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The Old Devils
Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably.
Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.
Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
About the author
Kingsley Amis
221 books579 followersBest known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include
Lucky Jim
(1954) and
The Old Devils
(1986).
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 418 reviews
October 3, 2012
This novel is a story of old friends, married couples in southwestern Wales, and how their lives change when Alun and Rhiannon Weaver return to the country after Alun's long career in London. Alun has for some time been an ambitious media personality whose career resulted in the "popularization" of Wales. He is vaguely blamed for the onslaught of developers and bad architecture in the country, though this seems to me baseless. He's also known for championing the Welsh poet, Brydan, whom I suspect is loosely based on Dylan Thomas. Alun's as pure a "shit," Amis's word, as you're likely to come across in English letters. A vile bastard masquerading as a chum. At once upon his return he commences to systematically cuckold most of his friends, whom he then routinely meets the next day at the Bible and Crown for round after round of powerful cirrhotic drinks. Everyone, or almost everyone, in The Old Devils drinks themselves into near insensibility on a daily basis. For what else is there to do in culturally bereft Wales? Peter Thomas was a local college professor in the old days. Back then he seduced and knocked up his student, Rhiannon, still something of a beauty today, whom he promptly left for one Angharad, under the delusion of greener pastures. He's an old fool but at least, unlike Alun, he knows he's an old fool. Peter is now married to the imperious Muriel. He's fat, pushing 70, with a failing heart, and he regrets his hasty youthful choices. In other words, he's still in love with Rhiannon. Then there's Charlie, the book's purest alcoholic, who's been suffering lately from panic attacks, and his wife Sophie, the first old flame to succumb to slick Alun's inexplicable charms. There's also Malcolm Cellan-Davies, more of a Welsh scholar than Alun will ever be, and his wife Gwen, who also falls under Alun's spell. Structurally The Old Devils is a traditional novel; there is nothing new or even innovative about it. There are no sophomoric metafictional tricks, for which I was grateful. The novel beguiles us chiefly through its mastery of technique. It is so sure footed. It makes a virtue of the run on sentence. It was surprising to find amid the rich comedic scenes these stretches of striking descriptive beauty. Amis got the Booker Prize for this novel and one can see why. Here is everything he knows from the writing of, what, twenty novels? Here it is all in one book. The last third I found moving; a surprise since emotion was never something Kingsley Amis's work was known for. He was essentially a comic novelist, like his son. That was another striking thing, the similarity of phrasing between father and son. One can almost imagine them arguing about the merits of a proper sentence during their famous weekly meetings (see Experience: A Memoir). Highly amusing, often LOL funny. Exuberantly recommended.
October 7, 2018
I have to admit that I only read this because it is one of my last four Booker winners, not because I have any interest in reading Kingsley Amis.
I suspect that both his writing and his sense of humour are acquired tastes that I will never acquire, and I really struggled to maintain any interest in its cast of ageing Welsh drunks or Amis's array of Welsh cliches. I don't think this one has aged well.
I suspect that both his writing and his sense of humour are acquired tastes that I will never acquire, and I really struggled to maintain any interest in its cast of ageing Welsh drunks or Amis's array of Welsh cliches. I don't think this one has aged well.
August 15, 2010
Does anyone really want to read a book about a lot of boring old farts getting drunk and shagging each others' wives?
No wonder people were saying the British novel was dead at the time when this won the Booker prize.
No wonder people were saying the British novel was dead at the time when this won the Booker prize.
August 11, 2017
Il tasso di alcool, pioggia, gallesità, cazzeggio maschile, solitudine coniugale di questo romanzo è almeno sei volte superiore ai limiti di legge consentiti. Per giunta parla di settantenni, categoria poco glamour e scarsamente frequentata dalle belle lettere inglesi dall'epoca di Re Lear, credo. Eppure questo gruppo di acciaccatissimi 'mbriaconi litiga, ama, odia, ricorda con rabbia e struggimento come non riuscirebbe a fare nemmeno un trentenne (taceremo per carità di patria degli apatici personaggini nostrani), mostrando una vitalità tanto più dolorosa quanto ormai irrimediabilmente segnata dalla decadenza fisica e dalla consapevolezza che il meglio è ormai alle spalle e che il passato - o meglio, il ricordo che ne abbiamo - si modifica e si deforma nel tempo, inafferrabile e indecifrabile per punirci di non averlo saputo riconoscere e vivere al momento giusto.
September 23, 2022
My expectations going into reading this novel were not very high. The overall Goodreads rating is quite low and there were negative reviews from some Goodreads friends whose opinions I always pay a lot of attention to and whose reactions typically match up well with mine. In this case, though, I found myself really enjoying this novel. I haven’t laughed and chuckled over a book so much in quite a while.
The Old Devils is set in Wales and introduces us to several retired, middle-income couples; many of individuals are heavy drinkers, heavy smokers and philanders, even though they are approaching or past 70. There is a dearth of admirable traits among these characters; in fact, I found myself disliking many of them but enjoying disliking them. The most difficult aspect of the novel was keeping straight all of the past and current relationships, pre-marital, marital and extramarital. Some of the humor comes from how these individuals deal with their health problems: ignoring, denying, negotiating with oneself were all strategies employed. This was my first by Kingsley Amis and I was very impressed with the depth with which he described the characters and the richness of their interactions. Many of the lives described were sad, but also felt very real.
The novel is also about Wales and the nature of the natives. I have not read much in the past that has given me any insight into Wales, but I think this novel provides a real sense of what the land and people are like. You get the impression that they are proud of where they live. I also liked how the novel ended. It was an ending I could believe.
I know some on Goodreads have said this novel has not aged well. I can’t explain the difference in my reaction and theirs, but while it is not a novel that works for everyone, it did work for me.
The Old Devils is set in Wales and introduces us to several retired, middle-income couples; many of individuals are heavy drinkers, heavy smokers and philanders, even though they are approaching or past 70. There is a dearth of admirable traits among these characters; in fact, I found myself disliking many of them but enjoying disliking them. The most difficult aspect of the novel was keeping straight all of the past and current relationships, pre-marital, marital and extramarital. Some of the humor comes from how these individuals deal with their health problems: ignoring, denying, negotiating with oneself were all strategies employed. This was my first by Kingsley Amis and I was very impressed with the depth with which he described the characters and the richness of their interactions. Many of the lives described were sad, but also felt very real.
The novel is also about Wales and the nature of the natives. I have not read much in the past that has given me any insight into Wales, but I think this novel provides a real sense of what the land and people are like. You get the impression that they are proud of where they live. I also liked how the novel ended. It was an ending I could believe.
I know some on Goodreads have said this novel has not aged well. I can’t explain the difference in my reaction and theirs, but while it is not a novel that works for everyone, it did work for me.
abbandonati
May 19, 2018Abbandonato a pagina 226 di 344. Non si può dire che non ci abbia provato. Ma alla fine 'gna facevo più di sbronze e dialoghi balordi e chiacchiere insulse. Mi stava venendo la cirrosi epatica, non ho il fisico per questa roba.
Via, si volta pagina e si cambia libro.
Via, si volta pagina e si cambia libro.
April 8, 2025
This is the type of British novel I call 'an old man's pub novel'. In these books everyone is high to medium functioning alcoholic.
I'm not sure what this book was trying to say or accomplish. There were some feeble attempts at discussing the idea of Welshness but not sure what Amis, an Englishman through and through, could possibly say about it (his expertise is based off 12 years he spent teaching in Swansea). Through his satirical wit Amis is trying to pick a bone with someone about something, but it's unclear what his main point is. Just a list of assorted petty grievances.
No one here is particularly likeable, but at least the old retired men in this book are trying to sleep with each other's wives and not some women half their age. I certainly hope to have something better to do with my time than this lot, when I retire (retire? lol, in this economy?)
