Kingsley Amis: A Biography

New York: St Martins Press, 1998 Book. Fine. Hardcover. 1st US Edition. Kingsley Amis arrived on the English literary scene with the publication of his classic novel Lucky Jim in 1954, and few writers since have provoked such wildly disparate degrees of laughter, admiration, and contempt in the reading public. For better or worse, Amis was known almost as much for his personality as for his work as a novelist-for his outspoken nature (one columnist called him "a literary Rottweiler"), his unfashionable praise for Thatcherism, and his devotion to whiskey-and in this, the only authorized biography of Amis, Eric Jacobs skilfully captures that personality with sympathetic detail and healthy doses of Amisian wit. Amis's life was in turns both tragic and triumphant, and from it Jacobs manages to spin a narrative that mirrors the sprightliness and originality of his subject's work. Crisp copy looks unread 394p.+ plates [B & W] bibliography, index..