Kingsley Amis

The cover of Kingsley Amis' Collected Letters, published in 2000

Sir Kingsley William Amis (April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995) was an English poet, academic, novelist, and teacher. Amis was considered an anti-authority revolutionary, as well as one of the "angry young men" of the 1950s (though he denied his participation). In time some came to consider him a reactionary. His early struggle with money and education instilled in Amis the desire to create his destiny and make his life more than what others thought it could be.

He was a highly intelligent and witty man whose writings reflect his deep awareness of the complexities of human nature. His works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II in 1945. Amis penned over twenty novels, published three collections of poetry, and wrote short stories and scripts for radio and television. His later writings showed his maturity as a critic and consisted mainly of books concerned with purely social and literary criticism. Amis is also known for the work of his son, Martin Amis, a famous British writer.

Biography

Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, South London, as the only son of a business man. Not much is recorded of Kingsley Amis childhood, but he completed his secondary education and went on to pursue higher education at the City of London School and St. John's College, Oxford. It was while studying at Oxford that he met Philip Larkin. The two became friends and that friendship would prove to be one of the most important of his life. During his time at Oxford, Amis was made aware of his lower-middle-class origins and he sought to better his education and made goals for improving his life. He spent a brief time away from Oxford to serve his country during World War II in the Royal Corps of Signals. Amis was determined to finish college and as soon as his service and the war were over, he returned to Oxford and graduated in 1947. That same year Amis published his first book of poetry, Bright November, but it was largely overlooked and received no critical acclaim.

In 1948, Amis fell in love with bright and sunny seventeen-year-old Hilary Bardwell. He lovingly called her "Hills" and the couple began their marriage with the birth of their son Martin in 1949. Martin would grow up to be a famous author himself and even wrote an autobiographical account of his life as Amis son. He called it Experience; it was a very straightforward novel written with a similar humor as his father and many compared the quality of his descriptions to those of Charles Dickens.

I slept in a drawer and had my baths in an outdoor sink. My nappies bore triangular singe marks where they had been dried on the fireguard. It was tough. My father's dinner would often consist of the contents of the doggybag that my mother brought back from the cinema café (the Tivoli) where she worked.
Martin Amis, Experience

Amis, now needing to support a growing family, went on to work as an English lecturer at the University of Wales Swansea (1948–61), and followed that with teaching at Cambridge (1961–63), where he distinguished himself as a fellow of Peterhouse. Although money was tight things changed for the better with the publication of Amis' first novel, Lucky Jim. The novel was published in 1954 and became an immediate success in the literary world. Lucky Jim was an innovative work for several reasons, foremost among them is the fact that Amis featured a simple and ordinary man as an anti-hero. The novel centers around Jim Dixon, a junior university teacher who consistently faces problems with his girlfriend and his supervising professor. He tries to reconcile himself to his occupation, only to realize that he despises anything dealing with the pretensions of "academic life". Constantly spurred on by ambition for a better place in life, Jim finds himself unable to break the bonds of social classes and he finds himself in constant peril of losing his job. The story was considered exemplary of the 1950s era in Britain. It went on to win the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. During his time of popularity, Amis was reported to have had associations with the group of writers who called themselves the Angry Young Men.

Although Amis found great success as a novelist, he did not stop writing poetry. He joined the poetic group, The Movement, which consisted of his dear friend Philip Larkin, as well as Robert Conquest and Elizabeth Jennings. The group helped to encourage Amis' poetry and he published his second collection of poems, A Frame of Mind in 1953, followed by Poems: Fantasy Portraits in 1954. Both Amis and Larkin shared a passion for jazz and politics. Amis was a noted atheist and, as a young man, a vocal member of the Communist Party. His stint with Communism began to wane when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956. After the events of 1956 Amis became very anti-communist and very conservative. He inserted his newfound ideals in his writings, beginning with his essay, "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967). These same sentiments can be felt in his later novel Russian Hide and Seek (1980).