I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. Another Booker Prize winner ticked off (though one of the more polarising ones). It's rather hard to believe that's the best Commonwealth literature had to offer in 1986.
Eighties books are generally weird to me. Not sure where to situate them. Since I was born in the 80s, I can't think of them as modern classic just yet (they are not old enough, and neither am I!), but they do feel a little dated already (same as me).
I'm not sure what this book was trying to say or accomplish. There were some feeble attempts at discussing the idea of Welshness but not sure what Amis, an Englishman through and through, could possibly say about it (his expertise is based off 12 years he spent teaching in Swansea). Through his satirical wit Amis is trying to pick a bone with someone about something, but it's unclear what his main point is. Just a list of assorted petty grievances.
No one here is particularly likeable, but at least the old retired men in this book are trying to sleep with each other's wives and not some women half their age. I certainly hope to have something better to do with my time than this lot, when I retire (retire? lol, in this economy?)
I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. Another Booker Prize winner ticked off (though one of the more polarising ones). It's rather hard to believe that's the best Commonwealth literature had to offer in 1986.
Eighties books are generally weird to me. Not sure where to situate them. Since I was born in the 80s, I can't think of them as modern classic just yet (they are not old enough, and neither am I!), but they do feel a little dated already (same as me).
January 21, 2022
Satirical novel about a group of aging Welsh couples who get drunk and sleep around. I am sure it is supposed to be funny, but I did not get the humor. It is definitely not my taste in subject matter. I find it hard to laugh at alcoholism. Plus, I think it denigrates the aging process. Surely some people have a positive life after retirement. I am baffled as to how this book beat out The Handmaid’s Tale or An Artist of the Floating World to win the Booker Prize in 1986. I rarely give 1-star reviews, but I strongly disliked this book.
January 7, 2013
It was a surprise to many when Kinglsey Amis won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils for this was an author who, according to the wisdom of the masses, was long past his prime. I don't know what the reaction was in Wales but I suspect the commentary there may have concentrated on his portrayal of the country than the quality of his writing. My countrymen do tend to get a bit huffy about how our nation is represented. But then we are known for our hot tempers (not for nothing is our national symbol a fire breathing dragon) and we do tend to take offence at implied slights to our national pride....
What in The Old Devils would have got the Welsh feathers ruffled? This is a tale about a bunch of old university mates who are mostly retired and, having been regular drinkers in the past, naturally gravitate to a pub called The Bible to while away the hours chewing the fat and carping about anything and everything. The drinking seems to begin well before lunch (not too long after breakfast in fact) and lasts as long as they can keep going into the night. Not to be outdone, their wives gather in one or other's homes to neck down a few bottles of vino.
Your average Celt wouldn't turn a hair about heavy drinking, gossipy characters. They're the kind of people who can be spied propping up the bar in many a grimy establishment throughout Wales. What would really get them hot under the collar however is how Amis tackles a theme about Welsh identity.
This largely centres on the character of Alun Weaver. He prefers this spelling of his first name to the more Anglicised 'Alan' since it's an easy way to emphasis his Welsh credentials. He's the only one of the old gang to leave Wales, making a career for himself in London as a writer and an expert on a poet called Brydan (a thinly disguised Dylan Thomas). But now after a 30 year absence he's announced his return to his old stamping ground in South Wales intending to set up home with his wife. Cue lots of anxiety from those wives of the Old Devils who indulged in affairs with him and are either hoping for a re-run or mortified with embarrassment about meeting him again.
Alun is what is often labelled as a "professional Welshman", (or as one of his friends describes him "an up-market media Welshman") the kind of person who gets trotted out whenever the BBC or its ilk need someone to comment on Welsh culture and society. They don't actually live in the country but feel compelled at every opportunity to parade their Welshness and love of 'the old country'. Amis makes him a figure of ridicule, an ageing lothario with questionable literary skills, who essentially wants Wales to remain in some kind of time warp.
That was the whole point, to stress continuity, to set one's face against anything that could be called modernism and to show that the old subject, life in the local villages, in the peculiar South-Wales amalgam of town and country, had never gone away...
The Old Devils probably wouldn't appreciate the gentrification of a boozer like this
The Old Devils probably wouldn't appreciate the gentrification of a boozer like this
The last thing the local soaks want is to bottle Wales in aspic; they want change but they recognise a balance needs to be struck. A balance between the kind of Anglicised ubiquity which means "Everywhere new here is the same as new things in England, whether it's the university or the restaurants or the supermarkets or what you buy there. ... Is there anything in here to tell you you're in Wales?" and the Disneyfication that Alun would seem favour in his books. One of the braver Devils confronts him head on, accusing him of ruining Wales.
Turning it into a charade, an act, a place full of leeks and laver-bread and chapels and wonderful old characters who speak their own highly idiosyncratic and often curiously erudite kind of language.
Such carping doesn't disguise the fact that between these men there does exist a close bond that approaches love and affection. Nor does Amis's satire come without a degree of affection and understanding for these characters. He makes us laugh but there is a poignancy for these guys whose brains don't want to acknowledge their best days are over though their bodies tell them otherwise. There are some wonderful cameos of the gang dealing with the infirmities that come with age including the difficulties of getting dressed when an expanding girth gets in the way of something as simple as putting on a pair of socks.
At one time this had come after instead of before putting his underpants on, but he had noted that that way round he kept tearing them with his toenails. ... The socks went on in the bathroom with the aid of a particular low table, height being critical. Heel on table, sock completely on as far as heel, toes on table, sock round heel and up. .... Pants on in the bedroom, heel and toe like the socks but at floor level, spot of talc around the scrotum, then trousers two mornings out of every three or so. On the third or so morning he would find chocolate, cream, jam or some combination from his bedtime snack smeared over the pair in use and he would have to return to the bathroom specifically to its mirror for guidance in fixing the braces on the front of the fresh trousers, an area which needless to say had been well out of his direct view these many years.
It's passages like this that show clearly how insult and ridicule can be transformed into high comic art. and how Amis, is a master of that art. Even if there is a segment of the population that takes umbrage at his depiction of Wales, they surely have to acknowledge that with The Old Devils, there is clearly old life in that old devil Amis.
Without doubt one of the most enjoyable of the Booker prize winners I've read. And no, you don't even need to be born in Wales to appreciate its humour.
What in The Old Devils would have got the Welsh feathers ruffled? This is a tale about a bunch of old university mates who are mostly retired and, having been regular drinkers in the past, naturally gravitate to a pub called The Bible to while away the hours chewing the fat and carping about anything and everything. The drinking seems to begin well before lunch (not too long after breakfast in fact) and lasts as long as they can keep going into the night. Not to be outdone, their wives gather in one or other's homes to neck down a few bottles of vino.
Your average Celt wouldn't turn a hair about heavy drinking, gossipy characters. They're the kind of people who can be spied propping up the bar in many a grimy establishment throughout Wales. What would really get them hot under the collar however is how Amis tackles a theme about Welsh identity.
This largely centres on the character of Alun Weaver. He prefers this spelling of his first name to the more Anglicised 'Alan' since it's an easy way to emphasis his Welsh credentials. He's the only one of the old gang to leave Wales, making a career for himself in London as a writer and an expert on a poet called Brydan (a thinly disguised Dylan Thomas). But now after a 30 year absence he's announced his return to his old stamping ground in South Wales intending to set up home with his wife. Cue lots of anxiety from those wives of the Old Devils who indulged in affairs with him and are either hoping for a re-run or mortified with embarrassment about meeting him again.
Alun is what is often labelled as a "professional Welshman", (or as one of his friends describes him "an up-market media Welshman") the kind of person who gets trotted out whenever the BBC or its ilk need someone to comment on Welsh culture and society. They don't actually live in the country but feel compelled at every opportunity to parade their Welshness and love of 'the old country'. Amis makes him a figure of ridicule, an ageing lothario with questionable literary skills, who essentially wants Wales to remain in some kind of time warp.
