1. English Lucky Jim

2. Postwar England

3. 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.

4. The Rise of Popular Culture in England (1950s)

5. Teddy Boys
– Anti-austerity

6. Teddy Girls?

7. Sir Kingsley Amis
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

8. 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

9. 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.”

10. 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

11. 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?