One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis (Gollancz, 1963): Book Review

For this final post on Kingsley Amis – for which, if the marked decline in blog traffic over the past week or so is any indication, the dwindling readership of Existential Ennui will be thankful – here's a first edition of Amis's fifth novel, which I found hidden in the little bookcase fixed to the wall outside Peter Ellis's bookshop on Cecil Court, and bought for three quid: 

One Fat Englishman, published by Victor Gollancz in 1963. Now, once or twice during this run of posts I've suggested that there is more warmth, more, as Kingsley's son, Martin Amis, put it, "reckless generosity" in Amis père's novels than those who are only familiar with his reputation – i.e his endlessly regurgitated, perennially picked-over failings – rather than with his work – would suppose. But that's by no means true of all his novels, and it's certainly not the case with this one. Roger Micheldene, the titular Fat Englishman, a libidinous book publisher abroad in America, is a strikingly loathsome creation, and the assortment of writers, students, intellectuals and linguists he encounters at various parties and functions in and around the campus of the fictional Budweiser college (standing in for Princeton, where Amis was a lecturer in the late-1950s) – and their wives and girlfriends, most of whom he attempts (sometimes successfully) to bed – is little better.

In a 2002 article for The Guardian, David Lodge recalled that on original exposure to One Fat Englishman in 1963 he "hadn't really enjoyed reading it, and enjoyment was very much at the heart of my interest in Amis's earlier fiction", but that when he reread it years later it was "more comprehensible and interesting", not to mention "much funnier". Personally I prefer the mid-sixties–mid-seventies Amis novels, but my reaction to One Fat Englishman was similar to Lodge's, except condensed: I was initially repelled by the book, but found myself thinking about it a fair bit once I'd finished.

Lodge identifies Micheldene as "a devastating and prophetic self-portrait", but Amis actually had something different in mind when he wrote the novel. As Michael Barber explained in a 2006 Hudson Review piece – republished on Existential Ennui in 2011 – on Zachary Leader's Amis biography: "Intended as an egregious exponent of the strident British anti-Americanism that Amis then deplored, Micheldene was mistaken by many readers for the author’s mouthpiece." Here Barber was drawing on the evidence of his own eyes and ears: in 1975 he interviewed Amis for The Paris Review, and raised the subject of Micheldene and One Fat Englishman, to which Amis responded:

"...I think the pro- and anti-American stuff hasn’t, if I may say so, been properly understood. What I was doing was knocking British anti-Americanism, and I thought, Put all the usual tired old arguments into the mouth of a very unsympathetic character. I thought this was quite a good way of showing up all those British attitudes. But I must have muffed it somewhere along the line because American reviewers fell into two classes: one lot said, 'Mr. Amis makes some shrewd hits on the deficiencies in our culture.' And they were meant to be very unshrewd hits. Others said, half rightly, 'Mr. Amis's objections to American life are very old hat. If they were ever accurate, they no longer are so. It's all been done better by American writers.' Well, that's true, except that they got the name wrong. Roger Micheldene's objections were all of those things."

Of course, a novelist's relationship with his or her own characters is always complex, and Amis went on to concede that "life tells us all the time that it's possible to like the people that you violently disapprove of" and that he'd "quite enjoy a couple of drinks with Roger". That much is evident in the novel itself, where Amis details Micheldene's exploits with a savage glee; and it is, admittedly, hard not to detect the author's guiding hand in places, such as when Micheldene sneeringly but wittily (and even today, appositely) predicts the likely notices for the debut novel by Irving Macher, a young Jewish author he's taken a dislike to (and who will become his nemesis): 

'A profoundly disturbing and yet deeply compassionate vision of the human situation'—Philip Toynbee. 'Perhaps one of the four most poised and authoritative contributions of the New York neo-Gothic meta-fantasy school'—Times Literary Supplement. 'This searing, sizzling, lacerating I.C.B.M. of a book will pick you up, throw you down and trample on you'—Daily Express. 'Remarkable'—Yorkshire Post.

Even Roger can't ignore the obvious literary qualities of Macher's novel, however, and so it is, after a fashion, with One Fat Englishman: a pleasant – or pleasurable – experience it may not be, but it's not one soon forgotten.