That was the whole point, to stress continuity, to set one's face against anything that could be called modernism and to show that the old subject, life in the local villages, in the peculiar South-Wales amalgam of town and country, had never gone away...
The Old Devils probably wouldn't appreciate the gentrification of a boozer like this
The Old Devils probably wouldn't appreciate the gentrification of a boozer like this
The last thing the local soaks want is to bottle Wales in aspic; they want change but they recognise a balance needs to be struck. A balance between the kind of Anglicised ubiquity which means "Everywhere new here is the same as new things in England, whether it's the university or the restaurants or the supermarkets or what you buy there. ... Is there anything in here to tell you you're in Wales?" and the Disneyfication that Alun would seem favour in his books. One of the braver Devils confronts him head on, accusing him of ruining Wales.
Turning it into a charade, an act, a place full of leeks and laver-bread and chapels and wonderful old characters who speak their own highly idiosyncratic and often curiously erudite kind of language.
Such carping doesn't disguise the fact that between these men there does exist a close bond that approaches love and affection. Nor does Amis's satire come without a degree of affection and understanding for these characters. He makes us laugh but there is a poignancy for these guys whose brains don't want to acknowledge their best days are over though their bodies tell them otherwise. There are some wonderful cameos of the gang dealing with the infirmities that come with age including the difficulties of getting dressed when an expanding girth gets in the way of something as simple as putting on a pair of socks.
At one time this had come after instead of before putting his underpants on, but he had noted that that way round he kept tearing them with his toenails. ... The socks went on in the bathroom with the aid of a particular low table, height being critical. Heel on table, sock completely on as far as heel, toes on table, sock round heel and up. .... Pants on in the bedroom, heel and toe like the socks but at floor level, spot of talc around the scrotum, then trousers two mornings out of every three or so. On the third or so morning he would find chocolate, cream, jam or some combination from his bedtime snack smeared over the pair in use and he would have to return to the bathroom specifically to its mirror for guidance in fixing the braces on the front of the fresh trousers, an area which needless to say had been well out of his direct view these many years.
It's passages like this that show clearly how insult and ridicule can be transformed into high comic art. and how Amis, is a master of that art. Even if there is a segment of the population that takes umbrage at his depiction of Wales, they surely have to acknowledge that with The Old Devils, there is clearly old life in that old devil Amis.
Without doubt one of the most enjoyable of the Booker prize winners I've read. And no, you don't even need to be born in Wales to appreciate its humour.
July 29, 2009
Readers of John Updike's Couples will find the setup of this novel glancingly familiar: the circle of ingrown, septic-turning friendships among well-off married couples in a small town by the sea, the arrival of the 'new couple' that puts the cat among the pigeons. But where Updike's novel (much the superior of the two) is all about sex and love, Amis's themes are booze and adultery. His couples, unlike Updike's, are all well on the wrong side of middle age; his setting, unlike Updike's picturesque New England town of Tarbox, is South Wales in the early Thatcher era, all closed-down pitheads and fake Welshness seen through a haze of alcohol and thin, freezing rain.
Still, lovers of that grumpy unsentimentality in which the British tend to specialize as they grow older (and none specialized more successfully than Kingsley Amis) will find much to enjoy here, as I did. For lovers of literary style, Amis's imaginative aptness of phrase cannot help but delight. What does not appeal is the almost poisonous mysogyny that underpins much of the humour - and while the insight that growing old brings no consolation of wisdom, only infirmity, futility and resentment against the world at large, makes for some fine black humour at times, the laugh often ends up sounding rather hollow.
Still, lovers of that grumpy unsentimentality in which the British tend to specialize as they grow older (and none specialized more successfully than Kingsley Amis) will find much to enjoy here, as I did. For lovers of literary style, Amis's imaginative aptness of phrase cannot help but delight. What does not appeal is the almost poisonous mysogyny that underpins much of the humour - and while the insight that growing old brings no consolation of wisdom, only infirmity, futility and resentment against the world at large, makes for some fine black humour at times, the laugh often ends up sounding rather hollow.
October 28, 2013
This is such a wasted opportunity. Amis showed in 'Ending Up' how capable he was of writing dark humour into the vagaries of old age, making that alleged time of non-existence interesting and compulsive reading... perhaps twelve years later, when 'The Old Devils' saw the light of day, he was sufficiently aged himself to be consumed by his lifetime of excesses. Certainly 'The Old Devils' lacks polish and precision. What it does confirm is that (shock, horror) older people still have sex, can be unfaithful, can drink till they stagger and fall in an unhappy routine that stretches until paralysis or death. Yes, it is that funny. It also has elements of the misogyny that was something of Amis' watchword and an anti-hero suspiciously similar to the author himself.
All in all the book reminds me of that lyric by the Who- 'hope I die before I get old.' Having seen them headline Glastonbury this year I can't help but wish they'd kept their promise, and that Amis had never thought to write this travesty of a (Booker Prize-winning) novel. Can't old age be more like Betty White?
All in all the book reminds me of that lyric by the Who- 'hope I die before I get old.' Having seen them headline Glastonbury this year I can't help but wish they'd kept their promise, and that Amis had never thought to write this travesty of a (Booker Prize-winning) novel. Can't old age be more like Betty White?
February 1, 2012
This is the most boring Booker I've read so far. It may, in fact, be one of the most boring books I've ever read. I can't even bother to put it on my list of most hated because at least with, say, Atonement, McEwan had the decency to write a thoroughly despicable, self-absorbed horrorshow of a human being to act as narrator for that otherwise dull book. Amis didn't even give us that. I couldn't even get too upset with him for writing two-dimensional female characters because his male characters were not much better. Here, none of the characters sparkled, I was 200 pages in before I came to a laugh-aloud line, and the most poignant part of the book didn't register at all. The characters are all stuck in high school dramas. Seriously, those were dull when we were IN high school, and everyone I know cringes when thinking back about that grating nonsense when they are a couple of years out. So the idea of 70-year-olds never outgrowing them is both boring and depressing, and it fails to ring true. The Finkler Question, which I think most people really disliked, was MUCH better at knocking humorously at the door of aging and regret, and Staying On (which won in the 70s) did it extremely well at that, too.
And if we are supposed to see the problems as deeper than that, then all the worse, because I was so disinterested in the characters that I actually couldn't believe them capable of that kind of depth. Say what you will about the foibles of the Finkler Question, I could buy into the main character's neurosis and weirdness. I felt none of that here.
And if it is supposed to be about Wales, the culture (real and imagined), and the culture-mongers, then it failed there, too. There's this bit at the end, where one of the characters gets dressed down for writing a pompous little bit of novel that purports to, but fails, to capture Wales. Think it was an inside apology to us as readers?
I have never been so glad to finish a book as I was to finish this one. I wasn't even this excited when I finished Atonement or Prep. And that's saying something.
And if we are supposed to see the problems as deeper than that, then all the worse, because I was so disinterested in the characters that I actually couldn't believe them capable of that kind of depth. Say what you will about the foibles of the Finkler Question, I could buy into the main character's neurosis and weirdness. I felt none of that here.
And if it is supposed to be about Wales, the culture (real and imagined), and the culture-mongers, then it failed there, too. There's this bit at the end, where one of the characters gets dressed down for writing a pompous little bit of novel that purports to, but fails, to capture Wales. Think it was an inside apology to us as readers?
I have never been so glad to finish a book as I was to finish this one. I wasn't even this excited when I finished Atonement or Prep. And that's saying something.
