Lucky Jim. (1954)

Evokes a period in England for those of a certain age. ( )

I read this about 40 year ago and remember having a good laugh at some of the predicaments Jim ends up in and also the pomposity of the various bastion of the college he encounters.

There are not many books which I believe to be genuinely funny, but this is one of them. ( )

James Dixon is in a plum position to earn a decent spot as a lecturer in his college's History Department. The only problem is he is falling in love with his boss's son's girlfriend.
You can't help but laugh out loud during certain scenes in Lucky Jim. Amis has a way of painting the picture so clear you are in the room with the characters, whether you want to or not. The snobbery and pretentious nature of ambition on academia permeates the plot. The description of Dixon's hangover, filled with images of excrement and death's decay, had me smirking with remembrance. Been there, done that. I am not a smoker, but Dixon trying to ration his cigarettes gave me a chuckle as well, especially when he's on the cigarette he should be enjoying a whole day into the future. Sadly, my accolades end there. I found almost everything else about Lucky Jim to be a bore. ( )

I searched out Kingsley Amis' 1958 best seller 'Lucky Jim' after hearing its praises from Hitchens and then, natch, son Martin Amis. Because I know what a nasty person Kingsley was, bc the book is 60 years old, and is just not interesting, 22 pages is as far as I could get. ( )

After enjoying four novels by Evelyn Waugh, I decided to read this book after hearing that it was even funnier. Well, it's not. You might disagree with me, though, if you find drunkenness and chronic irresponsibility more amusing than I do.
James Dixon "works," to use the term loosely, at an academic career in which he has no interest because he can't imagine what else he'd like to do with his life. He hates his situation and the people it puts him in contact with. He deals with his repressed rage through a series of faces he pulls, each bearing a name he has given to it (including an Evelyn Waugh face).
This book's subtext is the rapid expansion of access to higher education after World War Two to make it accessible to those returning from military service by founding or beefing up universities far from Oxbridge. These newer schools were scoffed at; popular opinion held that they must be inferior to the traditional British universities and staffed by incompetents. But one of the rules of satire is that it works best if it is rooted, in part, in respect for the object mocked. So as a puncturing of the pretensions of higher education's paragons, this book rates below Randall Jarrell's Pictures at an Institution in my estimation.
The word that frequently crossed my mind as I read was "tedious," and I came close to chucking it.
And then, in the closing pages, came one of the most beautifully-executed reversals of fortunes I've ever read—totally unexpected by me since I'd been misled by the false impression I was reading a "funny" book. It's not funny, but it is great comedy. The awareness that James's nature won't be changed by his luck doesn't diminish the pleasure one whit. ( )