87-402: Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis , first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz . It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the academic and romantic tribulations of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. Amis arrived at Dixon's surname from 12 Dixon Drive, Leicester,
174-407: A bad start Dixon realises that he is attracted to Christine, who is far less pretentious than she initially appears. Dixon's growing closeness to Christine upsets Bertrand, who is using her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, Julius Gore-Urquhart, and get a job from him. Then Dixon rescues Christine from the university's annual dance after Bertrand treats her offhandedly, and takes her home in
261-404: A biweekly format to a larger monthly publication. On September 23, 2024, The Nation endorsed Kamala Harris for the 2024 United States presidential election but with criticism on foreign politics, especially in regard to the 2023 Gaza war . On October 25, 2024, the magazine published an article, by the magazine's interns, criticizing this endorsement. Following Donald Trump 's victory in
348-544: A column criticizing Samuel Gompers and trade unions for being complicit in the war machine of the First World War , The Nation was briefly suspended from the US mail. The magazine's financial problems in the early 1940s prompted Kirchwey to sell her individual ownership of the magazine in 1943, creating a nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, out of the money generated from a recruiting drive of sponsors. This organization
435-757: A first in English in 1947, he had decided by then to give much of his time to writing. In 1946 he met Hilary Bardwell . They married in 1948 after she became pregnant with their first child, Philip. Amis initially arranged for her to have a back-street abortion , but changed his mind, fearing for her safety. He was a lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea from 1949 to 1961. Two other children followed: Martin in August 1949 and Sally in January 1954. Days after Sally's birth, Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim ,
522-504: A librarian in Hull) and his temptation to adultery. I Like It Here (1958) takes a contemptuous view of "abroad", after Amis's own travels on the Continent with a young family. Take a Girl Like You (1960) steps away from the immediately autobiographical, but remains grounded in the concerns of sex and love in ordinary modern life, tracing a young schoolmaster's courtship and ultimate seduction of
609-691: A list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. He was the father of the novelist Martin Amis . Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham , south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk – "quite an important one, fluent in Spanish and responsible for exporting mustard to South America" – for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London , and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). The Amis grandparents were wealthy. William Amis's father,
696-451: A memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism . He is best known for satirical comedies such as Lucky Jim (1954), One Fat Englishman (1963), Ending Up (1974), Jake's Thing (1978) and The Old Devils (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century". In 2008, The Times ranked him ninth on
783-424: A novelist who died in 2023; and Sally Amis , who died in 2000. Amis was married a second time, to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard from 1965 to 1983, with whom he had no children. At the end of that marriage, he went to live with his former wife Hilary and her third husband, in a deal brokered by their two sons Philip and Martin to ensure he could be cared for until his death. The Nation The Nation
870-493: A personal selection of his favourite poems, grew out of his work for a London newspaper, in which he selected a poem a day and gave it a brief introduction. Amis was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, for Ending Up (1974) and Jake's Thing (1978), and finally, as prizewinner, for The Old Devils in 1986. In 2008, The Times ranked Amis 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. As
957-439: A poet, Larkin had published two novels; Amis originally sought to be a poet and turned to novels only after publishing several volumes of verse. He continued throughout his career to write poetry in a straightforward, accessible style that often masks a nuance of thought. Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), satirises the highbrow academic set of an unnamed university through the eyes of a struggling young lecturer of history. It
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#17328699540271044-550: A really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred." In the first year of publication, one of the magazine's regular features was The South as It Is , dispatches from a tour of the war-torn region by John Richard Dennett, a recent Harvard graduate and a veteran of the Port Royal Experiment . Dennett interviewed Confederate veterans, freed slaves, agents of
1131-522: A rigorous daily schedule on himself, segregating writing and drink. Mornings were spent on writing, with a minimum daily output of 500 words. Drinking began about lunchtime, when this had been achieved. Such self-discipline was essential to Amis's prodigious output. Yet according to James, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour towards Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately.... It seems fair to guess that