January 6, 2014
I looked up the symptoms of cirrhosis and discovered that they can include fatigue, loss of appetite, and nausea. By the time I was done this novel, I was pretty sure that I had somehow acquired cirrhosis from it. It is not a likable book, mainly because there are so few characters to like in it, supposing you can manage to distinguish one from the other by the time you get through it. Is Peter the enormously fat one? Which one is Garth and why do I care? Does Malcolm have any real talent or is he like everyone else and not have any visible or plausible reason to exist? This won the Booker? I suspect it was intended as a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award to Kingsley Amis, because there's no way this is a better novel than Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, nor Robertson Davies' What's Bred in the Bone, nor Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, all of which were shortlisted in 1986, when The Old Devils somehow won the prize.
December 7, 2017
A thoroughly enjoyable romance in the Shakespearean sense of the word. Lots of proto-Martin humour (though if Amis fils 'goes to 11' in terms of hyperbole as the trope of choice, his père dials it all in at just over a 3, irony and understatement being more his thing than "monkeying about with the reader" [<--as quoted in son Martin's latest book The Rub Of Time]
Lots of talk about the Welsh, and lots of talk about (and actual) boozing: every single chapter seems to have a drink in it, as the old ensemble cast of codgers (who all seem to have slept with each other in the wayback of when) careen through threatened catastrophe, navigate a minor death, and fittingly end up at a wedding, still kicking against the pricks of the horseman and his cold, steady eye.
Lots of talk about the Welsh, and lots of talk about (and actual) boozing: every single chapter seems to have a drink in it, as the old ensemble cast of codgers (who all seem to have slept with each other in the wayback of when) careen through threatened catastrophe, navigate a minor death, and fittingly end up at a wedding, still kicking against the pricks of the horseman and his cold, steady eye.
August 18, 2009
I tend to be sympathetic to characters who are aging, fat, and unlovely, since I'm sure this is my destiny as well, but this bunch is so tedious that I couldn't muster any interest. I kept waiting for the humor to begin, but it never did. They're all just moldering away in Wales, pickling their livers and feeling sorry for themselves. I feel like David Lodge has written these characters, and written them far better. I'm astounded this won the Booker.
July 27, 2025
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
10 out of 10
Ever since I have read Lucky Jim – reviewed here: http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/l... - the glorious Kingsley Amis – considered the best comedy writer of the second half of the 20th century – has become one of my top ten, or maybe five, authors.
After Lucky Jim came the mesmerizing Ending Up (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/e...) then the equally enchanting Girl, 20 (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/g...) and Difficulties with Girls (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/11/d...)
If the three aforementioned masterpieces have a common thread, that of exhilarating humor, combined with serious writing and grave themes, obviously, The Old devils seems completely different, for albeit humor is evidently present and abundant, the preeminent tone is more than sober, and the winner of The Booker Prize is much more a tragedy than a comical work.
Alun Weaver returns to Wales with his wife, Rhianon, and they may be considered the main characters of the novel, the man being a writer of a degree of popularity, present in England – from where they return to his native province – on some television shows and known somewhat for his consistent, if rather preposterous and overdone, promotion of Welsh culture.
As the couple returns, memories are not just brought back, but some of the flames and infatuations gain new life, with Alun on a superficial level entering various sex affairs, with at least a couple of the wives of his old comrades or Old Devils, one of them is Gwen, who would make a scene at one stage in the story, aggravated by the behavior of this provincial Casanova.
Another woman who had fallen in the past for the charms of this superficial, unsubstantiated, shallow, selfish writer is Sophie, married to Charlie Norris, another old acquaintance who is an alcoholic now, starting early in the day with a drink and being extracted from various shameful situations by his gay brother, Victor, who is in charge of a locale where the brothers are owners.
One day, soon after their return, Alun has some drinks with Charlie and Peter Thomas – yet another old companion- and knowing where Charlie is, he walks to his home to have sex with Sophie, who protests initially, but then accepts, relating some complains about the drinking spouse, who sleeps separately on a regular basis, but has a peculiar condition and he cannot stand being alone in the dark and this would create a trauma and almost a scandal, when on another occasion Welsh Casanova tries to get the wife in a corner and Charlie, left alone for too long, nearly has a seizure and needs a powerful drug, administered by his brother.
Peter Thomas has had a love affair with Rhianon, decades ago, when the lover became pregnant and the man panicked and behave badly, only to regret it for almost the rest of his life, given that this was the only woman he would ever love, although he would soon marry Muriel, with whom they would have a son, Robert, but their relationship would never work and in the tension and continuous conflict the husband would become very fat and support the idea, confirmed by psychology studies, that people in a happy married couple live longer happier lives than divorcees and single men and women, but worst of all from this point of view are those who stay in marital bondage, when they fight all the time and the equivalent in terms of trauma is being in a car wreck every single day.
Alun is a complex character, like all the rest, only in this case, he is almost the villain of the story, with his philandering and lack of care, consideration for the others – yes, he seems to feel nobody knows about his shenanigans and the secret is well kept between him and the many women he has coitus with, although the reality is quite the opposite, his wife not just knows about it, but she is such a noble, superior, kind, intelligent, emotionally and otherwise, generous human being that she is worried about the other women, some of them former friends, like Sophie and Gwen.
In her turn, Rhianon has always been fond, in love actually, with Peter and when they reunite, she emphasis that his coward behavior when she became pregnant is in the past now and in fact, at a rather late moment in the story, she states that she is happy they have met and all the rest, their love was worth anything, including the regrettable aspects and there is a chance that they may become very close friends, now that they are in their sixties and Alun may be out of the way and Muriel may finally decide to take some drastic action – let us not get into the details of what and how any of them would act.
Peter would have been the ideal husband for Rhianon and vice versa, and it is terrible that the woman has to share her life – which has obviously positive sides, she has not exactly lived in the gulag or the North Korean camps – with such a Trump like figure – this is an exaggeration, for it is hard to imagine anyone as narcissistic, superficial, simple and idiotic as the commander in cheat’, although there would be similarities in the two men.
Aside from Peter and Rhianon, who play the roles of Romeo and Juliet in old age, to some extent and they are definitely the most enchanting, likeable, characters that we can relate and depending on age and tastes, identify with, Charlie would be another personage that causes feelings of sympathy and compassion – Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being – if not in one of the other two works I have read y him – talks about the compassion we feel when we are on the same level with the human being, while pity involves a degree of superiority.
Charlie drinks too much and this could be for some an extenuating circumstance while for others it would be ever more incriminating, but he maintains his wit, humor and perceptiveness, for Alun thinks that his companions are, if not in awe of him, at least more or less in admiration, perhaps envious, when in fact Charlie especially and the others see through him, the vain pretense, the infatuation, overblown persona, again…the exaggerations of a smaller Trump, albeit, for all his flaws, Alun is a Marcel Proust when compared with an eight year old when set along the silly old fool sitting in the White House.
The Old Devils was for Martin Amis, the son of the gigantic writer and a phenomenon in his own right, the masterpiece of his father and:
‘It stands comparison with any English novel of the century’
10 out of 10
Ever since I have read Lucky Jim – reviewed here: http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/l... - the glorious Kingsley Amis – considered the best comedy writer of the second half of the 20th century – has become one of my top ten, or maybe five, authors.
After Lucky Jim came the mesmerizing Ending Up (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/e...) then the equally enchanting Girl, 20 (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/g...) and Difficulties with Girls (http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/11/d...)
If the three aforementioned masterpieces have a common thread, that of exhilarating humor, combined with serious writing and grave themes, obviously, The Old devils seems completely different, for albeit humor is evidently present and abundant, the preeminent tone is more than sober, and the winner of The Booker Prize is much more a tragedy than a comical work.
Alun Weaver returns to Wales with his wife, Rhianon, and they may be considered the main characters of the novel, the man being a writer of a degree of popularity, present in England – from where they return to his native province – on some television shows and known somewhat for his consistent, if rather preposterous and overdone, promotion of Welsh culture.
As the couple returns, memories are not just brought back, but some of the flames and infatuations gain new life, with Alun on a superficial level entering various sex affairs, with at least a couple of the wives of his old comrades or Old Devils, one of them is Gwen, who would make a scene at one stage in the story, aggravated by the behavior of this provincial Casanova.
