Memoirs by Kingsley Amis, author of Take A Girl Like You and more than a dozen other masterpieces http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/take-girl-like-you-by-kingsley-amis-one.html - 10 out of 10

 

Memoirs by Kingsley Amis, author of Take A Girl Like You and more than a dozen other masterpieces http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/take-girl-like-you-by-kingsley-amis-one.html

10 out of 10

 

 

This could be the fifteenth opus written by this Magister Ludi that I have enjoyed and it is clear from that that I am an admirer, indeed, he is one of my three top favorite authors, the other two being Marcel Proust and Somerset Maugham.

 

The danger with reading these Memoirs (or other) would be that coming to know the author better, the reader might feel like distancing himself (herself or themselves) from the human being that has written this and other works and might be deterred from reading more by the same person, as may happen if you come across Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, wherefrom one gets a closer look at the lives of Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, and especially Jean Jacques Rousseau – the latter left his children at the door at a time when nine out of ten kids in that situation would die – and finds the very dark side, one that repels http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html

Alhamdulillah, there is nothing outrageous in this autobiography and one does not end it with the feeling that one wants no more from the same source, on the contrary; however, what could happen is a sort of detachment from other figures that one admires, such as Evelyn Waugh – author of the tremendous, fabulous Brideshead Revisited and at least another phenomenal books

http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/11/brideshead-revisited-sacred-profane.html - who appears in the Memoirs as less than enchanting: there is character that says Waugh was ‘a horrible little man, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the rich and very courteous and flattering while the person in question was a lady, and then totally ignoring her, once she has lost that title’, now whether we could believe this or not is another question, but the comments around a BBC interview suggest Waugh was rather difficult.

 

Another writer that I admire is Anthony Burgess, author of the dazzling, effervescent, magical A Clockwork Orange, about whose title we learn from the Memoirs that it could refer to something strange, in old tongue, and then Burgess explains that it could be related to the word that means man in Malay and thus we could interpret it as ‘Mechanical Man’, which is what the protagonist is turned into at some point http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-clockwork-orange-by-anthony-burgess.html

Kingsley Amis is rather ironical or even cynical about the notion that someone is obsessed with language – keeping language in high esteem is fine – and thinks this name choosing takes the matter too far – well, words to that effect I hope – and then we find more about the relationship with Anthony Burgess, who has written reviews praising the works of Kingsley Amis, but the latter could not do the same in all honesty with the books of the former (not all of them anyway) so he avoided writing about some of  them, until he reached the autobiography, in which he found some points to disagree with.

 

Thus, at their next meeting, Anthony Burgess came abruptly to the point (as always, Kingsley Amis is hilarious in rendering this and all other encounters, scenes, dialogues, well, everything) without so much as how are you, and says something like ‘I have always treated you well, lauded your books and you found little to say about my work’, and then end of conversation, but with the next book, Burgess returned to the same good review; we find from the wondrous, exhilarating Belles Lettres Papers http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-belles-lettres-papers-by-charles.html that Anthony Burgess was very nice on almost or all authors and their books…

Most writers, or those that I know of, admire, come out with their reputations untarnished, and even the aforementioned example, is just a case of Anthony Burgess being perhaps to kind to books that deserve more criticism and then expecting a similar treatment for some of his lesser output; one other Magister Ludi who is on my list of ten favorite luminaries is Anthony Powell or Tony, which is how Kingsley Amis refers to him, the one that gave humanity (Tony) the absolute chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music Of Time http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-dance-to-music-of-time-by-anthony.html

 

One issue w may have with reading these Memoirs, and for that matter, almost any book by Magister Kingsley, would be what it does to the fellow that wants to write and understands that he, she or they cannot reach this glorious level, and then the thought of what Demigod Amis would say about your production could be daunting, he is very clear on quite a few of those who are appreciated by the public, he dismisses most American writers, if not all, with the caveat that, were he to navigate (he does not like flying and I realize that I have placed the present tense here and see that he is alive for me and so many others, I hope) more to the other side of the Atlantic, he would maybe change his view…

A few pranks come to mind, one concerning him, when he received a letter that purported to have him called for military duty to Burma, then for Philip Larkin (who looks like he has been his best friend) there is a threat that he could be prosecuted for looking into some dirty magazines (there was no internet then and thus no widely available porn) and finally, Magister Kingsley moved one car from its place with some others, to make a joke on some people who had been quite nasty, plus the Nashville trip

 

Nashville was a period in the life of the mesmerizing author that he regrets, he thought he would join academia and people with reasonable views, only to find himself trapped in a vile, racist, inept society, with professors expressing the most disgusting attitudes towards African Americans (who were called with other, insulting terms then and there) and this has reminded me of my own experience working for AT&T, when they have treated me often with the most contemptible methods, if not a slave, then I have not been a respected employee either, what with the shameful wages, the calls for overwhelming activity, the request that I attend various shindigs (right, it is good to fly to Lisbon, Cairo, Madrid and other such places, but then you have to be able to afford it, both in terms of money spent and extracting yourself form your other duties, because the multinational treated you as an employee that gives 100 hours every week, but paid you as a contractor to avoid the pension, medical and any other costs on top of the fucking two hundred and fifty dollars they sent you, when they did not forget that)

 

The style, humor, depth of analysis, kindness, self-criticism are exemplary and then we have the added pleasure of meeting and finding some details about Elizabeth Bowen, Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, Martin Amis and many other luminaries