SOURCE: “Kingsley's Ransom,” in The New Yorker, Vol. LXXI, No. 34, October 30, 1995, pp. 52-7.

In the following review of The Biographer's Moustache, Wolcott argues that Amis has been too harshly criticized and provides an overview of his career.

Late this summer, a literary crime was committed in London: if the victim had been a woman, it might have been called “granny bashing.” The elderly gentleman being ganged up on was Kingsley Amis, who, at seventy-three, had brought out his twenty-fourth novel, The Biographer's Moustache, to little acclaim. The majority opinion was that this book revealed sad evidence of diminished capacity. The Observer: “The Biographer's Moustache is reflex writing, full of Pavlovian pedantry.” The Sunday Times: “A stale, flat, savourless affair.” The Daily Mail: “Banal, boring and extremely silly.” Terribly dated, nearly everyone agreed. Amis, having been a poohbah on the public scene for decades, had become an overstuffed father...