Another woman who had fallen in the past for the charms of this superficial, unsubstantiated, shallow, selfish writer is Sophie, married to Charlie Norris, another old acquaintance who is an alcoholic now, starting early in the day with a drink and being extracted from various shameful situations by his gay brother, Victor, who is in charge of a locale where the brothers are owners.
One day, soon after their return, Alun has some drinks with Charlie and Peter Thomas – yet another old companion- and knowing where Charlie is, he walks to his home to have sex with Sophie, who protests initially, but then accepts, relating some complains about the drinking spouse, who sleeps separately on a regular basis, but has a peculiar condition and he cannot stand being alone in the dark and this would create a trauma and almost a scandal, when on another occasion Welsh Casanova tries to get the wife in a corner and Charlie, left alone for too long, nearly has a seizure and needs a powerful drug, administered by his brother.
Peter Thomas has had a love affair with Rhianon, decades ago, when the lover became pregnant and the man panicked and behave badly, only to regret it for almost the rest of his life, given that this was the only woman he would ever love, although he would soon marry Muriel, with whom they would have a son, Robert, but their relationship would never work and in the tension and continuous conflict the husband would become very fat and support the idea, confirmed by psychology studies, that people in a happy married couple live longer happier lives than divorcees and single men and women, but worst of all from this point of view are those who stay in marital bondage, when they fight all the time and the equivalent in terms of trauma is being in a car wreck every single day.
Alun is a complex character, like all the rest, only in this case, he is almost the villain of the story, with his philandering and lack of care, consideration for the others – yes, he seems to feel nobody knows about his shenanigans and the secret is well kept between him and the many women he has coitus with, although the reality is quite the opposite, his wife not just knows about it, but she is such a noble, superior, kind, intelligent, emotionally and otherwise, generous human being that she is worried about the other women, some of them former friends, like Sophie and Gwen.
In her turn, Rhianon has always been fond, in love actually, with Peter and when they reunite, she emphasis that his coward behavior when she became pregnant is in the past now and in fact, at a rather late moment in the story, she states that she is happy they have met and all the rest, their love was worth anything, including the regrettable aspects and there is a chance that they may become very close friends, now that they are in their sixties and Alun may be out of the way and Muriel may finally decide to take some drastic action – let us not get into the details of what and how any of them would act.
Peter would have been the ideal husband for Rhianon and vice versa, and it is terrible that the woman has to share her life – which has obviously positive sides, she has not exactly lived in the gulag or the North Korean camps – with such a Trump like figure – this is an exaggeration, for it is hard to imagine anyone as narcissistic, superficial, simple and idiotic as the commander in cheat’, although there would be similarities in the two men.
Aside from Peter and Rhianon, who play the roles of Romeo and Juliet in old age, to some extent and they are definitely the most enchanting, likeable, characters that we can relate and depending on age and tastes, identify with, Charlie would be another personage that causes feelings of sympathy and compassion – Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being – if not in one of the other two works I have read y him – talks about the compassion we feel when we are on the same level with the human being, while pity involves a degree of superiority.
Charlie drinks too much and this could be for some an extenuating circumstance while for others it would be ever more incriminating, but he maintains his wit, humor and perceptiveness, for Alun thinks that his companions are, if not in awe of him, at least more or less in admiration, perhaps envious, when in fact Charlie especially and the others see through him, the vain pretense, the infatuation, overblown persona, again…the exaggerations of a smaller Trump, albeit, for all his flaws, Alun is a Marcel Proust when compared with an eight year old when set along the silly old fool sitting in the White House.
The Old Devils was for Martin Amis, the son of the gigantic writer and a phenomenon in his own right, the masterpiece of his father and:
‘It stands comparison with any English novel of the century’
June 12, 2023
İngiliz yazar Kingsley Amis’in eseri Yaşlı Kurtlar, 1986 Booker Ödülü’nü almış. Roman, bir yazarın, hayatının son demlerinde eşi ve yetişkin kızıyla beraber memleketi Galler’e dönmesiyle başlıyor ve kitabın tamamı da bu yaşlı çiftin yıllar sonra eski dostlarıyla bir araya gelmesiyle yaşananları anlatıyor. Yaşananlar diyorum ama kitapta pek fazla olay yok aslında, daha çok birkaç yaşlı çiftin hayat, eski aşklar, ilişkiler ve çokça da günlük meselelerle ilgili sohbetlerini okuyoruz. Günlerini içerek ve gevezelik ederek geçiren ve zaman zaman da eski aşkları ve sırlarıyla hesaplaşan bir grup eski arkadaşın birkaç buluşmasının anlatımı kitap kısaca. Arada Galler edebiyatı, kültürü ve Birleşik Krallık’la aradaki dinamiklere de göndermeler yapılsa da bir arka plan olarak silik kalmış bu meseleler. Yazarın günlük hayattan kareler ve karakterlerin sohbetlerinden parçalar sunması ve bunların genel olarak bir yere varmaması, bir çerçeveye oturtulmaması ya da söyleyecek şeyleri varsa da bana geçememiş olması kitabın sevmediğim yönü oldu açıkçası.
Diğer yandan, yazarın karakterleri aktarmakta başarılı olduğunu düşünüyorum. Üçüncü tekil şahıs kullanarak, arasına belli bir mesafe koyarak anlatmış her karakteri ama her birini kendi odağından vermeyi başarmış. Fazla karakter olmasına ve konuşmaların ağırlıkta olmasına rağmen hepsini tanıdım okurken, hiç birinin sesi bir diğerine karışmadı.
Sonuç olarak, sevip sevmeme konusunda kararsız kaldığım bir kitap oldu. Sadece durağan metinlerden hoşlanmayanlara önermeyeceğimi ve sabır isteyen bir metin olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
Diğer yandan, yazarın karakterleri aktarmakta başarılı olduğunu düşünüyorum. Üçüncü tekil şahıs kullanarak, arasına belli bir mesafe koyarak anlatmış her karakteri ama her birini kendi odağından vermeyi başarmış. Fazla karakter olmasına ve konuşmaların ağırlıkta olmasına rağmen hepsini tanıdım okurken, hiç birinin sesi bir diğerine karışmadı.
Sonuç olarak, sevip sevmeme konusunda kararsız kaldığım bir kitap oldu. Sadece durağan metinlerden hoşlanmayanlara önermeyeceğimi ve sabır isteyen bir metin olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
December 31, 2018
Dear Goodreads
I confess the Amises father & son are two writers I have an implacable, irrational block against. This is the first Kingsley I’ve read & I only read it because I am working my way through all the Booker Prize Winners & I picked up a cheap first edition at Any Amount of Books.
Loved it.
He writes English like an angel. The novel chronicles the misadventures of a group of well-to-do aging 1980s reprobates, with nothing to do but drink themselves silly and gossip idly. The narrative follows their aimless and chaotic existence but is anything but chaotic itself: structure, plot, character, language all as tight as a drum and delivering sharply accurate observation. This really is a master firing at peak ability.
Amis really doesn’t miss a single human frailty to mock, frequently harshly: but there is warmth and human sympathy there as well. A quick glance at Kingsley’s own life will suggest just how much of this novel is autobiographical, and made of searing regrets. I felt the last couple of lines were addressed directly to his ex-wife, but who can really say. This won the Booker Prize in 1986.
I confess the Amises father & son are two writers I have an implacable, irrational block against. This is the first Kingsley I’ve read & I only read it because I am working my way through all the Booker Prize Winners & I picked up a cheap first edition at Any Amount of Books.
Loved it.
He writes English like an angel. The novel chronicles the misadventures of a group of well-to-do aging 1980s reprobates, with nothing to do but drink themselves silly and gossip idly. The narrative follows their aimless and chaotic existence but is anything but chaotic itself: structure, plot, character, language all as tight as a drum and delivering sharply accurate observation. This really is a master firing at peak ability.