Kingsley Amis and The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage (HarperCollins, 1997)

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

Thus far in this series of posts on Kingsley Amis we've had some spy fiction – The Anti-Death League and The Egyptologists – and some science fiction – the Amis-edited SF anthology Spectrum. Now it's time for some nonfiction, with a book I bought in secondhand bookshop Tome in Eastbourne, for just two quid (remarkably, all of their secondhand books are priced at two pounds):

A first edition of The King's English, published in hardback by HarperCollins in 1997, two years after Amis's death. It is, as the subtitle states, "A Guide to Modern Usage", and given that Kingsley Amis had a way with the written English word few could match in the twentieth century, you'd be hard pressed to think of a better guide. But that subtitle does make the book sound drearier, more pedagogical – not to mention considerably less witty – than it actually is. As Charles Moore points out in this 2011 Telegraph review (The King's English was reissued by Penguin that year): "...what does shine throughout is Kingsley’s love of his language. He is exact, but not pedantic. Even when making minute points about the letter of the law, he is really talking about its spirit." A good example of this might be the entry titled "Preposition at the end of a sentence", wherein Amis writes:

This is one of those fancied prohibitions (compare SPLIT INFINITIVE) dear to ignorant snobs. In this case they should be disregarded, and they mostly are, though the occasional stylistic derangement may suggest that a writer here and there still feels its force. It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with. As [H. W.] Fowler famously observed, 'The power of saying . . . People worth talking to instead of People with whom it is worth while to talk is not one to be lightly surrendered.' This time idiom and common sense have triumphed over obscurantism.

In his introduction to the 2011 edition of The King's English, Martin Amis makes a similar point to Charles Moore: "...those who remember [Kingsley] as a reactionary – or, if you prefer, as an apoplectic diehard – will be astonished to discover how unfogeyish he is. With remarkably few exceptions, he takes the sensible and centrist course. He is also deeply but unobtrusively learned. As a result, this is not a confining book but a liberating one." That said, there are some cases where the rules are immutable – apostrophes, for instance, where Amis père takes issue with the "greengrocer's apostrophe" and highlights common errors, such as inserting an apostrophe where none is needed. Even here, though, he's notably lenient, admitting that the "rules governing the use of this vexing little mark are evidently hard to master" and conceding that those "who mind their p's and q's must be tolerated".

The word "tolerance" isn't one generally associated with Kingsley Amis, at least in most people's minds – unless, perhaps, it's in regard to his levels of alcohol consumption – but anyone who's spent any amount of time with his writings will know that, like all of us, he was a complicated man. Take the entry titled "Gay", for example, which Martin Amis identifies as "perhaps the most stirring passage in the book": 

The use of this word as an adjective or noun applied to a homosexual has received unusually prolonged execration. The 'new' meaning has been generally current for years. Gay lib had made the revised Roget by 1987 and the word itself was listed in the 1988 COD under sense 5 as a homosexual... And yet in this very spring of 1995 some old curmudgeon is still frothing on about it in the public print and demanding the word "back" for proper heterosexual use...

...once a word is not only current but accepted willy-nilly in a meaning, no power on earth can throw it out. The slightest acquaintance with changes in a language, or a minimum of thought, will show this truth.

This time it is not a wholly unwelcome truth. The word gay is cheerful and hopeful, half a world away from the dismal clinical and punitive associations of homosexual. We lucky ones can afford to be generous with our much larger and richer vocabulary.

As Martin Amis notes: "An 'old curmudgeon': towards the end of his life, Kingsley was monotonously so described. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable defines curmudgeon as 'a grasping and miserly churl'. Whereas all careful readers of The King's English (and of his novels) will find themselves responding to a spirit of reckless generosity."

I'm not sure, however, that the phrase "a spirit of reckless generosity" could be applied to the final Kingsley Amis book I'll be looking at: a 1963 novel that some critics have pointed to as a prophetic portrait of Amis himself.

Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest: Science Fiction, Spectrum (Gollancz, 1961) and The Egyptologists (Cape, 1965)

I touched on Kingsley Amis's experiments with genre in the previous post, on 1966's The Anti-Death League – the genre in that instance being (largely) spy fiction. But The Anti-Death League also boasts elements of science fiction in its genetic make-up, a genre Amis was a leading exponent of. He wrote a key critical text on SF – 1960's New Maps of Hell – and the following year, in collaboration with his friend, the diplomat, historian and poet Robert Conquest, published this:

Spectrum, issued in hardback in 1961 by Victor Gollancz under one of the publisher's iconic yellow dust jackets, and bought by me in first edition back in November 2011 at the same Bloomsbury Book Fair – and indeed from the same dealer – as the similarly jacketed first of Anthony Price's October Men (which will give you an indication of how long some of the multitudinous books on my "to be blogged about" shelves have been awaiting my blogging attention). It's an anthology of SF tales by the likes of Frederik Pohl, Clifford D. Simak and Robert Heinlein, selected by Amis and Conquest, and with an introduction – obliquely referencing New Maps of Hell – which starts off as a robust rebuttal of ill-informed criticisms of science fiction – drawing the analogy that "a useful qualification for reviewing a book on Georgian cutlery is the ability to tell a knife from a fork" – only to turn into almost an apology for its inadequacies, especially as regards characterization (or lack thereof). Although as my learned friend Olman argues in his review, that perceived deficiency is, by and large, borne out by the stories themselves.

