The Alteration by Kingsley Amis

First published in Great Britain in 1976; republished with an introduction by William Gibson by NYRB Classics on May 7, 2013

Kingsley Amis was a science fiction fan, so it shouldn't be surprising that he tried his hand at a science fiction theme. The Alteration is an alternate history with the merest whiff of steampunk. It pays tribute to one of the finest alternate histories, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, secretly admired by some of The Alteration's characters as a forbidden book about a forbidden book. Cleverly, Amis describes an alternate version of Dick's novel, a device that acquaints the reader with the alternate world that Amis imagines, in which the Vatican controls all of Christendom (except for the small, relatively powerless nation of New England), science has been suppressed, and electricity is regarded as sinful.

In 1976, the highlight of a Requiem Mass for a recently deceased King is the beautiful voice of ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, a prodigy both as a singer and as a composer. The occasion brings to England the director of the Sistine Choir and the leading singer in the secular opero, both of whom are eunuchs, as well as Cornelius van den Haag, the Ambassador from New England. They debate Hubert's future: he can be either a great soprano or a great composer, but history has shown the impossibility of succeeding at both. If his calling is to remain a soprano, of course, he will need to visit a surgeon before he reaches puberty. The influential Italians believe that is the course Hubert's life must take.

Before Hubert can be altered, the church needs the permission of Hubert's father, Tobias, and of his confessor, Father Lyall, who voices reservations about the procedure. The opinion of Hubert's mother, Margaret, is irrelevant to everyone except Father Lyall, who has a sinful desire for Tobias' wife. Hubert's own opinion is equally irrelevant, and he probably would not have one but for his curiosity about sex. On the other hand, it's hard to say no to the Pope. When Hubert eventually makes his decision (although, technically, it is not his to make), intrigue ensues. Fate (which some will see as divine intervention) also seems to play an ironic role, but sometimes fate is guided by the hand of man.

And so, as fans of Kingsley Amis would expect, we have a book full of adulterers, hypocrites, sycophants, scoundrels, back-stabbers, manipulators, worriers, and the merely confused. Although filled with the wry humor that typifies a Kingsley Amis novel, The Alteration also explores philosophical issues. Does foregoing the possibility of physical love truly serve God, or does it serve only the earthbound interests of the church? Why is the suppression of pleasure so often the mission of religion? Does the celibacy of the priesthood make it impossible for the church hierarchy to understand the importance of family and the desire to procreate? When praying for God's protection, is it wrong to pray for protection from the church?

While The Alteration is a book of large themes -- the relationship between church and state, the conflict between freedom and duty, the inherent right to defy corrupt authority -- it succeeds on a more intimate level because Hubert, in contrast to the members of the church hierarchy, is such an innocent, appealing figure. In addition, the novel works because the alternate world in which Hubert lives is artfully constructed. It is a dystopian world, but one that is vastly different from the worlds imagined in most dystopian literature. The ruthless and unyielding exercise of theocratic power in a western world dominated by a single religion is every bit as frightening as the totalitarian dictatorship of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Despite the church's pretensions to the contrary, it is not a world that is kind to the innocent.

Amis' prose is (as always) both fluid and precise. His ability to write about serious matters with a light touch is remarkable. Still, this is not light reading. Some passages are dense. The novel therefore requires the reader's effort, but the effort is well-rewarded.

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Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

First published in 1953; published by New York Review of Books Classics on October 2, 2012

Kingsley Amis' first novel is arguably his best and probably his funniest. While Lucky Jim is an amusing send-up of academia, it is also a wicked examination of sexual dynamics as they were evolving in the post-war world of the early 1950s. Amis generates laughs by dishing out example after example of the perennial inability of men to understand women. He is particularly adept at exposing the transparent shallowness of men -- but the likable man who is the novel's protagonist is never a total cad, and Amis pokes fun at men with such good humor that male readers can recognize a bit of themselves in his characters and laugh. (Female readers, I susect, will nod their heads knowingly.)

James Dixon is in his first (and possibly last) year of employment as a lecturer in the history department of a provincial college. Despite his position, Dixon is disinclined to do any work that might be considered academic. As he avoids preparing the "special subject" he is supposed to teach in his second year, his only concern is the number of pretty girls who will sign up for the class. Whether Dixon will be invited to return for his second probationary year depends upon his ability to keep Professor Ned Welch happy. Welch is the prototypical absent-minded professor, a model of the pretentious and dull academic, the kind of scholar to whom Dixon is incapable of sucking up, no matter how hard he tries.

Dixon begins the novel in a spotty relationship with Margaret Peel, a lecturer who is taking a paid leave after her unsuccessful suicide attempt (triggered by the news that, in her words, Catchpole was leaving her for his "popsy"). Despite Margaret's prim and earnest nature (quite the opposite of Dixon's), Dixon enjoys spending time with her as long as "the emotional business of the evening" can be "transacted without involving him directly." More to Dixon's liking is Christine Callaghan, the current girlfriend of Welch's son Bertrand, an untalented painter. But Bertrand is also having a go with Carol Goldsmith (behind the back of Carol's husband Cecil, another history department colleague of Dixon's). Bertrand is interested in Christine largely because Christine's uncle is Julius Gore-Urquhart, a wealthy arts patron who is searching for a private secretary, a position Bertrand covets.