Amis really doesn’t miss a single human frailty to mock, frequently harshly: but there is warmth and human sympathy there as well. A quick glance at Kingsley’s own life will suggest just how much of this novel is autobiographical, and made of searing regrets. I felt the last couple of lines were addressed directly to his ex-wife, but who can really say. This won the Booker Prize in 1986.
October 20, 2009
I met a lady recently who told me her intention to read every Booker Prize winner. My response was that it’s an admirable ambition, but I’m not sure they’re actually of a uniformly standard. At that point I hadn’t read this book, by a writer I generally like, but if I had then I could have used it as an example. “So-so” is the description I’d go for.
‘The Old Devils’ follows some Welsh couples of a certain age as they drink, copulate and ruminate on the nature of being Welsh. There are some good jokes, excellent scenes and well drawn characters, but the whole thing is far too insular (every adultery which happens remains in their little group, there’s rarely anyone from outside it) and overly long.
I grew up in Wales and yet don’t recognise the nature of “being Welsh” as depicted in this book. It could be that I grew up in a totally different generation and not in the valleys. Or it could be that Kingsley Amis was an Englishman.
‘The Old Devils’ follows some Welsh couples of a certain age as they drink, copulate and ruminate on the nature of being Welsh. There are some good jokes, excellent scenes and well drawn characters, but the whole thing is far too insular (every adultery which happens remains in their little group, there’s rarely anyone from outside it) and overly long.
I grew up in Wales and yet don’t recognise the nature of “being Welsh” as depicted in this book. It could be that I grew up in a totally different generation and not in the valleys. Or it could be that Kingsley Amis was an Englishman.
January 5, 2016
Ouvira dizer que este romance apresentava um olhar satírico e imensamente cómico sobre o envelhecimento, ao qual não faltava sentimentalismo e beleza. Não encontrei nada do género. As piadas eram ora demasiado insulares, ora repetidas e prolongadas até à exaustão. E andavam à volta de essencialmente o mesmo: as particularidades do País de Gales; as pessoas não crescem ou mudam por aí além; a velhice não traz sabedoria; as pessoas de idade continuam a ter relações sexuais e a cometer adultério; nem todos os casais que se mantêm juntos durante anos incontáveis são felizes ou fiéis; uma vez um traste, para sempre um traste, independentemente da idade, entre outras (pequenas) variações destes temas. Tudo isto prolongado durante um romance que tem, pelo menos, cem páginas a mais do que devia.
Quanto ao enredo, este é do mais comum e corriqueiro que se possa imaginar. Um grupo de amigos, que vivem no País de Gales, todos estes de meia-idade, passam os seus dias a beber e a mexericar, até ao dia em um casal amigo que já não vêm há alguns anos muda-se para as imediações. A chegada destes implica um ligeiro aumento de consumo de álcool, mexerico e significativamente mais adultério. E é essencialmente isto. Quatrocentas e tal páginas de nada mais do que isso, com "private jokes" sobre o País de Gales pelo meio cuja graça me iludia por completo e que, segundo li, nem são entendidas pelos habitantes daquela zona.
Foi o primeiro livro de Amis-pai que li (já do filho gosto imenso, não obstante o seu trabalho ser um pouco inconsistente), mas não será o ultimo, até porque consta que este é um dos seus romances inferiores. O romance, apesar dos seus muitos defeitos, tinha os seus momentos engraçados a algumas observações acutilantes sobre o envelhecimento, mas de um modo geral é demasiado repetitivo e extenso. Tal como está é demasiado do mesmo.
Quanto ao enredo, este é do mais comum e corriqueiro que se possa imaginar. Um grupo de amigos, que vivem no País de Gales, todos estes de meia-idade, passam os seus dias a beber e a mexericar, até ao dia em um casal amigo que já não vêm há alguns anos muda-se para as imediações. A chegada destes implica um ligeiro aumento de consumo de álcool, mexerico e significativamente mais adultério. E é essencialmente isto. Quatrocentas e tal páginas de nada mais do que isso, com "private jokes" sobre o País de Gales pelo meio cuja graça me iludia por completo e que, segundo li, nem são entendidas pelos habitantes daquela zona.
Foi o primeiro livro de Amis-pai que li (já do filho gosto imenso, não obstante o seu trabalho ser um pouco inconsistente), mas não será o ultimo, até porque consta que este é um dos seus romances inferiores. O romance, apesar dos seus muitos defeitos, tinha os seus momentos engraçados a algumas observações acutilantes sobre o envelhecimento, mas de um modo geral é demasiado repetitivo e extenso. Tal como está é demasiado do mesmo.
June 24, 2019
Last of the summer wine in Wales. Alun Weaver and his wife Rhiannon return to London be around in Wales after decades in England. Alun is a tv personality seen by the English as an expert on Wales but by his friends a bit of a blowhard albeit a friendly one. Alun is also a serial philanderer.
The characters in the story are all elderly, retired and enjoy getting inebriated every day. Malcom and his wife Gwen, Sophie and alcoholic Charlie who suffers anxiety attacks, Dorothy and Percy and Peter and his nagging wife Muriel. The story revolves around their past and the relationships they had. Poor overweight Peter love of Rhiannon, Malcolm and Charlie’s wives affairs with Alun who still pursues the ladies.
Amis has a wonderful way with descriptive prose of the landscape, characters and what I would say a dry wit in this comic/tragic story. All set around drinking yourself senseless and the recuperative powers of welsh livers! I would give this story 3.5 rating as it is amusing but not laugh out loud. This is my 20th Man Booker Prize winner book and on the whole they are very enjoyable reads.
The characters in the story are all elderly, retired and enjoy getting inebriated every day. Malcom and his wife Gwen, Sophie and alcoholic Charlie who suffers anxiety attacks, Dorothy and Percy and Peter and his nagging wife Muriel. The story revolves around their past and the relationships they had. Poor overweight Peter love of Rhiannon, Malcolm and Charlie’s wives affairs with Alun who still pursues the ladies.
Amis has a wonderful way with descriptive prose of the landscape, characters and what I would say a dry wit in this comic/tragic story. All set around drinking yourself senseless and the recuperative powers of welsh livers! I would give this story 3.5 rating as it is amusing but not laugh out loud. This is my 20th Man Booker Prize winner book and on the whole they are very enjoyable reads.
October 27, 2013
One of the greatest novels I've ever read. Hilarious, honest, joyous, so truthful about humanity, both the best and the worst of us, and so very sad at times. I found myself laughing at the beginning of certain paragraphs, or even just sentences, and then crying by the end of them. I've read pretty much everything by Kingsley Amis before, fiction and non-fiction, but upon reading "The Old Devils" for a second time, I was just astounded at how utterly brilliant it is. I couldn't sleep all night after reading it, laid awake thinking about the characters, the beautifully written dialogue, everything about it. That's only happened to me a few times before. If it sounds like I'm gushing over the book, well, there it is, why not? It's always feels like a miracle to re-discover that human beings can create art of such astounding and lasting beauty.
November 30, 2025
Old people in the pub, talking, 50 years ago. Can't get into it, and honestly don't care to, even though it won the Booker.
DNF
DNF
March 17, 2010
What’s not to enjoy in a book that contains the sentence ‘She was said to have been found once telling the man who was laying the carpets about eohippus’ (referring to an unstoppably talkative character)? If that doesn’t make you smile, don’t bother with this book. If it does, find a copy and enjoy.
Kingsley Amis’ writing (at this, later, stage) combined humour and an acute sensibility to the joys and disappointments of life. He is unequalled in his ability to deliniate bores (the unstoppable Dorothy, referred to above, and the equally dreadful Garth) that the reader can recognise from their own experiences, as well as social misadventures - I still reread the episode where Charlie is taken unawares by someone speaking in Welsh to him, and thinking he’s lost his mind.
