Lucky Jim is a conventional novel; its narration is third person, its development is chronological, and its style is a conventional mixture of dialogue and description. The characterizations are clearly and sharply drawn. The novel abounds in verbal wit, comic gesture, and good natured satire. One of its most distinguished qualities is the pacing and power of key descriptive passages. Amis controls and builds excruciatingly comic tension in such descriptions as Welch attempting to pass a van on a curve with a bus veering down from the opposite direction or Jim awakening with a hangover to discover that his mouth still bears witness to his excesses.

A recurrent theme in criticism on Amis is that he continues a long tradition of wit, social satire, and picaresque heroism which began with the novels of Henry Fielding, and that he provides for contemporary readers satirical novels...