As Amis political life turned conservative, his personal life was anything but. He ended his 15 year marriage to Hilary Bardwell when he left her for fellow novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard in 1965. Amis married Jane (as she was called), but was given a taste of his own medicine when she walked out on him in 1983, declaring that he was impossible to live with. The couple had one daughter. Amis made it no secret that he regretted leaving Hilary. In an odd and extraordinary turn of events, Amis hired Hilary as his housekeeper after his second marriage fell apart. Hilary brought with her their two children, Martin and Philip, as well as her new husband. Hilary and her husband Alistair had one son together, James. The group lived together for the next fifteen years until Amis death in 1995. Hilary nursed Amis during his last years, caring for all of his needs.

Writing Career

You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.
Kingsley Amis, from Lucky Jim, 1954

Science Fiction

In 1960, Kingsley Amis wrote New Maps of Hell and his critical interest in the science fiction genre began. It was in this novel that one of Amis most popular phrases, "comic inferno" was coined. The phrase describes a humorous dystopia (a society characterized by human misery and squalor). Amis differed from other writers in his depiction of such a world because of such humor. In particular, Amis found inspiration in the works of Frederick Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, and Robert Sheckley. His next try at science fiction was a production of a popular anthology series, Spectrum I-IV. Amis found his main source of inspiration in the 1950s magazine, Astounding Science Fiction. He co-wrote the series with Robert Conquest, a prominent Sovietologist. Shortly after the successful series, Amis wrote three novels in quick succession, The Alteration, which is an alternate history novel set in a futuristic Britain where the Reformation never took place; Russian Hide-and-Seek, another alternate history that explores a world where Russia conquered Britain at the end of World War II; and finally, the very popular supernatural-horror novel The Green Man, which was eventually adapted by the BBC for television.

Amis was a great conversationalist, and he loved to discuss ideas and stories with others. One such event transpired with C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's Cambridge office in 1962. The three maintain a purely science-fiction dialogue and the conversation was recorded. Later, Lewis transcribed the event and titled it 'Unreal Estates' and put it in one of his final collections, On Stories.

James Bond

In the 1960s, Kingsley Amis broke from his science-fiction work when he began writing for the popular James Bond series created by Ian Fleming. Amis did much of this writing without credit as he worked under a pseudonym, sometimes with no credit at all. In 1965 Amis wrote a Bond novel under his own name. The novel, The James Bond Dossier was very successful so he wrote another the very same year. The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 was a manual about how to be a sophisticated spy. This spy uses the pseudonym Bill Tanner, Tanner being "M", Bond's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels.

After Fleming's death in 1964 there was a rumor that is was Amis who completed the draft of The Man with the Golden Gun, but in recent years this story was proven false, although Amis did offer suggestions on the improvement of the manuscript.

In 1968 the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications, desired to continue the publication of the popular series under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Amis was the very first to write under this name. He produced, Colonel Sun, but that was the last book ever published by "Markham". Colonel Sun, which was very successful, was later adapted as a comic strip and appeared in the Daily Express in 1969. Although Colonel Sun was never made into a Bond film (because of producer problems), it was clearly referenced in 2002's Die Another Day, starring Pierce Brosnan, wherethe villain was named Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.

The empty room gazed bleakly at Bond. As always, everything was meticulously in its place, the lines of naval prints exactly horizontal on the walls, water-colour materials laid out as if for inspection on the painting-table up against the window. It all had a weirdly artificial, detached air, like part of a museum where the furniture and effects of some historical figure are preserved just as they were in his lifetime.
Kingsley Amis, Colonel Sun

Awards

In addition to the Somerset Maugham Award he won for Lucky Jim, in 1983 a jury commissioned by the British Book Marketing Council declared Take a Girl Like You one of the dozen best novels written in English since 1945. In 1986 Amis won the Booker Prize for The Old Devils. He also won the won the Campbell Award for the year's best science-fiction with The Alteration in 1976.

His son, Martin Amis, was also awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, in addition to the National Book League Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bibliography

1947 Amis's first collection of poems, Bright November

1953 A Frame of Mind

1954 Poems: Fantasy Portraits.

1954 Lucky Jim, Amis' first novel ISBN 10-0142180149

1955 That Uncertain Feeling

1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956.