The book has strong autobiographical elements, with three of the main characters, Charlie, Peter, and the ever-priapic Alun all being different aspects of the writer’s personaility and what raises the book above being a mere satire of middle-aged life, though it is worth reading it for that alone, is the awareneness of the importance of love, and the near-tragic effects of not having faith with one’s emotions.
I love this book, and will always have it to hand.
Kingsley Amis’ writing (at this, later, stage) combined humour and an acute sensibility to the joys and disappointments of life. He is unequalled in his ability to deliniate bores (the unstoppable Dorothy, referred to above, and the equally dreadful Garth) that the reader can recognise from their own experiences, as well as social misadventures - I still reread the episode where Charlie is taken unawares by someone speaking in Welsh to him, and thinking he’s lost his mind.
The book has strong autobiographical elements, with three of the main characters, Charlie, Peter, and the ever-priapic Alun all being different aspects of the writer’s personaility and what raises the book above being a mere satire of middle-aged life, though it is worth reading it for that alone, is the awareneness of the importance of love, and the near-tragic effects of not having faith with one’s emotions.
I love this book, and will always have it to hand.
June 17, 2018
Hum... es la primera vez que leo un Man Booker y la verdad esto se parece mucho al Oscar que le dieron a Art Carney en 1974 (compitiendo con El Padrino y Cabaret) por Harry y Tonto. Es decir, el premio a una trayectoria y no a la obra en cuestión (y cuando quizá había mejores cosas en la competencia).
En este caso Amis escribió con precisión, pero de una manera en la que me fue imposible encontrar una profundidad bien comunicada. Las vidas en declive de este grupo de matrimonios sesentones en Gales resultan incluso algo anodinas y los supuestos momentos de comedia son dos o tres en el libro (aunque admito que sí me reí en todos). Al final resulta de esos libros que mientras lees la mente termina divagando y uno deja de poner atención.
Pero algún día voy a leer Lucky Jim y espero que la experiencia sea distinta.
En este caso Amis escribió con precisión, pero de una manera en la que me fue imposible encontrar una profundidad bien comunicada. Las vidas en declive de este grupo de matrimonios sesentones en Gales resultan incluso algo anodinas y los supuestos momentos de comedia son dos o tres en el libro (aunque admito que sí me reí en todos). Al final resulta de esos libros que mientras lees la mente termina divagando y uno deja de poner atención.
Pero algún día voy a leer Lucky Jim y espero que la experiencia sea distinta.
October 9, 2014
I enjoyed the book partly because Amis was an acute observer with an unkind eye who wrote with understanding and insight but mainly because it was and is an accurate portrayal of both the Welsh (and English for that matter) middle class. It is funny for those who know the breed and yet he conveys the desperation lying underneath some of his characters with a measure of sympathy.
April 3, 2024
Hem yazar,hem çevirmen, hem iletişim yayınları hem Man booker ve evet hepsi bir olup beni ancak bu kadar hayal kırıklığına uğratabillirdi. Kitabı bitirmek için çektiğim işkencede hepsinin tek tek payı var.
- Kingsley Amis'den çok ümitliydim. Baba-oğul başarılı yazarlar diye biliyor ve merak ediyordum. Bu sene (2024) en iyi yabancı film dalında Oscar alan The Zone of İnterest, oğlu Martin Amis'in kitabından uyarlama olunca, bu kitabı okuma heyecanım da biraz daha arttı. Anlaşılan o ki Martin Amis'in okurlarına vermeye çalıştığı bir mesaj var ama ne yazık ki ben bu metinin nasıl bir meselesi var anlamadım. Tek görebildiğim, anlayabildiğim Galler kültürünü aşağılama hedefi.
- Çevirisi çok kötü kitabın. Cümleler devrik, anlaşılır değil. Uzun süre, ya bu adamlar sarhoş ya ne dediklerini bilmiyorlar o yüzden anlamıyorum diye düşündüm. Ama yok, metinler de anlaşılmıyor. Yazdığı önsöze bakılırsa, çevirmen Levent Mollamustafaoğlu, Kingsley Amis'i severek okuyormuş. Bu kitabı okuyana kadar okuduğu tüm eserlerini sevmiş. 'Yaşlı Kurtlar'ı tercüme etmesi teklifi gelince o da biraz hayal kırıklığına uğramış. Eeee haklı kitapta hiçbirşey yok ve sanırım bu sebepten sıkılarak, biran önce tercüme edeyim de bitsin diyerek bitirmiş sahiden. Ama okuyucuları da bitirdiği bir gerçek.
- İletişim yayınlarının, özellikle bu serisi özenlidir benim bildiğim. en azından bende ki repütasyonu yüksek. Vardır bir güzellik diye sonuna kadar okumaya zorlamamda kendimi, evet, iletişim yayınları'nın da etkisi oldu.
- Ya Man Booker ödülüne ne demeli? Hayatımda okuduğum ilk Man booker ödüllü kitap olsaydı bu, bir daha Man booker okumazdım, öyle söyleyeyim. Niye verdiniz bu ödülü? Amis'in diğer eserleri güzel, ölmeden bu ödülü almış olsun mu dediniz? Neydi derdiniz? Galler sakinlerinden Man booker jürisi de mi nefret ediyor?
Kitap özetle, okul yıllarından beri birbirlerini tanıyan 4-5 yaşlı çiftin sıradan günleri. Günlerini sabahtan akşama kadar içip, kendi içlerinde birbirlerini aldatarak geçiriyorlar. Karakterler durmaksızın içiyorlar ve içmek için yeni fırsatlar yaratıyorlar. Amis'in kendisi de böyleymiş o yüzden romanda, edebiyat dünyası otobiyografik öğeler de buluyormuş. Zaten çok içtiği için beyin hücreleri ölmüş ve böyle bir metin çıkarmış ortaya diye düşündürdü bu durum beni :)
Belki Galler kültürünü bilenlere ve orjinal dilinden okuyanlara daha çok şey ifade edecektir.
- Kingsley Amis'den çok ümitliydim. Baba-oğul başarılı yazarlar diye biliyor ve merak ediyordum. Bu sene (2024) en iyi yabancı film dalında Oscar alan The Zone of İnterest, oğlu Martin Amis'in kitabından uyarlama olunca, bu kitabı okuma heyecanım da biraz daha arttı. Anlaşılan o ki Martin Amis'in okurlarına vermeye çalıştığı bir mesaj var ama ne yazık ki ben bu metinin nasıl bir meselesi var anlamadım. Tek görebildiğim, anlayabildiğim Galler kültürünü aşağılama hedefi.
- Çevirisi çok kötü kitabın. Cümleler devrik, anlaşılır değil. Uzun süre, ya bu adamlar sarhoş ya ne dediklerini bilmiyorlar o yüzden anlamıyorum diye düşündüm. Ama yok, metinler de anlaşılmıyor. Yazdığı önsöze bakılırsa, çevirmen Levent Mollamustafaoğlu, Kingsley Amis'i severek okuyormuş. Bu kitabı okuyana kadar okuduğu tüm eserlerini sevmiş. 'Yaşlı Kurtlar'ı tercüme etmesi teklifi gelince o da biraz hayal kırıklığına uğramış. Eeee haklı kitapta hiçbirşey yok ve sanırım bu sebepten sıkılarak, biran önce tercüme edeyim de bitsin diyerek bitirmiş sahiden. Ama okuyucuları da bitirdiği bir gerçek.
- İletişim yayınlarının, özellikle bu serisi özenlidir benim bildiğim. en azından bende ki repütasyonu yüksek. Vardır bir güzellik diye sonuna kadar okumaya zorlamamda kendimi, evet, iletişim yayınları'nın da etkisi oldu.
