by Kingsley Amis
A history lecturer at a not-too-prestigious British university, Jim
Dixon, is compelled to please his superior, the amiable but tedious
Professor Welch. He is invited to medieval musical revivals, meets
Welch’s fatuous, bearded painter son Bertrand, and falls in love with
the latter’s delightful girlfriend despite being bound by ties of guilt
to a needy female Professor who recently attempted suicide.
It's a
brilliantly comic novel, bursting with anger at the unfairness of
Britain's Old School Tie system and peppered with some of the most
viciously funny attacks on dreary academe ever written. Dixon’s
ruminations on his thesis alone — "its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing
facts, the pseudo-light it threw on non-problems" — encapsulates
perfectly all my own feelings and experiences at attempting a life in
the ivory towers. Dixon seethes with contempt for Welch's self-absorbed
senility; Bertrand's beard, clothing and tone of voice; his own weakness
at knuckling to those he needs; and Margaret, who keeps him in a
sexless limbo of dependency. Brilliantly paced, graced with characters
that range from the absurd to the pathetic, erudite without being
pretentious, masterfully funny, and blessed with the happy ending that Ending Up (the only other Amis novel I've read) lacked. One of the greats.
five stars
