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Kingsley Amis

LUCKY JIM
Kingsley Amis (19221995)
popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely
regarded as one of the greatest satirical writers of the
twentieth century.
born on April 16, 1922. The Amises lived a lower-middle class
existence in Norbury, a suburb just south of London. Kingsley
attended the City of London private school on scholarship, and
enrolled in the spring of 1941 at St. John's College, Oxford, to
study English Literature. At St. John's, Amis met Philip Larkin,
who shared Amis's love of jazz and admired Amis's talent for
mimicry. Larkin would become a life-long friend, as well as a
renowned poet and novelist in his own right. World War II soon
interrupted Amis's college career, and he served in the British
Army between the years 1942 through 1945.
Following service in the British Armys Royal Corps of Signals during
World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the
University College of Swansea in Wales. Lucky Jim, his first novel,
appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham
Award. Amis spent a year as a visiting fellow in the creative writing
department of Princeton University and in 1961 became a fellow at
Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but resigned the position two
years later, lamenting the incompatibility of writing and teaching.
Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science
fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of
poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and
three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and
more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in
1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.
Lucky Jim
Amis began work on Lucky Jim in 1951. The novel
was published in 1954 to tremendous popularity,
although some critics accused Amis of vulgarity
because of the coarse language and immature
behaviour of Jim Dixon. In spite of these negative
reviews, Lucky Jim won the prestigious Somerset
Maugham Award the following year.
The book is based on a conflict of what we think
would be right, and what we would like it to be.
Amis shows the comedy of being an outsider trying
to fit into the new world he has always struggled
with to reach. Amis focuses on the environment of a
university campus intensively and depicts several
mostly unusual relationships of local colleagues,
which do not contain any pieces of honesty. Dixon
tries to get on well with his superiors to keep the
job and to make a good impression, but the things
are going to happen from bad to worse as he does
not fit into the superficial mid-level class.
Themes in Lucky Jim
The value of straightforwardness over pretension
and hypocrisy
The differences between social classes

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