Lucky Jim

I took advantage of the Schneetag today to finish Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim. (I have added to my list of aliases the name "Kingsley"; why does no one name their son Kingsley nowadays?) The book is really quite funny. It is about the goings-on at a university. As anyone who has attended an institution of "higher" "education" can tell you, academics are generally an absurd lot: their foibles call out to be lampooned, and Amis is mercilessly accurate. Though the novel can be said to have a protagonist (the titular Jim), all of the characters therein are for the most part contemptible, loathsome, and unpleasant. The book is a rogues' gallery of all the worst types of people one can find on a college campus: the soporific tenured professor (whose natural habitat is the history or English department), the incompetent and disinterested junior professor, the perpetually-medicated and emotionally unstable female academic, the spiteful colleague, the pretentious and self-absorbed artiste...

One might think that such a book, lacking any character of any virtue whatsoëver, would be a depressing read. On the contrary: it is the funniest book I've read in a good long while. Whether you be a misanthrope or not, it is still gratifying to see absurd pomposity — the sort of behavior any college student can identify — mocked.