1218-550: A serious yet light-handed treatment of what the genre had to say about man and society. Amis was especially keen on the dystopian works of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth , and in New Maps of Hell coined the term "comic inferno" to describe a type of humorous dystopia exemplified by the work of Robert Sheckley . He further displayed his devotion to the genre in editing, with the Sovietologist Robert Conquest ,
1305-524: A taxi. The pair kiss and make a date for later, but Christine admits that she feels guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrand's back and about Dixon's supposed relationship with Margaret. The two decide not to see each other again, but when Bertrand calls on Dixon to "warn him off the grass" he cannot resist the temptation to quarrel with Bertrand, until they fight. The novel reaches its climax during Dixon's public lecture on " Merrie England ". Having attempted to calm his nerves by drinking too much, partially at
1392-462: A visiting lecturer in other north-eastern universities. On returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post. After 13 years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge , in 1961, but regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment. He resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although he actually moved no further than London. In 1963, Hilary discovered that Amis
1479-729: A weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the New York Evening Post . The offices of the magazine were moved to the Evening Post ' s headquarters at 210 Broadway. The New York Evening Post would later morph into a tabloid , the New York Post , a left-leaning afternoon tabloid, under owner Dorothy Schiff from 1939 to 1976. Since then, it has been a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch , while The Nation became known for its left-wing ideology. In 1900, Henry Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard , inherited
1566-475: A wide knowledge of all kinds of English poetry. The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (1978), which he edited, was a revision of an original volume done by W. H. Auden . Amis took it in a markedly new direction: Auden had interpreted light verse to include "low" verse of working-class or lower-class origin, regardless of subject matter, while Amis defined light verse as essentially light in tone, though not necessarily simple in composition. The Amis Anthology (1988),
1653-568: A young man at Oxford, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and left it in 1956. He later described this stage of his political life as "the callow Marxist phase that seemed almost compulsory in Oxford". Amis remained nominally on the political left for some time after the war, declaring in the 1950s that he would always vote for the Labour Party . Amis eventually moved further to
1740-568: Is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison 's The Liberator , an abolitionist newspaper that closed in 1865, after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution . Thereafter, the magazine proceeded to a broader topic, The Nation . An important collaborator of
1827-613: Is similarly displayed in the ecclesiastical matters in The Alteration ; Amis was neither a Roman Catholic nor a devotee of any church. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Amis regularly produced essays and criticism, principally for periodical publication. Some were collected in 1968 into What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Essays , in which Amis's wit and literary and social opinions were displayed on books such as Colin Wilson 's The Outsider (panned), Iris Murdoch 's début novel Under
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#17328699540271914-486: Is staying with Professor Welch, he holds a musical weekend that seems to offer an opportunity for Dixon to advance his standing among his colleagues. The attempt goes wrong, however, and the drunken Dixon drops a lighted cigarette on the bed, burning a hole in the sheets. During the same weekend Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After
2001-528: Is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors called Nation Associates, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees. This program accounts for 30% of the total revenue for the magazine. An annual cruise also generates $ 200,000 for the magazine. Since late 2012, the Nation Associates program has been called Nation Builders. In 2023, the magazine had approximately 91,000 subscribers, roughly 80% of whom pay for
2088-528: The American Civil War , arguing that a stable currency was necessary to restore the economic stability of the nation. Closely related to this was the publication's advocacy of the elimination of protective tariffs in favor of lower prices of consumer goods associated with a free trade system. The magazine would stay at Newspaper Row for 90 years. In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron Henry Villard acquired The Nation and converted it into
2175-464: The Freedmen's Bureau , and ordinary people he met by the side of the road. Among the causes supported by the publication in its earliest days was civil service reform—moving the basis of government employment from a political patronage system to a professional bureaucracy based upon meritocracy . The Nation also was preoccupied with the reestablishment of a sound national currency in the years after
