The Life of Kingsley Amis

by Zachary Leader

Here is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned for his blistering intelligence, savage wit and belligerent fierceness of Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation–having first achieved prominence with the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and as one of the Angry Young Men–but also a dominant figure in post—World War II British writing as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist.

In The Life of Kingsley Amis , Zachary Leader, acclaimed editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis , draws not only on unpublished works and correspondence but also on interviews with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of whom have never spoken out before. The result is a compulsively readable account of Amis’s childhood, school days and life as a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural commentator, professional author, husband, father and lover. Even as he makes the case for Amis’s cultural
centrality–at his death Time magazine claimed that “the British decades between 1955 and 1995 should in fairness be called ‘the Amis era’”–Leader explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts and ambitions; the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements, domestic turbulence and personal disaster.

Dazzling for its thoroughness, psychological acuity and elegant style, The Life of Kingsley Amis is literary biography at its very best.

Genres: Biography, Literature, History, Nonfiction

1008 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to be honest here. It's a good biography, but I grew to have such personal distaste for Amis by the second third of the book that I was unable to finish it. Schmuck.

[George Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

They don't allow men, let alone writers and public intellectuals, like Kingsley Amis anymore, so when a figure of his peculiar ability is followed by a biographer as diligent and quietly witty as Zachary Leader the result is a constant pleasure. One somewhat tempered by the alcoholism and absolute infantilism, in the Freudian sense, of its subject, yet illuminated by Amis's life-long ability to describe honestly and funnily everything he couldn't protect himself, and those he loved, from. Amis's low-constraint, anti-ideological, in some ways leftist version of a right-wing political position is a refreshing thing to come across in these times. Needless to say, Leader's achievement also includes inducing me to read and enjoy the major works of an author whose fiction I'd previously dismissed (though I've always liked the few reviews and poems I've come across).

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the one hand, this is a meticulously researched and commendably even-handed volume; the work of a biographer taking his job seriously. On the other, it’s the work of a writer unable to let a single scrap of his research go to waste, someone who’s not just dived into the minutiae but performed a reverse somersault from the highest board. If Leader recounts Amis meeting a fellow scribe at a high end restaurant or club, he’ll give you half a page on the history of the building first. At each appearance of a new work by Amis, Leader switches from biographer to literary critic, often kicking out spoilers without a hint of a warning. As someone who had read nowhere near all of Amis’s output, this is a particular pisser. Still, it’s a major achievement and does exactly what its title vouchsafes: it gives you the whole of Kingsley Amis’s life.

[Oblamov Jaysnovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being best remembered for one's first book is a heavy cross for any writer to bear. Amis's novels were almost always reviewed respectfully and at length, but all too often they seemed funnier and sharper when quoted than when read as a whole. The Old Devils was a rare exception to the rule. It has become the fashion to denounce long biographies as telling us more than we need to know, but Leader's is a triumphant vindication of its 900-plus pages. It's a pleasure to read, and the accumulation of detail gives a real sense of a life being led. Amis was all too prescient when he claimed, apropos the expansion of university places, that "More Means Worse"; when it comes to his biography, more means even better.

[Bookthesp1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leaders Book throws everything in including the kitchen sink - (indeed, several kitchen sinks) and covers the life of Amis thoroughly and with reference to all aspects of his life and writing. Its at times an exhausting and somewhat uneven read. Leader's style is somewhat plodding and lacking in......style... one waits for a well turned phrase or some impressive writing but in vain. Still, after a stilted start he keeps the narrative going
with interesting excursions into the fictional world of Amis and his relationships with wives, women and other writers. Its unlikely to be surpassed as a traditional biographical study but I suspect there is a better book to be written about Amis, from a different angle maybe.

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok so I didn't read this cover to cover. It's nearly 900 pages. It was massively reduced in a bookstore here, so I picked up this hardback hefty tome for something ridiculous like three dollars. I've read a few of his novels, Lucky Jim is a classic. And I picked through this just for the juicy bits: the marriages, philandering, Martin stories, drunkeness, arguments etc. What a character and mostly a complete shit. I was intrigued to hear he'd published a book in the early 70s about drink. Guide to obscure cocktails and etiquette of drinks. Have to track that down. Chin chin old chap.

[Hoyadaisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really thorough biography of Amis, no stone left undiscussed. I wish I'd started with his adult life, when Amis had really interesting things to say about himself, the people in his life, and his books. A few writers have said how self-serving and inconsistent his "Memoirs" are, but I don't care how unreliable they are if the quotations that Leader includes are representative--funnier than anything except "Lucky Jim."

[Josh]

Can't wait to start reading this bit on the great Old Devil.

[Elizabeth Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give up on this one...surprisingly dry, feh.

[Edward]

This will probably take me as long to finish as the letters did, namely above a year. It's already been a lot of fun. Thanks for the Christmas gift mom!

[Bill Peschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Full of great details used in Writers Gone Wild and its (I hope) sequel.

[Warrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly? I didn’t finish it. Too long, too gossipy, too. Too many slabs of quotations, too minor a writer for 997 pages.

[Timothy Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent biography of a great writer but deeply flawed ( and prejudiced ) man.

[Carl Rollyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zachary Leader describes his subject as not only the "finest British comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century but a dominant force in the writing of the age." But Leader is traversing territory covered by Eric Jacobs, Kingsley Amis: A Biography (1995) and Richard Bradford, Lucky Jim: The Life of Kingsley Amis (2001), not to mention eleven other books of criticism and memoirs. Jacobs knew Amis and wrote his biography while the subject was alive-an awkward arrangement that led Jacobs to focus only on criticism that Amis had already leveled against himself. Bradford did not have access to Amis's son, Martin, or to the Amis friends who spoke about him for the first time to Leader. Leader's lengthy biography should have invited reviews questioning so much detail. Yet he received remarkably little negative reaction in Britain-in part because his subject is so entertaining and led a life more varied than that of most writers, and in part because Leader himself is such a graceful stylist. In short, this biography is superior to its predecessors and belongs in any collection of work about postwar British writers.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Zachary Leader determined to have the final word on the life and work of one of Britain's most interesting and controversial literary figures, and his earlier edition of Kingsley Amis's correspondence gives him ample credentials. Despite the book's imposing heft, The Life of Kingsley Amis can be engaging and readable. Fans of Amis will appreciate Leader's comprehensive coverage, though some lengthy literary discussions can be heavy sledding. Jonathan Yardley points out that Eric Jacobs published a similar (albeit much briefer) book shortly after Amis's death, and he wonders if Leader's obsessive attention to detail somehow undermines the very goal of literary biography: to provide insight into a life that leads, ultimately, to a better understanding of a writer's work.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Melanie]

"By all accounts, Kingsley Amis never shut up. Whether he was belching, farting, impersonating animals, or making sounds altogether more civilized, the life of the great comic novelist would appear to have been a roaring cataract of garrulousness. To his son, Martin, he was an "engine of comedy"; Philip Larkin, his closest friend and lifelong correspondent, told him that he "lived in a world of the most perfectly refined pure humour." This new biography, the third to appear since Amis's death in 1996, does a magnificent job of showing us not only the incorrigible joker, but also the womanizing alcoholic who often seemed to relish the tragic spectacle of his own disintegration. GILES HARVEY" -- Village Voice

[Dan Honeywell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like most biographers about writers, the early years are difficult to get into. But when the writing years begin, you're engrossed. I enjoyed this, the good and bad about Mr. Amis. He was a great talent, witty, inciteful, and one of the writers I've enjoyed the most.