1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals. A Fabian Society pamphlet

1958 I Like it Here

1960 Take A Girl Like You ISBN 10-0140018484

1960 New Maps of Hell ISBN 10-0405063210

1960 Hemingway in Space (short story), Punch Dec 1960

1962 My Enemy's Enemy ISBN 10-0575008164

1962 The Evans County

1963 One Fat Englishman ISBN 10-0671671197

1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest).

1965 The James Bond Dossier ISBN 10-9997512286

1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007, under the pseudonym "Bill Tanner|Lt.-Col William ('Bill') Tanner"

1966 The Anti-Death League ISBN 10-014002803X

1968 Colonel Sun, a James Bond novel, under the pseudonym "Robert Markham." ISBN 10-1845761758

1968 I Want It Now

1969 The Green Man ISBN 10-0897332202

1970 What Became of Jane Austen and Other Questions

1971 Girl, 20

1972 On Drink ISBN 10-0224007971

1973 The Riverside Villas Murders ISBN 10-0151777209

1974 Ending Up ISBN 10-0151287961

1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World

1976 The Alteration ISBN 10-0881844322

1978 Jake's Thing ISBN 10-0140050965

1979 Collected Poems 1944-78

1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek ISBN 10-0091420504

1980 Collected Short Stories

1983 Every Day Drinking

1984 How's Your Glass?

1984 Stanley and the Women

1986 The Old Devils ISBN 10-0060971460

1988 Difficulties With Girls

1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill

1990 The Amis Collection

1991 Memoirs ISBN 10-0671749099

1991 Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories

1992 The Russian Girl ISBN 10-0670853291

1994 The semi-autobiographical You Can't Do Both ISBN 10-0091803195

1995 The Biographer's Moustache ISBN 10-0002253305

1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage ISBN 10-0312186010

2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis, Edited by Zachary Leader ISBN 10-0786867574

Amis Favorite Poets

Kingsley Amis wrote The Amis Anthology: A Personal Choice of English Verse (1988) in which he listed....

Richard Aldington - Kenneth Allott - Matthew Arnold - Kenneth Ashley - W. H. Auden - William Barnes - Oliver Bayley - Hilaire Belloc - John Betjeman - Laurence Binyon - William Blake - Edmund Blunden - Rupert Brooke - Robert Browning - Robert Burns - Thomas Campbell - Thomas Campion - G. K. Chesterton - Hartley Coleridge - Robert Conquest - W. J. Cory - John Davidson - Donald Davie - C. Day Lewis - Walter De la Mare - Ernest Dowson - Michael Drayton - Lawrence Durrell - Jean Elliot - George Farewell - James Elroy Flecker - Thomas Ford - Roy Fuller - Robert Graves - Thomas Gray - Fulke Greville - Heath - Reginald Heber - Felicia Dorothea Hemans - W. E. Henley - George Herbert - Ralph Hodgson - Thomas Hood - Teresa Hooley - Gerard Manley Hopkins - A. E. Housman - Henry Howard - T. E. Hulme - Leigh Hunt - Elizabeth Jennings - Samuel Johnson - John Keats - Henry King - Charles Kingsley - Rudyard Kipling - Philip Larkin - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - John Lydgate - H. F. Lyte - Louis MacNeice - Andrew Marvell - John Masefield - Alice Meynell - Harold Monro - William Morris - Edwin Muir - Henry Newbolt - Alfred Noyes - Wilfred Owen - Thomas Love Peacock - George Peele - Alexander Pope - Frederic Prokosch - Walter Ralegh - John Crowe Ransom - Christina Rossetti - Siegfried Sassoon - John Skelton - Robert Southey - Edmund Spenser - Sir John Squire - Robert Louis Stevenson - Sir John Suckling - Algernon Charles Swinburne - George Szirtes - Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Dylan Thomas - Edward Thomas - R. S. Thomas - Francis Thompson - Anthony Thwaite - Chidiock Tichborne - Aurelian Townsend - W. J. Turner - Oscar Wilde - John Wilmot, Lord Rochester - Roger Woddis - Charles Wolfe - William Wordsworth - W. B. Yeats - Andrew Young

External links

Bell, Robert H. Introduction to Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998."Kingsley Amis in the Great Tradition and in Our Time,"