2262-555: The United Nations . Circulation peaked at 187,000 in 2006 but dropped to 145,000 in print by 2010, although digital subscriptions had risen to over 15,000. By 2021, the total for both print and digital combined was 96,000. The Nation was established on July 6, 1865, at 130 Nassau Street (" Newspaper Row ") in Manhattan . Its founding coincided with the closure of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator , also in 1865, after slavery
2349-645: The Vietnam War . He spoke at the Adam Smith Institute , arguing against government subsidy to the arts. By his own admission and according to his biographers, Amis was a serial adulterer for much of his life. This was a major contributory factor in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written in lipstick by wife Hilary) on his back "1 Fat Englishman – I fuck anything." In one memoir, Amis wrote, "Now and then I become conscious of having
2436-457: The political right , a development he discussed in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967); his conservatism and anti-communism can be seen in works like the dystopian novel Russian Hide and Seek (1980). In 1967, Amis, Robert Conquest , John Braine , and several other authors signed a letter to The Times entitled "Backing for U.S. Policies in Vietnam", supporting the US government in
2523-512: The right . In the 1950s, The Nation was attacked as "pro-communist" because of its advocacy of détente with the expansionist Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin , and its criticism of McCarthyism . One of the magazine's writers, Louis Fischer , resigned from the magazine afterwards, claiming The Nation ' s foreign coverage was too pro-Soviet. Despite this, Diana Trilling pointed out that Kirchwey did allow anti-Soviet writers, such as herself, to contribute material critical of Russia to
2610-433: The "swinging" atmosphere of late-1960s London, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical. Girl, 20 , for instance, is set in the world of classical (and pop) music, in which Amis had no part. The book's noticeable command of music terminology and opinion shows Amis's amateur devotion to music and almost journalistic capacity to explore a subject that interested him. That intelligence
2697-501: The English Midlands . He has made an unsure start and, towards the end of the academic year, is concerned about losing his probationary position in the department. In his attempt to be awarded a permanent post he tries to maintain a good relationship with his absent-minded head of department, Professor Welch. To establish his credentials he must also ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, but he eventually discovers that
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2784-507: The Net (praised), and William Empson 's Milton's God (inclined to agreement). Amis's opinions on books and people tended to appear, and often were, conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of "the classics" and of traditional morals, but more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgement in all things. Amis became associated with Ian Fleming 's James Bond novels, which he admired, in
2871-660: The United States to enter World War II to resist fascism , and after the US entered the war, the publication supported the American war effort. It also supported the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima . During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by Kirchwey (later Carey McWilliams ) and The New Republic ' s Michael Straight . The two magazines were very similar at that time—both were left of center, The Nation further left than TNR ; both had circulations around 100,000, although TNR ' s
2958-515: The Welches as they pass on the street. When originally published, Lucky Jim received enthusiastic reviews. In the New Statesman , Walter Allen wrote, "Mr Amis has an unwaveringly merciless eye for the bogus: some aspects of provincial culture – the madrigals and recorders of Professor Welch, for instance – are pinned down as accurately as they have ever been; and he has, too, an eye for character –
3045-425: The address of Philip Larkin from 1948 to 1950, while he was a librarian at the university there. Lucky Jim is dedicated to Larkin, who helped to inspire the main character and contributed significantly to the structure of the novel. Time magazine included Lucky Jim in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 . Jim Dixon is a lecturer in medieval history at a red brick university in
3132-618: The anniversary issue, President Barack Obama said: In an era of instant, 140-character news cycles and reflexive toeing of the party line, it's incredible to think of the 150-year history of The Nation . It's more than a magazine—it's a crucible of ideas forged in the time of Emancipation, tempered through depression and war and the civil-rights movement, and honed as sharp and relevant as ever in an age of breathtaking technological and economic change. Through it all, The Nation has exhibited that great American tradition of expanding our moral imaginations, stoking vigorous dissent, and simply taking
3219-410: The archives, and new essays by frequent contributors like Eric Foner , Noam Chomsky , E. L. Doctorow , Toni Morrison , Rebecca Solnit , and Vivian Gornick ; a book-length history of the magazine by D. D. Guttenplan (which The Times Literary Supplement called "an affectionate and celebratory affair"); events across the country; and a relaunched website. In a tribute to The Nation , published in
3306-467: The class with which his novel is concerned... They have no manners, and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public bar and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious... They are scum." In response to Maugham's criticism of the new generation, the New Statesman and The Nation held contests to get readers to respond to Maugham in