- Ya Man Booker ödülüne ne demeli? Hayatımda okuduğum ilk Man booker ödüllü kitap olsaydı bu, bir daha Man booker okumazdım, öyle söyleyeyim. Niye verdiniz bu ödülü? Amis'in diğer eserleri güzel, ölmeden bu ödülü almış olsun mu dediniz? Neydi derdiniz? Galler sakinlerinden Man booker jürisi de mi nefret ediyor?
Kitap özetle, okul yıllarından beri birbirlerini tanıyan 4-5 yaşlı çiftin sıradan günleri. Günlerini sabahtan akşama kadar içip, kendi içlerinde birbirlerini aldatarak geçiriyorlar. Karakterler durmaksızın içiyorlar ve içmek için yeni fırsatlar yaratıyorlar. Amis'in kendisi de böyleymiş o yüzden romanda, edebiyat dünyası otobiyografik öğeler de buluyormuş. Zaten çok içtiği için beyin hücreleri ölmüş ve böyle bir metin çıkarmış ortaya diye düşündürdü bu durum beni :)
Belki Galler kültürünü bilenlere ve orjinal dilinden okuyanlara daha çok şey ifade edecektir.
November 13, 2009
I managed to squeeze in 1986 Booker Prize winner The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis, before the end of the year.
Written (and set) in the 1980's, you can clearly see how attitudes have changed (in this case, for the better). There is probably only one sympathetic character in the whole book, but I think that's the point. It's about a group of 'friends' desperately clinging together into old age, although they don't seem to really like each other anymore.
Amis definitely enjoys being cruel to his characters, exposing their hypocrisies, as they drown their provincial bitterness in booze (so much booze!), pining for what should have been. I think this cruel streak is a shared trait between Kingsley, and his son, Martin Amis.
The writing's still good, very sharply observed, but it feels like a time capsule. It wouldn't have been my choice for the Booker Prize that year - Margaret Atwood was in the running with The Handmaid’s Tale, which has definitely come out the stronger book in the intervening years.
Written (and set) in the 1980's, you can clearly see how attitudes have changed (in this case, for the better). There is probably only one sympathetic character in the whole book, but I think that's the point. It's about a group of 'friends' desperately clinging together into old age, although they don't seem to really like each other anymore.
Amis definitely enjoys being cruel to his characters, exposing their hypocrisies, as they drown their provincial bitterness in booze (so much booze!), pining for what should have been. I think this cruel streak is a shared trait between Kingsley, and his son, Martin Amis.
The writing's still good, very sharply observed, but it feels like a time capsule. It wouldn't have been my choice for the Booker Prize that year - Margaret Atwood was in the running with The Handmaid’s Tale, which has definitely come out the stronger book in the intervening years.
June 14, 2024
Didn't appreciate any of the characters.
December 15, 2012
Kingsley Amis was rather an old devil himself when he wrote this novel, and every bitter, precise word shows how accustomed he'd already become to the aches and indignities of senescence:
That's Alun Weaver, Britain's best, or at least best-known, living Welsh poet, and the central character (primus inter pares) of The Old Devils. Weaver, who reportedly changed his first name from "Alan" in order to be more Welsh, has made his career out of being the semi-official hagiographer for the sainted departed "Brydan" (a stand-in for Dylan Thomas), who was of course Wales' best dead poet.
And now, after years of modest success in London (television appearances, a book or two), it's time for Alun and his handsome wife Rhiannon to return in triumph to the little Welsh town from which they came, and take up again with the mates who knew them best, back when they were all young and hungry.
Like cats among pigeons, or a snooker player's cue ball striking the rack, the Weavers' arrival irrevocably alters the settled trajectories of all their old friends. Alun was—is—an adulterer, not so much serial as massively parallel, and Rhiannon's own retinue of male followers remains thoroughly bewitched by her charms. There's more than one tearful scene, more than one exchange of angry words, in the futures of Peter, Muriel, Malcolm, Gwen, Charlie and the others whose routine is being upset.
Despite John Banville's carefully-worded Introduction, by the way, this book's political sentiments were not at all upsetting to me. I only noticed a couple of gratuitous asides, easily ignored, about the perfidy of "left-wingers" and the like. Amis' characters seem to be more old-fashioned conservatives—more concerned with fretting over the good things that've been lost than with actively working to dismantle the progress that's truly been made in so many areas.
There's nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, of course—absolutely everything that transpires in The Old Devils is utterly mundane. But Amis' prose is extraordinarily vivid. Like the sharp-edged light in one of those BBC situation comedies that get sent overseas to be broadcast on PBS, the illumination he throws on these old fools' cross-purposes picks out every harsh detail... and it's fascinating.
It's also heartening, in a way, to watch these folks carry on. These are men and women in their sixties and seventies, after all, long after our youth-obsessed culture will have relegated them to invisibility. (I'm starting to notice some of that syndrome myself.) But as Banville's Introduction says, "In this novel, drink, sex, and death dance a merry round." (p.xi) Amis' characters are all very much alive—they may have slowed down some physically, but they're still as active as ever both mentally and socially. They are nowhere near ready to go gently into that good night. And as I was drawn into their antics, I realized anew that people really do only get old on the outside.
This book may not have made quite as much of a splash as Lucky Jim or, for sf fans, The Alteration... but it well deserves the accolades it's received.
Standing quite motionless he gazed before him with a faraway look that a passer-by, especially a Welsh passer-by, might have taken for one of moral if not spiritual insight, such that he might instantly renounce whatever course of action he had laid down for himself. After a moment, something like a harsh bark broke from the lower half of his trunk, followed by a fluctuating whinny and a thud that sounded barely organic, let alone human.
—p.66
That's Alun Weaver, Britain's best, or at least best-known, living Welsh poet, and the central character (primus inter pares) of The Old Devils. Weaver, who reportedly changed his first name from "Alan" in order to be more Welsh, has made his career out of being the semi-official hagiographer for the sainted departed "Brydan" (a stand-in for Dylan Thomas), who was of course Wales' best dead poet.
And now, after years of modest success in London (television appearances, a book or two), it's time for Alun and his handsome wife Rhiannon to return in triumph to the little Welsh town from which they came, and take up again with the mates who knew them best, back when they were all young and hungry.
Like cats among pigeons, or a snooker player's cue ball striking the rack, the Weavers' arrival irrevocably alters the settled trajectories of all their old friends. Alun was—is—an adulterer, not so much serial as massively parallel, and Rhiannon's own retinue of male followers remains thoroughly bewitched by her charms. There's more than one tearful scene, more than one exchange of angry words, in the futures of Peter, Muriel, Malcolm, Gwen, Charlie and the others whose routine is being upset.
Despite John Banville's carefully-worded Introduction, by the way, this book's political sentiments were not at all upsetting to me. I only noticed a couple of gratuitous asides, easily ignored, about the perfidy of "left-wingers" and the like. Amis' characters seem to be more old-fashioned conservatives—more concerned with fretting over the good things that've been lost than with actively working to dismantle the progress that's truly been made in so many areas.
There's nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, of course—absolutely everything that transpires in The Old Devils is utterly mundane. But Amis' prose is extraordinarily vivid. Like the sharp-edged light in one of those BBC situation comedies that get sent overseas to be broadcast on PBS, the illumination he throws on these old fools' cross-purposes picks out every harsh detail... and it's fascinating.
It's also heartening, in a way, to watch these folks carry on. These are men and women in their sixties and seventies, after all, long after our youth-obsessed culture will have relegated them to invisibility. (I'm starting to notice some of that syndrome myself.) But as Banville's Introduction says, "In this novel, drink, sex, and death dance a merry round." (p.xi) Amis' characters are all very much alive—they may have slowed down some physically, but they're still as active as ever both mentally and socially. They are nowhere near ready to go gently into that good night. And as I was drawn into their antics, I realized anew that people really do only get old on the outside.
This book may not have made quite as much of a splash as Lucky Jim or, for sf fans, The Alteration... but it well deserves the accolades it's received.
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