Amis and Conquest would go on to edit a further four Spectrum anthologies for Gollancz throughout the 1960s. But they also collaborated on a novel:

The Egyptologists, published in hardback by Jonathan Cape in 1965, bought by me in first in Hall's Bookshop, Tunbridge Wells either last year or the year before – or maybe even the year before that; I genuinely can't remember (see above re: the length of time it takes me to to get round to blogging about some of these bloody books). The situationist-style jacket design is by Jan Pienkowski, who also designed the Richard Chopping-referencing wrapper for Amis's The James Bond Dossier (Cape, 1965), not to mention, while we're on the subjects of Fleming and Cape, the dust jacket of John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming (1966). Kirkus describes The Egyptologists as a "long legpull" and "nonsense", but there's a more favourable – and lengthier – review over at Mystery*File.

Next in the series of posts on Kingsley Amis, I'll probably have a posthumously published work of linguistic pitfalls and pronunciation...

The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis (Gollancz, 1966): New Fiction Society Signed Edition, 1972; Uncorrected Proof, 1966

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

The final signed edition I have to show you (for the moment; I do have other signed books waiting patiently in the bookcases) also begins a run of posts on its author:

The Anti-Death League, by Kingsley Amis, originally published in hardback by Victor Gollancz in 1966 under an evocative dust jacket designed by the great Raymond Hawkey, photography by Adrian Flowers. This isn't that edition, however – at least, not quite. It's the second impression from 1972, which I spotted in Lewes's Bow Windows Bookshop last year and couldn't resist – even though I already own a first edition – because each copy was signed by Amis for members of the New Fiction Society:

Although given that this edition came along six years after the first edition, it would have been a slight contradiction in terms to call it "new". Mind you, I've no idea how apposite the New Fiction Society's name was/is: after much fruitless googling I've been unable to determine who or what they were/are (I even resorted to posing the question on Twitter, to a deafening silence). If anyone can shed any light on this mysterious Society, do please leave a comment. 

UPDATE: Fellow fan of The Anti-Death League Philip Gooden emailed me shortly after I posted this with the following insight: 

"The NFS was a kind of upmarket book club that flourished briefly in the mid-70s. Since its aim was to encourage more serious fiction – or at least something between popular and highbrow – it may even have had some Arts Council support. My memory's a bit hazy but I don't think you had to commit to buying a set number of books and they were sold at only a small discount to the published price (in pre-discounting days). The jackets were just the same, with the addition of the NFS sticker on the spine. Perhaps you could get signed copies by paying more.

"The only two I have are Martin Amis's Success (1978) and Robert Nye's Falstaff (1976). I don't think the society was going in the early 70s so suspect that your copy of The Anti-Death League was retrospectively branded by them. Delighted to find someone else who thinks that it's K. Amis's best book." 

And I'm delighted to be able to post this information. Thank you, Philip!

The Anti-Death League was Kingsley Amis's seventh published novel – including 1965's The Egyptologists, co-written with Robert Conquest – and marked the beginning of his (solo) experiments with genre, in this case spy fiction with a dash of science fiction... kind of; there's actually a lot more to the novel than that would suggest, the military espionage trappings merely a backdrop to a highly eventful extended meditation on the nature of life, love, death, friendship, God (who also receives a good kicking in another Amis genre experiment, 1969's The Green Man) and sexuality. It's the one book I would recommend to anyone who reckons they have Amis père pegged: a surprisingly warm novel which stands in marked contrast to the cantankerous likes of, say, Ending Up (1974) – which, incidentally, after The Anti-Death League is my second favourite Amis (of those that I've read).

Speaking of Robert Conquest, as I briefly was above, he'll be popping up in the next post, in which I'll be examining two books he and Kingsley Amis produced in collaboration...

. . . . . . . . . .

ADDENDUM: In March 2019, six years after I originally posted this, I came across an uncorrected proof of the 1966 Gollancz edition of The Anti-Death League in a Lewes antique emporium. 