Invited to spend a weekend with the Welches, Dixon makes a mess of it in an impressive variety of ways. He does the same at a dance and, finally, at a public lecture he has been invited to give on a subject ("Merrie England") dear to Welch's heart. Dixon spends the most of the novel mildly misbehaving while trying to sort out the relationships between the various characters as well as his own (mostly superficial) feelings about them. Should he stay with Margaret? Should he try to win Christine's affections? Should he punch Bertrand in the ear?

Amis was a master of understated humor enlivened by slapstick moments. He packed more wit into a single sentence that most comedy writers manage in entire chapters. Take this description of an incipient fistfight between Dixon and Bertram: "They faced each other on the floral rug, feet apart and elbows crooked in uncertain attitudes, as if about to begin some ritual of which neither had learnt the clues." Of course, the brief fight causes more damage to a china figurine than to either of the combatants. Among the many jokes Amis tells in Lucky Jim, my favorite is the formula for love: ignorance of the other person plus unsatisfied sexual desire equals love.

As obnoxious as Dixon can be -- he schemes and manipulates, he drinks too much, he hides the evidence when he burns his host's blanket, he's lazy, he hates everything -- Amis manages the astonishing trick of making the reader identify with him and root for his success. Unlike Welch and Bertram and many of the novel's other characters, Dixon is genuine. He isn't a snob, he's incapable of disguising his faults, and he's cheerily self-deprecating.

The New York Review of Books edition of Lucky Jim includes an entertaining and informative introduction penned by Keith Gessen, notable for its frequent quotations from correspondence between Amis and Philip Larkin. It's interesting to note the parallels in experiences and attitudes between the lives of Amis and Larkin and the fictional life of Jim Dixon. The introduction also provides context to the novel in its discussion of post-war England.

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That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis

First published in Great Britain in 1955

Is an employee ever promoted on his or her own merit, or is upward mobility always a function of friendship or politics? Kingsley Amis provides a sly, silly, and perceptive answer to that question in his second novel, That Uncertain Feeling.

John Lewis would like to be elevated to the position of sub-Librarian, but it is lust rather than ambition that leads him to pursue Elizabeth Gruffydd-Williams, the village socialite, whose husband is on the committee that will make the selection. That Lewis is married with children causes him to feel some guilt, albeit only when he is in his wife's presence, particularly when she is telling him to have whatever fling he desires so long as he does not burden her with knowledge of his infidelity (a reaction he should know better than to believe). Lewis is much too ineffectual to have a successful affair, but his attempts to woo (and bed) Elizabeth provide ample fodder for the sort of domestic comedy at which Amis excelled.

Poking fun at all things Welsh was a Kingsley Amis specialty. The cast of That Uncertain Feeling includes the sort of eccentric Welsh characters that Amis created masterfully: an arrogant poet, a "nut-faced" clergyman, busybody neighbors, know-it-all committee members, and a wide variety of drunks. Amis also made a career of skewering the pretentious class -- those with a little more money who look down on those with a little less -- although the relatively well-to-do in That Uncertain Feeling are roasted over a low flame. None of the novel's characters are evil or truly unlikable. Even the badly behaving Lewis is endearing, all the more so by the novel's end, when he seems to have learned something from the consequences of his error-prone life.

I don't know if Amis was capable of writing an unfunny sentence. Employing modes of humor that range from dry wit to slapstick, Amis placed his hapless librarian into one awkward situation after another. Amis' ability to write comedy that is simultaneously low key and outrageous has rarely been matched. That Uncertain Feeling is filled with the sort of humor for which Brits are famous: self-effacing commentary; insults exchanged in unfailingly polite language; even a bit of gratuitous cross-dressing.

The ending has the feel of an epilogue -- everything that has gone before suddenly changes, as if Amis didn't know where else to go with the story and decided to abandon it -- but that's a minor complaint. There's probably a serious point buried amidst all the lunacy but I didn't strain myself to search for it. The sustained laughter is quite enough reason for modern readers to search out this 1955 novel.

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The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis

 

First published in 1986, Winner of Mann Booker Prize 1986

It took some time, but the characters in The Old Devils--elderly friends in South Wales who spend most of their time discussing the condition of being Welsh--grew on me as I worked my way through the chapters. Amis is a master of dry wit. I'm sure I would have a deeper appreciation of the humor in The Old Devils if I knew more about Wales or the Welsh. Fortunately, Amis found a number of other targets for his wit that transcend nationality: lecherous old men, the women who encourage them, gossips, hypocrites, drinkers, academics and poets among them. He also teases wonderfully comic moments from malfunctioning bowels, adulterous desires, social posturing, road trips, and inebriation.

Most of the central characters in the ensemble cast have full and distinct personalities and unique sets of behaviors. Some of the personalities are quirky, some introspective. Most are repressed but some manage to experience and display emotions. Some are funny and some are a little sad and most are sometimes a little annoying--but who isn't? That seems to be one of the points Amis explicitly attempted to make. It took me awhile to start caring about these people but by the middle of the novel I was hooked on them. They became kind of like the relative you care about but don't want to visit very often. I give Amis props for making them so convincing.

This isn't a plot-driven novel. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace, following slow-moving people with aging minds and bodies. Other than a couple of big events, both near the end of the book, nothing much happens. I wouldn't call it plodding but I wouldn't say the writing is lively either. If you are in a mood to be patient, the characters and the fun Amis has with them make the novel worth reading.

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