3393-419: The cultural complexion of the United States, Amis had this to say: "I've finally worked out why I don't like Americans ... . Because everyone there is either a Jew or a hick." Amis himself described his antisemitism as "very mild". Amis's first, 15-year marriage was to Hilary Bardwell , the daughter of a civil servant, by whom he had two sons and one daughter: Philip Amis, a graphics designer; Martin Amis ,
3480-454: The demands of any cosmological scheme. Amis's religious views appear in a response reported in his Memoirs . To the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko 's question, "You atheist?", Amis replied, "It's more that I hate Him." During this time, Amis had not turned completely away from the comedic realism of Lucky Jim and Take a Girl Like You . I Want It Now (1968) and Girl, 20 (1971) both depict
3567-492: The editor to whom he submitted it has translated it into Italian and passed it off as his own. Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again "girlfriend", Margaret Peel, a fellow lecturer who is recovering from a suicide attempt in the wake of a broken relationship with another man and implies she might make another attempt if Dixon left her. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon's sense of duty and pity while keeping him in an ambiguous and sexless limbo. While she
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3654-430: The editors of The Nation professed that "Bernie Sanders and his supporters are bending the arc of history toward justice. Theirs is an insurgency, a possibility, and a dream that we proudly endorse." On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor; D. D. Guttenplan , the editor-at-large, took her place. On March 2, 2020, The Nation again endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for President . In their reasoning,
3741-404: The editors of The Nation professed: "As we find ourselves on a hinge of history—a generation summoned to the task of redeeming our democracy and restoring our republic—no one ever has to wonder what Bernie Sanders stands for." On February 23, 2022, The Nation named Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara its new president. In December 2023, Sunkara announced the magazine would be switching from
3828-503: The election, The Nation ran an opinion piece attributing the result to widespread support for "anti-system politics" among American society, drawing parallels between Harris' campaign and that of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Print ad pages declined by 5% from 2009 to 2010, while digital advertising rose 32.8% from 2009 to 2010. Advertising accounts for 10% of total revenue for the magazine, while circulation totals 60%. The Nation has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and
3915-422: The female lecturer Margaret, who battens neurotically on Jim's pity, is quite horribly well done. Mr Amis is a novelist of formidable and uncomfortable talent." W. Somerset Maugham praised Amis' writing while disdaining the new generation he represented: "Mr. Kingsley Amis is so talented, his observation is so keen, that you cannot fail to be convinced that the young men he so brilliantly describes truly represent
4002-567: The finest comic set pieces in the language." Margaret Drabble , although defending Monica Jones , Philip Larkin 's paramour, against Amis's caricature of her in Lucky Jim , wrote in the New Statesman that "Monica as Margaret Peel, a needy, dowdy academic spinster, was the version that first lodged in my consciousness, as a scarecrow alarming enough to warn any woman off the academic life". Adam Gopnik , writing in The New Yorker , wrote that
4089-480: The founders of The Nation would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard sold the magazine in 1935. Maurice Wertheim , the new owner, sold it in 1937 to Freda Kirchwey , who served as editor from 1933 to 1955. Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When Albert Jay Nock published
4176-412: The glass merchant Joseph James Amis, owned a mansion called Barchester at Purley , then part of Surrey . Amis considered J. J. Amis – always called "Pater" or "Dadda" – "a jokey, excitable, silly little man", whom he "disliked and was repelled by". His wife Julia "was a large, dreadful, hairy-faced creature ... whom [Amis] loathed and feared. His mother's parents lived at Camberwell . Her father George
4263-612: The heroine. With The Anti-Death League (1966), Amis begins to show some of the experimentation – in content, if not style – that marked much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s. His departure from the strict realism of his early comedic novels is not so abrupt as it might first appear. He had been avidly reading science fiction since a boy and developed that interest in the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958, while visiting Princeton University . These were published that year as New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction , giving
4350-466: The improbability of the existence of any benevolent deity involved in human affairs. In The Anti-Death League , The Green Man , The Alteration and elsewhere, including poems such as "The Huge Artifice: an interim assessment" and "New Approach Needed", Amis showed frustration with a God who could lace the world with cruelty and injustice, and championed the preservation of ordinary human happiness – in family, in friendships, in physical pleasure – against