Extremely uncommon in its own right – it's the only proof of the novel I've ever seen – this copy is also remarkable in that it's an association copy, bearing the ownership signature of literary agent Hilary Rubinstein, who, when he was an editor at Gollancz, brought Amis's debut novel, Lucky Jim, to the publisher. Quite a nice find, then – especially for eight quid.

Celebrating 50 Years of Richard Stark's Parker, and the Parker Movie: Infographics and Character Guide from University of Chicago Press

Interrupting the signed editions briefly: Trent has already linked this one over at The Violent World of Parker after Levi at University of Chicago Press gave us (and fellow Parker fanatic Ethan Iverson) the heads up, but it's diverting enough that I'd like to post something here too. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Donald E. "Richard Stark" Westlake's taciturn career criminal Parker (The Hunter hit the streets early 1963) and the US release of the new Parker movie, UCP, current publishers of the Parker (and Grofield) series, have unveiled a terrific new dedicated page on their site.

There's a guide to Parker's rules, witty infographics detailing the body count in each book and Parker's take from each score, and most useful of all, I think, a sortable character guide, featuring practically every player – major and minor – from the twenty-four-book series, the novel(s) they appeared in, a bit of biographical background, and even little spoilers.

Clearly a hell of a lot of work went into all this, and I suspect the character guide in particular will prove a godsend in years to come (not least of all to me when I'm researching Parker posts), so a hearty congratulations to Levi and all at UCP. Go check it out.

Harriet Lane, Alys, Always (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012; Signed Edition), Patricia Highsmith, and Tom Ripley

As with C. J. Sansom's Dominion, I became interested in this next book as a result of reading a few reviews at the tail end of last year:

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane, published in hardback – under a lovely dust jacket designed by Carrie May – by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in February 2012 – which, if you're paying attention at the back of the class, might beg the question, how come I only read those aforementioned reviews at the end of 2012...? Although if you're sitting at the front of the class with the rest of the exceptionally bright children, you'll probably already have worked out that it wasn't the reviews of the hardback edition that I noticed but the reviews of the paperback edition, which was published by Phoenix in December (tick, VG, clever kids; dullards at the back see me after). Of course, awkward bugger that I am, the paperback wasn't good enough for me – and neither was the regular hardback first edition. No – I decided that nothing less than a signed first edition would do, and so went and bought the only one I could find for sale online:

Which has been signed and dated pre-publication. And I suspect in years to come it'll be one to treasure; Lane's debut novel, Alys, Always has been rapturously received by critics, more than a few of whom have pointed to Patricia Highsmith as an influence, especially Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels – which was why my curiosity was piqued by those reviews I saw. Turns out Lane is indeed a fan of Highsmith's work – all the best people are, I find – and there are certainly echoes of The Talented Mr. Ripley in particular in Alys, Always. Not so much stylistically – the novel is written in the first person, present tense (where Highsmith stuck rigidly to third and past), and Lane is a lighter writer (hey!) than Highsmith – more in the way it centres on a manipulative type inveigling themselves into an unsuspecting circle of family and friends. In Talented it was Tom inserting himself into, and eventually co-opting, Dickie Greenleaf's life; here it's Frances Thorpe – thirty-something subeditor on the literary section of an ailing newspaper – worming her way into the lives of novelist Laurence Kyte and his children.

One major difference is that unlike Tom Ripley, Frances doesn't actually kill anyone. Instead, at the novel's outset she chances upon the crashed car of Laurence's wife, Alys, who, after a brief, strained conversation, promptly dies on her. Even so, it's the kind of opening one can imagine Highsmith herself entertaining: a coincidence (she was very fond of those) that sets in motion a chain of events largely driven by a scheming loner. For though Frances may not share Tom's murderous tendencies, she does share his outsider's viewpoint, observing the Kytes – not to mention her own family and friends – at a step removed, which in turn allows her to shape and mould their emotions and intuit and almost predict their reactions. She also shares Tom's ultimate aim – a better life for him/herself – and even, in a parallel of the scene in Talented where Tom tries on Dickie's things, drifts about the Kytes' holiday home draped in Alys's shawl and pores over her cookbooks and photo albums.

I don't mean to bang on about Patricia Highsmith – even though I, er, kind of have – but the more you look at Alys, Always, the more Highsmith comes to mind – or at least, to my mind. It's important to note, however, that this isn't imitation on Lane's part: it's inspiration. Lane has a style all her own; she's especially good at evoking an environment in a few lines, and I particularly admire her brevity (the novel clocks in at just over 200 pages, which, in an era of bloated doorstoppers, is refreshing). My learned friend Book Glutton put it best: he identified Alys, Always as being "Highsmithic" – and to my way of thinking, there's no higher praise than that.