Product Description

Jim has fallen into a job at one of the new red brick universities. A moderately successful future beckons as long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend, deliver a lecture on "merrie England" and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9262 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Synopsis
Jim has fallen into a job at one of the new red brick universities. A moderately successful future beckons as long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend, deliver a lecture on "merrie England" and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand.

Customer Reviews

The Wrong Time
Its probably the wrong time to be reading this book - to me it comes across as being depressingly old-fashioned.

At the time of publication it appears to have been lauded for its satirical relevance, in a few decades time it may have the charm and interest of a period piece. But to me, the deep misogyny and sneering contempt for all things provincial and non-Oxbridge are more unpleasant than the rigid and pompous post war society that the book is attempting to lampoon.

There are some good comic moments - description of a hangover, fight between two characters, and the frustrations of a slow bus journey - but the humour is patchy and my main memories of the book will be its very peculiar attitude towards women.

Merrie England, Miserable Jim
Jim Dixon is in his first year as a college lecturer and he's been in trouble nearly from the second he arrived...unfortunately, since he's also on probation, he's panicking a great deal that he'll lose his job. He despises his boss - an elderly, absent minded and rather self important gentleman called Professor Welch - and doesn't even like his subject, Medieval History. (He only ever studied it himself because he'd seen it as the easy option when he was a student). He's had a few unfortunate encounters with his fellow academics since he started - he'd barely arrived at the college when he accidentally caught the Prof of English (??) with a stone on the knee, and then knocked over the Registrar's Chair at his first Faculty Meeting. (If only the Registrar himself hadn't been on the verge of sitting down...) There had also been the essay submitted by one of Dixon's pupils had submitted an essay heavily criticising a book written by one of Welch's ex-pupils. What made this difficult to sweep under the carpet was the level of Welch's involvement - the book was written at his suggestion and under his guidance - while the essay was based heavily on Dixon's lecture notes.

Jim, however, does have a few allies - including Alfred Beesley, (who works in the college's English Department), Bill Atkinson (someone always happy to provide Jim with a cover story) and Carol Goldsmith (the wife of a colleague at the history department). However, Jim spends most of his time with Margaret - another member of staff at the university. It's not that he particularly wants to - rather, he more or less feels morally obliged to. The problem is things have now got to the point where they're widely seen as a couple. Margaret is now "recovering well" at Welch's house after a recent (apparent) suicide attempt. (Prior to Jim, she'd been spending some time with an utter cad called Catchpole...who, rather understandably, ran off with his new girlfriend to North Wales for a couple of weeks). Jim had been supposed to meet her for a pot of tea that evening , but had backed out to write the following day's lecture...it's something he feels rather guilty about that, bearing in mind what had happened. (This guilt is something Margaret shamelessly trades on throughout the book).

Since Margaret is staying at the Prof's house, Jim can't avoid visiting once in a while. One of the most significant - not to mention disastrous - visits is for a weekend long artistic gathering. Jim manages to set fire to his bedclothes, destroy his bedside table, and make an enemy of Bertrand - one of the professor's sons. Bertrand, a pretentious artist with an awful beard and a significant superiority complex, arrives from London for the proceedings with a very pretty guest called Christine Callaghan. Jim naturally is smitten - but is afraid to make any move...partly for fear of what it will do to Margaret, and partly because he knows stealing Betrand's girlfriend will lower his standing in the Professor's eyes even further. Still, at least he's interested in Christine herself...unlike Bertrand, who's only interested in her uncle - the noted art critic, Julius Gore-Urquhart.

An amusing and easily read book. Jim proves a likeable character - although the laughter comes mostly at his expense, as he lurches from one disaster to another.

Classic Flop?
I first read the thing back in the summer 1975 (I can be sure of the date because it was part of my University set reading - some `wit' had included this on the list of `books to study before coming' as it was supposed to have sketches of people still teaching at the university in it - if it did, I never met them).

I didn't find it very funny then, and I find it even less so now.

It is in the genre of `campus novels' - a particularly tacky genre - and is claimed to have been `seminal' - for which I shall never forgive it.

For those who don't know, campus novels are about College and University campuses; are written by people whose whole lives have been blighted by the college experience and consequently feel it incumbent upon themselves to inflict a similar blight on the rest of their and future generations; they usually attempt to be `hilarious' - and fail.

Campus Novels are loved by academics (a sort of S & M experience, I would suggest) and book critics (who tend to be failed academics - and consequently promote them as some sort of revenge taking experience). They pop up far too often on suggested reading lists and the like.

`Lucky Jim' supposedly changed the whole post-war generation ... with little evidence to support this, I am firmly `in denial'.

Jim Dixon is the sort of lout who, because he had nothing better to do and is too lazy to do anything anyway, enters the University lecturing profession dishonestly - claiming interest and expertise where he has none. The book follows this thug's adventures through a `red-brick' university where he causes drunken destruction and chaos wherever he goes. He exhibits the sort of socialist rhetoric you'd expect and lands a job at the end with a millionaire.

What is clear to me (although not so clear to many at the time of publication, or since) is that Mr Amis does not like Jim - he is an `oink' of the wrong class and only becomes respectable at the end as he moves into the pale blue conservative world. His luck is in escaping the not-really-university `red-brick' institution, whose academic standards and personnel are only a joke.

The so called humour is in fact barely disguised contempt for the genuine changes brought on by a World War that shattered the privilege of education and class (although not so effectively). Educating this sort of person is obviously a dumbing-down in the eyes of Mr Amis.

The excellent introduction to the Penguin Edition, by David Lodge, also points out the attack being made on Graham Greene - especially on `The Heart of the Matter'.

There are obvious connections and references - from suicide to doing `the right thing'.

All I can say is I re-read, `The Heart of the Matter' recently and was impressed: I re-read this slight book and found it severely wanting.

Fortunately Mr Amis went on to write better things - unfortunately, his politics went even further in the wrong direction.