4437-499: The kind which also took small boys, before they became pubescent and dangerous", he then moved to nearby Norbury College. In 1940, the Amises moved to Berkhamsted , Hertfordshire , and Amis (like his father before him) won a scholarship to the City of London School . In April 1941, after his first year, he was admitted on a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford , where he read English. There he met Philip Larkin , with whom he formed
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#17328699540274524-484: The late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with Bond, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular James Bond Dossier under his own name. The same year, he wrote The Book of Bond , or, Every Man His Own 007 , a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner being M's chief of staff in many of Fleming's novels. In 1968 Amis wrote Colonel Sun , which
4611-700: The life, charm and decline of his father. Amis was knighted in 1990. In August 1995 he fell, following a suspected stroke. After apparently recovering, he worsened and died on 22 October 1995 at St Pancras Hospital , London. He was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at Golders Green Crematorium . Amis is widely known as a comic novelist of life in mid- to late-20th-century Britain, but his literary work covered many genres – poetry, essays, criticism, short stories, food and drink, anthologies, and several novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery. His career initially developed in an inverse pattern to that of his close friend Philip Larkin . Before becoming known as
4698-467: The magazine and the Evening Post , and sold off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade The Nation into a current affairs publication and gave it an anti- classical liberal orientation. As the 1932 U.S. presidential election approached, the Nation saw no real choice between Hoover and Roosevelt, and it urged readers to vote for Socialist Party candidate Norman Thomas. Oswald Villard wrote "So I insist,
4785-593: The magazine from Kirstein in 1965. During the 1950s, Paul Blanshard , a former associate editor, served as The Nation ' s special correspondent in Uzbekistan . His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the Catholic Church in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution. On the eve of the 1968 U.S. presidential election the magazine argued that the choice between Nixon and Humphrey
4872-568: The magazine from the Storrow family. In 1985, he sold it to Arthur L. Carter , who had made a fortune as a founding partner of Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill . In 1991, The Nation sued the Department of Defense for restricting free speech by limiting Gulf War coverage to press pools . However, the issue was found moot in Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense , because
4959-519: The magazine published a poem entitled "How-To" by Anders Carlson-Wee which was written in the voice of a homeless man and used black vernacular . This led to criticism from writers such as Roxane Gay because Carlson-Wee is white. The Nation ' s two poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith , issued an apology for publishing the poem, the first such action ever taken by the magazine. The apology itself became an object of criticism also. Poet and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt called
5046-447: The magazine wrote that the publication would have "seven main objects" with the first being "discussion of the topics of the day, and, above all, of legal, economical, and constitutional questions, with greater accuracy and moderation than are now to be found in the daily press." The Nation pledged to "not be the organ of any party, sect or body" but rather to "make an earnest effort to bring to discussion of political and social questions
5133-542: The magazine's arts section. During McCarthyism (the Second Red Scare), The Nation was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark, and a Bartlesville, Oklahoma , librarian, Ruth Brown , was fired from her job in 1950, after a citizens committee complained she had given shelf space to The Nation . In 1955, George C. Kirstein replaced Kirchway as magazine owner. James J. Storrow Jr. bought
5220-458: The man who votes for either Hoover or Roosevelt is the one who is throwing away his vote... He is again postponing the peaceful revolution which Woodrow Wilson said in 1912 was on the horizon." The magazine did, however, endorse Roosevelt in the next three elections. Oswald Villard welcomed the New Deal and supported the nationalization of industries—thus reversing the meaning of " liberalism " as
5307-638: The most important friendship of his life. In June 1941, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain . He broke with communism in 1956, in view of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev 's denunciation of Joseph Stalin in his speech " On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences ". In July 1942, he was called up for national service and served in the Royal Corps of Signals . He returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and earned
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#17328699540275394-541: The new magazine was its Literary Editor Wendell Phillips Garrison , son of William. He had at his disposal his father's vast network of contacts. The Nation is published by its namesake owner, The Nation Company, L.P., at 520 8th Ave New York, NY 10018. It has news bureaus in Washington, D.C. , London , and South Africa , with departments covering architecture , art, corporations, defense , environment , films, legal affairs , music, peace and disarmament , poetry, and
