novel is badly written.

If any one writer is to blame for the decline of the comic novel in England it is Kingsley Amis. Before the war, in the hands of writers like Gerhardie, Waugh and early Compton-Burnett, it was not inconceivable that the comic novel could be intellectually interesting, or be written with a bit of linguistic invention. What followed from Amis's novels were dismal comedies by Tom Sharpe or David Lodge about buying contraceptives.

Amis shut off large parts of his intelligence in favour of facetiousness, and the results have dated appallingly. Jake's Thing is a comedy about the folly of admitting women to Oxbridge men's...

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This section contains 887 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by Philip Hensher
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Critical Review by Philip Hensher from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.