Lucky Jim was his first novel, and it remains my all-time favorite novel about academia. It's simply hilarious but also dead serious. If you don't know it, just get it and read it. If you've ever lived in academia, you'll laugh out loud.
The Russian Girl is one of his last novels (from the early 90's). I vaguely remember reading it when it came out, but it didn't make much of an impression. When I saw a paperback version in a used bookstore a few years ago, I couldn't resist picking it up. Not sure why it took me this long to get to it, but I'm so glad I did.
First of all, Kingsley Amis has to be the master of the British comic novel of the second half of the twentieth century. It's P. G. Wodehouse combined with Fawlty Towers. Yes, it's so so British and all that, very proper and buttoned down. The contrived style can be a bit off-putting at times, but do try to go with it. Think Maggie Smith at her best. But there's real heart, genuine modesty, and strong opinions to be reckoned with. And then there's the writing itself, which will delight you unexpectedly.
OK it's old-fashioned, it's a bit sexist. Yes, he was an alcoholic with all the issues that come along with that particular shortcoming. But there is also genuine craft here, a writer that took care with words, with structure, and with ideas. In The Russian Girl, Amis manages to express some very serious thoughts on how various worlds can collide in an individual life. There's our everyday outer life (the face we show to society), there's literature (and art in general), there's politics, there's academia, there's our inner emotional life, there's sexuality. All of these overlap in countless ways, and those overlaps while sometimes fruitful, often simply contaminate one another. How do we sort it all out?
Art is art; life is life. We do our best with personal morality. Why confuse morality with politics and literature? We vote, we have political affiliations, as citizens we must make expedient political decisions. Why mix that up with art or personal morality? Sorting all that out is the real subject of this book, and Kingsley's advice is well taken. Do the best you can at the moment. Don't make connections between worlds that are not there in the actual real-life context. Artificial and contrived connections are dangerous and may lead to serious error. And real contradictions and conflicts are inevitable, and we must be prepared to deal with them, no matter how confusing.
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| Funny, but that's not the whole story. |
Most of all, Kingsley shows tremendous faith in our ability to get it right in the long run, or at least be more correct as we stumble down the road of life. Yes, the book has some plot contrivances. Yes, it all doesn't quite play out believably, but then again what's so realistic about Solzhenitsyn's fiction? Yes, there are deux ex machina moments, characters that are introduced simply to express an idea, and then they disappear. I get it. In the end I was happy to know Amis's thoughts, and I was reassured with his assessment that though in the small scale we often get it so so wrong, we are always capable of growth and insight. No matter what bad choices we've made in the past, we can continue to learn. If we're willing to pay the price (without resentment) for those bad choices, we can begin again ... and again ... and again as needed. Maybe it's the alcoholic needing forgiveness or trying hard to reconcile his capabilities with his failings.
Is it all about redemption? Perhaps. I haven't read much of Martin Amis, but what I have read (and I get the tremendous intelligence, the literary skill) makes me despair that redemption is just another illusion. For now I prefer Kingsley's outlook, and I will dream on. It might be painful to truly look at ourselves, but in the long run it's the only way to find a better path. Pain itself cannot be the only end.
I prefer to think of life as a comedy. Full of errors, pain and pathos, but nonetheless a comedy.
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