5481-499: The print magazine. Adding sales from newsstands, The Nation had a total circulation of 96,000 copies per issue in 2021, earning the majority of its revenue from subscriptions and donations, rather than print advertising. Since its creation, The Nation has published significant works of American poetry , including works by Hart Crane , Eli Siegel , Elizabeth Bishop , and Adrienne Rich , as well as W. S. Merwin , Pablo Neruda , Denise Levertov , and Derek Walcott . In 2018,
5568-524: The reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time". He suggests this reflects a naïve tendency in readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. He enjoyed drink and spent a good deal of time in pubs. Hilary Rubinstein , who accepted Lucky Jim for Victor Gollancz , commented, "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer.... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see." Clive James commented: "All on his own, he had
5655-498: The science-fiction anthology series Spectrum I–V, which drew heavily upon 1950s numbers of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction . Though not explicitly science fiction, The Anti-Death League takes liberties with reality not found in Amis's earlier novels. It introduces a speculative bent that continued to develop in others of his genre novels, such as The Green Man (1969) (mystery/horror) and The Alteration (1976) ( alternative history ). Much of this speculation concerned
5742-564: The time to think through our country's challenges anew. If I agreed with everything written in any given issue of the magazine, it would only mean that you are not doing your jobs. But whether it is your commitment to a fair shot for working Americans, or equality for all Americans, it is heartening to know that an American institution dedicated to provocative, reasoned debate and reflection in pursuit of those ideals can continue to thrive. On January 14, 2016, The Nation endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for President . In their reasoning,
5829-399: The troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct." His friend Christopher Hitchens said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health." Amis had an unclear relationship with antisemitism , which he sometimes expressed but also claimed to dislike. He occasionally speculated on the commonly advanced Jewish stereotypes. Antisemitism
5916-448: The two realise that the suicide attempt was faked as a piece of neurotic emotional blackmail. Feeling free of Margaret at last, Dixon responds to Christine's phoned request to see her off as she leaves for London. There he learns from her that she is leaving Bertrand after being told that he was having an affair with the wife of one of Dixon's former colleagues. They decide to leave for London together and then walk off arm in arm, outraging
6003-482: The urging of Gore-Urquhart, he caps his uncertain performance by angrily mocking and denouncing the university culture of arty pretentiousness and passes out. Welch lets Dixon know privately that his employment will not be extended, but Gore-Urquhart offers Dixon the coveted job of assisting him in London. Later Dixon meets Margaret's ex-boyfriend, who reveals that he had not been her fiancé, as she had claimed. Comparing notes,
6090-493: The vacant Professor Welch was at least partially modeled on Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien , who his students, Amis and Larkin, had found to be tedious and almost unintelligible. In the 1957 British film adaptation , Jim Dixon was played by Ian Carmichael . Keith Barron starred in Further Adventures of Lucky Jim , a 1967 seven-episode BBC TV series based on the character and set in the "swinging London" of 1967. This
6177-583: The voice of Jim Dixon. Retrospective reviews have solidified its legacy as one of Amis' finest novels. Christopher Hitchens described it as the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century, writing: " Lucky Jim illustrates a crucial human difference between the little guy and the small man. And Dixon, like his creator, was no clown but a man of feeling after all." Olivia Laing , writing in The Guardian : "Remarkable for its relentless skewering of artifice and pretension, Lucky Jim also contains some of
6264-423: The war ended before the case was heard. In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher. In 1995, Katrina vanden Heuvel succeeded Navasky as editor of The Nation , and in 2005, as publisher. In 2015, The Nation celebrated its 150th anniversary with a documentary film by Academy Award–winning director Barbara Kopple ; a 268-page special issue featuring pieces of art and writing from
6351-467: The weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi." But Amis was adamant that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work." This matched a disciplined approach to writing. For "many years" Amis imposed
6438-482: The writers known as the Angry Young Men . Lucky Jim was among the first British campus novels , setting a precedent for later generations of writers such as Malcolm Bradbury , David Lodge , Tom Sharpe and Howard Jacobson . As a poet, Amis was associated with The Movement . In 1958–1959 Amis made the first of two visits to the United States, as visiting fellow in creative writing at Princeton University and
