English 3044 Lucky Jim

Postwar England

Postwar England Technologically and culturally, by 1945 England is “modern.” The country has cars, television, movies, and early computers. The beginnings of a modern culture of consumer consumption, fashion, and music are forming.

The Rise of Popular Culture in England (1950s)

Teddy Boys – Anti-austerity

Teddy Girls?

Sir Kingsley Amis 1922-1995 Born in London Educated at Oxford Married and divorced twice English professor in Wales Author of 20 novels, six books of poetry Knighted in 1990 Father of novelist Martin Amis

Close friend of poet Philip Larkin Amis was considered part of the “Angry young men” movement Amis and Larkin wrote letters complaining: - Dylan Thomas was an ‘intolerable windbag’ - Having sex with women was more trouble than it was worth - Most literature was garbage, especially Old English - Both hated their families; Larkin’s father was a Nazi sympathizer; Amis’s fiancé was the model for the Welches

Amis drank heavily, often consuming a bottle of Scotch every evening, or 1-2 bottles of alcohol a day Amis was “a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals” – Terry Eagleton “What was needed in South Africa, he informed them, was ‘to shoot as many blacks as possible’” “He always enjoyed provoking people, particularly if he thought they didn't have a sense of humour. He was rude about everybody.”

Lucky Jim (1954) A harsher, “Juvenalian” satire of the pretentiousness and conservatism of 1950s upper-class England A semi-likeable protagonist? Jim (like Amis and Larkin) are not born into upper-class One of the first “campus novels” Early post-modernism? There is some subjective narration, but deeper description and character analysis

Manipulative Margaret – Lazy, childish Jim – Pretentious Bertrand – Out of Touch Prof. Welch – Nagging Mrs. Welch – Is this a picaresque novel? Are there any good characters? -- Does Jim grow or change? Is it because of Christine?