Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
Paperback book
Penguin 1982 (Copyright 1953, First Penguin 1961)
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth
century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic
as when it first scandalized readers in 1954.
This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history
at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to
the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the
reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and
neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold
on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy post-war
manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they
may take, and a work of art that at once distils and extends an entire
tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse
and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has
written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice,
and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have
the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so
imperishable.”
Condition:
The book is in good condition for its age.
The cover has slightly creased / bent corners, vertical creases to the
spine, slight edge wear, slight creasing, faint surface marks and scratches and
very slight age browning. Inside, the
book has a small pencil inscription on first page, some slightly creased / bent
corners, minor marks and wear and slight age browning. The pages appear to be in reasonably tight
and clean condition.