6525-638: Was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906. Its founding publisher was Joseph H. Richards; the editor was Godkin, an immigrant from Ireland who had formerly worked as a correspondent of the London Daily News and The New York Times . Godkin sought to establish what one sympathetic commentator later characterized as "an organ of opinion characterized in its utterance by breadth and deliberation, an organ which should identify itself with causes, and which should give its support to parties primarily as representative of these causes." In its "founding prospectus"
6612-517: Was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ; a group of abolitionists, led by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted , desired to found a new weekly political magazine. Edwin Lawrence Godkin , who had been considering starting such a magazine for some time, agreed and so became the first editor of The Nation . Wendell Phillips Garrison , son of The Liberator ' s editor/publisher William Lloyd Garrison ,
6699-423: Was also responsible for academic affairs, including conducting research and organizing conferences, that had been a part of the early history of the magazine. Nation Associates became responsible for the operation and publication of the magazine on a nonprofit basis, with Kirchwey as both president of Nation Associates and editor of The Nation . Before the attack on Pearl Harbor , The Nation repeatedly called on
6786-436: Was an enthusiastic collector of books and Baptist chapel organist who was employed at a Brixton gentleman's outfitters as a tailor's assistant, being "the only grandparent [Amis] cared for". Amis hoped to inherit much of his grandfather's library, but his grandmother Jemima – whom Amis already disliked for her habit of mocking her husband when he read his favourite passages to Amis, making "faces and gestures at him while his head
6873-405: Was followed by The Further Adventures of Lucky Jim in 1982, but with Enn Reitel as Jim. In 2003, ITV aired a remake of Lucky Jim with Stephen Tompkinson playing the central character. Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis CBE (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist , poet , critic and teacher . He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry,
6960-500: Was having an affair with the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard . Hilary and Amis separated in August and he went to live with Howard, divorcing Hilary and marrying Howard in 1965. In 1968 he moved with Howard to Lemmons , a house in Barnet, north London. She and Amis divorced in 1983. In his last years, Amis shared a house with Hilary and her third husband, Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock . Martin's memoir Experience contains much about
7047-440: Was lowered to the page" – permitted him to take only five volumes, on condition he wrote "from his grandfather's collection" on the flyleaf of each. Amis was raised at Norbury – in his later estimation "not really a place, it's an expression on a map ... really I should say I came from Norbury station ." Having been educated first at St Hilda's, an "undistinguished, long-vanished local school ... an independent girls' school of
7134-535: Was published to great acclaim. Critics felt it had caught the flavour of Britain in the 1950s and ushered in a new style of fiction. By 1972, its impressive sales in Britain had been matched by 1.25 million paperback copies sold in the United States. It was translated into 20 languages, including Polish, Hebrew , Korean, and Serbo-Croat. The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction and Amis became one of
7221-548: Was published under the pseudonym " Robert Markham ". Amis's literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970, with the possible exception of The Old Devils , a Booker Prize winner. Several critics found him old-fashioned and misogynistic. His Stanley and the Women , an exploration of social sanity, could be said to instance these traits. Others said that his output lacked his earlier work's humanity, wit and compassion. This period also saw Amis as an anthologist, displaying
7308-417: Was slightly higher; and both lost money. It was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion. The new publication would have been called The Nation and New Republic . Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths: The Nation achieved a higher circulation, and The New Republic moved more to
7395-521: Was sometimes present in his conversations and letters to friends and associates, such as "The great Jewish vice is glibness, fluency ... also possibly just bullshit, as in Marx , Freud , Marcuse ", or " Chaplin [who was not Jewish] is a horse's arse. He's a Jeeeew you see, like the Marx Brothers , like Danny Kaye ." It is a minor theme in his Stanley and the Women novel about a paranoid schizophrenic. As for
7482-496: Was such a bad one that voters should stay home. In June 1979, The Nation ' s publisher Hamilton Fish and then-editor Victor Navasky moved the magazine to 72 Fifth Avenue , in Manhattan . In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for condominium development. The offices of The Nation are now at 33 Irving Place, in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood. In 1977, a group organized by Hamilton Fish V bought
7569-475: Was widely perceived as part of the Angry Young Men movement of the 1950s, in reacting against stultification of conventional British life, although Amis never encouraged this interpretation. Amis's other novels of the 1950s and early 1960s likewise depict contemporary situations drawn from his experience. That Uncertain Feeling (1955) features a young provincial librarian (perhaps with an eye to Larkin working as
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