Chargé de cours dans une université de seconde zone, Jim Dixon accumule les déboires professionnels et sentimentaux. Entre Welch, son supérieur soporifique et vaseux qu'il est obligé de supporter sans broncher et une collègue dépressive et collante, Jim est sur le point de craquer. Il finit par encourager l'un des ses étudiants à critiquer l'ouvrage d'un disciple de Welch. Il n'en fallait pas plus pour déclencher un véritable scandale...
Mais, face à l'adversité, Jim dispose de quelques ressources : son talent pour les grimaces et son imagination fertile.
Qui est Jimmie Fane ? Un écrivain talentueux dont l'oeuvre mérite d'être redécouverte ? Ou bien un faiseur littéraire que certains de ses amis n'hésitent pas à qualifier de " merde " ? C'est ce que va tenter de découvrir son biographe moustachu en fouinant dans le désordre de la vie passée de Jimmie et en prenant la femme de ce dernier pour maîtresse.
Satire du monde des privilèges, ce roman met en scène un univers absurde qui fait rêver les littéraires snobs et ambitieux de tous horizons. Cet ouvrage est parfaitement représentatif de l'oeuvre de Kingsley Amis, écrivain considéré comme une véritable institution de la littérature anglaise du XXe siècle.
La moustache du biographe est le dernier roman de Kingsley Amis publié avant sa mort en 1996 à 74 ans.
Biographical noteKingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories. Main descriptionIn Kingsley Amis's Take A Girl Like You, twenty year old Jenny Bunn is supernally beautiful and stubbornly chaste, which is why Patrick Standish, an arrogant schoolmaster, wants her so much. This perceptive coming of age novel about a northern girl who moves south, wants to fit in and yet wants to preserve her principles, challenges our assumptions about the battle of the sexes and classes in Britain. It is a story about 'the squalid business of the man and the woman' and 'the most wonderful thing that had ever happened' to Jenny Bunn.Few twentieth century novelists have explored our preoccupation with sex like Kingsley Amis. The results are surprising and often hilarious.Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.
Biographical noteKingsley Amis' (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment with British society in novels such as THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1955). His other works include THE GREEN MAN (1970); STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984); and THE OLD DEVILS (1986) which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and seven novels, including In The Fold, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and Arlington Park, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize 2007. Her non-fiction book, A Life's Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. Her most recent novel, The Bradshaw Variations was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton. Main descriptionThe short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In 'The 2003 Claret', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In 'Boris and the Colonel' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In 'Mason's Life' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis's stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain's best loved writers.Kingsley Amis' (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment with British society in novels such as THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1955). His other works include THE GREEN MAN (1970); STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984); and THE OLD DEVILS (1986) which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and seven novels, including In The Fold, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and Arlington Park, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize 2007. Her non-fiction book, A Life's Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. Her most recent novel, The Bradshaw Variations was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton.
At Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs. The mismatched quintet keep their spirits alive by bickering and waiting for grandchildren to visit at Christmas. But the festive season does not herald goodwill to all at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage. Disaster and chaos, it seems, are just around the corner .
Told with Amis's piercing wit and humanity, Ending Up (1974) is a wickedly funny black comedy of the indignities of old age.
Douglas Yandell, a young-ish music critic, is enlisted by Kitty Vandervane to keep an eye on her roving husband - the eminent conductor and would-be radical Sir Roy - as he embarks on yet another affair. Roy, meanwhile, wants Douglas as an alibi for his growing involvement with Sylvia, an unsuitably young woman who loves nothing more than to shock and provoke. Life soon becomes extremely complicated as Douglas finds himself caught up in a frantic, farcical tangle of relationships, rivalry and scandal.
Girl, 20 is a merciless send-up of 1970s London's permissive society from a master of uproarious comedy.
Brimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters. But his American hosts seem made of sterner stuff. Who will be Roger's undoing? Irving Macher, the young author of an annoyingly brilliant first novel? Father Colgate, the priest who suggests that Roger's soul is in torment? Or will it be his married ex-lover Helene? One thing is certain - Roger is heading for a terrible fall.
Outrageously funny and irreverent, One Fat Englishman (1963) is a devastating satire on Anglo-American relations.
'I suppose it was conceited of me. But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'
The King's English is Kingsley Amis's authoritative and witty guide to the use and abuse of the English language. A scourge of illiteracy and a thorn in the side of pretension, Amis provides indispensable advice about the linguistic blunders and barbarities that lie in wait for us, from danglers, four-letter words to jargon and even Welsh rarebit. If you have ever wondered whether it's acceptable to start a sentence with 'and', to boldly split an infinitive, or to cross your sevens in the French style, Amis has the answer - or a trenchant opinion. By turns reflective, acerbic and provocative, The King's English is for anyone who cares about how the English language is used.
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their wine-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver and his wife, Rhiannon.
Vous vous intéressez à l'oenologie mais détestez les « snobinards du vin » ? Vous souhaitez impressionner vos invités alors que vous êtes complétement fauché et/ou radin ? Vous ne savez pas comment gérer votre gueule de bois ? Vous désirez perdre du poids mais sans diminuer votre consommation d'alcool ? Vous voulez briller en société et rabaisser vos amis un peu prétentieux ? Ce livre est pour vous !
Avec ces textes et chroniques écrits dans les années 1970 et 1980, Kingsley Amis distille avec un humour très britannique son savoir passionné et subjectif (car « en matière d'alcool, la subjectivé est primordiale ») sur l'art de la boisson. Il donne des recettes de cocktails qu'il a soit inventés (dont le Lucky Jim, tiré de son best-seller éponyme) soit améliorés, des considérations érudites et drôlissimes sur les alcools du monde, des conseils sur les outils indispensables à avoir dans son mini bar, des recommandations sur les plats à associer à différents vins (ou à d'autres alcools, car il ne comprend pas la suprématie du vin dans les dîners mondains). Il propose même en fin d'ouvrage un quizz, demandant par exemple au lecteur de nommer trois types de vin italiens, de dater approximativement l'invention de la vodka ou de citer une liqueur contenant du naartjie, une sorte de mandarine asiatique.
D'un ton toujours pince-sans-rire, Amis nous permet de nous instruire sans en avoir l'air. Everyday Drinking est un livre résolument « Chap », qui se lit avec plaisir et fera le bonheur de tous les bons vivants, amateurs d'alcools (même de vin) et de bons mots.
