This episode looks at Amis's contributions to the James Bond literature - Colonel Sun, his continuation of the Fleming series, set in the Greek islands, and a critical review of Fleming's work as a whole.  I discuss whether the novel works as a Bond book (yes), whether Amis fans will find much of his usual pleasures (no)  (and on the way manage to get E M Forster's definition of story and plot confused, and examine the theory that Amis was choosing less personal projects at this time because of the turmoil of his private life).  The James Bond Dossier is more interesting, addressing head-on the criticisms levelled at Fleming's work as appealing to male reader's wish fulfilment and full of pornography and sadism, and Amis makes a good case that these are largely unfounded; he is on weaker ground arguing that what the critics really disliked was that Bond was presented as patriotic, uncomplicatedly pro-West and brave.  Amis also slyly uses his defence of genre writing to implicitly argue that popular literature deserved more respect than polite literature.

Sources mentioned

Dear Philip, Dear Kingsley- The Letters between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin  (Radio play) 

Amis, Amis & Bond  Radio documentary

A change in approach, with a sort-of thriller in the near future, following an experimental army unit preparing to use a secret and terrible weapon.  But much of the story is about love, and Amis abandons irony while exploring whether the existence of God can be reconciled with the existence of suffering.  

References

R D Laing The Divided Self (1961)

John Robinson Honest to God (1963)

Dylan Thomas "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London"

Father Ted "That would be an ecumenical matter"

Wee Gwen (British Tactical Nuclear weapon)

What is the Metropolitan Egyptological Society and why does it discourage public and media enquiries? It is impossible to answer this question without spoilers so I've included a warning at the point where all is revealed. 

I discuss the co-author Robert Conquest, how the protagonists got stuck in unfulfilling marriages, whether womanisers like women as much as they claim to, the surprising availability of would-be mistresses, and what George Orwell reads into Donald McGill's seaside postcards.  

References

Robert Conquest: The Great Terror

The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (1978) edited by Kingsley Amis

George Orwell The art of Donald McGill

E Buckland The World of Donald McGill  

2006 interview with Hilly Kilmarnock

The adventures, mainly amorous, of Roger Micheldene, soaked in sin, fat, rude, and angry, in suburban America, as he tries to persuade Helene Bangs to leave her husband for him.  Many readers mistake the target for the satire: it is Micheldene and the society that produced him that Amis is critiquing, although he does share some of his prejudices (especially about literature).  The discussion muses on the improbable social and sexual success of Micheldene despite his lack of redeeming behaviour, parallels with the author's own life, and Amis's atheism and attitude to Christianity.

Content note: quotations with the f word

Links

David Lodge review

Kingsley Amis's longest, and some say his best, novel, recounts the tortuous relationship of innocent Jenny Bunn and lascivious Patrick Standish as they negotiate societal mores and personal boundaries in a pre-Pill world.  In this episode I explore the source and meaning of the epigraph "Go, gentle maid, go lead the apes in hell", whether the book can be read as an indictment of the male gaze, what the old website Hot Or Not tells us about Pretty Privilege, what Amis means when a character says that they are too busy trying to not be a nasty man to worry about being a bad man, and similarities with the plot of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.  

Content note: discussion of sexual assault and consent

References:

Song of the Wanderer by Harry James
Word Histories: Meaning and origin of 'to lead apes in hell'
Ernest Kuhl "Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell" and the Ballad of "The Maid and the Palmer" 
John Davies of Hereford "A Contention betwixt a wife, a widow and a maid"
Philip Larkin reads his poem "Lines on a young lady's photograph album"


Take a Girl Like You (1970 film)
Take a Girl Like You (2000 series) Part 1   Part 2  Part 3

Amis complains about going abroad and foreigners (and expats) while his main ire is aimed at the literature tradition of English writers imbuing Mediterranean cultures with a deep understanding inaccessible to those without the means to travel.  Amis's least favourite novel, based largely on his own experiences when the family spent 3 months in Portugal as a conidtion of Lucky Jim winning the Somerset Maugham first novel prize.  His satire is aimed at a style of writing that doesn't really exist any more, leaving the pleasures of the book fleeting and inconsequential.

The tale of 'Unlucky John', trapped in an unsatisfying job and home life in Swansea, offered an escape route through an affair with a bored wife and her hard-partying friends.  In this episode I discuss the parallels with Amis's own life, whether anxiety about mortality is a plausible excuse for infidelity, and why farce requires sympathy with the protagonist to be funny.  

Language note: I include a quote from the book that uses the term 'faggot'  - this isn't used as a gay slur.

A detailed look at Kingsley Amis’s first published novel, covering the role of luck, whether as an Angry Young Man he wants systematic change or just a better place for himself, and the characteristic KA internal monologue reflecting moral ambiguity and confusion as a new form of expression.  Also discussed are the song from which the title derives, the long shadow of military service, whether relationships at the time included sex, a comparison of Christine with Rachel in The Rachel Papers, and whether Amis’s view of universities and the value of research are consistent or well-founded.   

Content note: discussion of suicide 

Links

 Oh Lucky Jim! song

Angry Young Men

Newport medieval ship

Moving onto the work of Kingsley Amis, some recommendations on where to start (Lucky Jim and The Old Devils), a discussion of his biography and political development, and the value of his work as a social history of the 50s-70s.

Books mentioned:

Zachary Leader  The Life of Kingsley Amis

The Letters of Kingsley Amis

Martin Amis's final collected journalism volume has its interesting moments, including a tempering of his love of Nabokov, doubts about Jeremy Corbyn, and thoughts on Larkin and Germany, which I contrast with Barbara Pym's as described in Paule Byrne's biography The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym . 

In this episode I also look back on the novels as whole, including a discussion of Shifts by Christopher Meredith and how its portrayal of working class characters compares with Amis, Amis's ways of ending his books, and the recurrent device of playing with the status of the text to create more distance between the author and the events portrayed, rejecting the model of Thackeray's Vanity Fair with its overt treatment of the characters and puppets.

And finally, having covered all of Martin's novels, I discuss what will happen next: moving onto Kingsley Amis's books.

Content note: brief refercnes to child sexual abuse and suicide