Martin and Kingsley

 

It is always sad to hear of the death of a famous writer, especially if he or she is one’s own age! The novelist Martin Amis died on 19 May. He was born almost exactly a year before me, and we must have graduated from Oxford at the same time, though of course neither of us knew the other. I haven’t read any of Martin Amis’s works, apart from the short extracts that occur quite often as quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary (there are over 250). I am quite sure that I would find them repugnant.

Unlike most of us, his entrance into the literary scene was easy, being the son of the famous Kingsley (who died in 1995 at exactly the same age as his son, 73). He said ‘nothing is more ordinary to you than what your dad does all day’, and of course his dad’s name would have given him an entre to his first job on the TLS. 

Of Kingsley’s works I have only read his first novel, Lucky Jim, which propelled him to instant fame as the spokesperson of a generation. I’m pretty certain that I would find the others fairly repugnant, like his son’s.

Both writers were noted for holding up a mirror to their generation, and for their use of humour (bleak in Martin’s case) to do so. A mirror can be a means of self-criticism, but it can also be a means of self-satisfaction. It’s possible to regard the two generations of writers to which this father and son duo belonged as not so much enabling a society to correct itself, but rather to feel satisfied with itself, or at least to accept that the way things are is inevitable.

Lucky Jim appeared in the same year, 1954, as The Fellowship of the Ring. Comparisons are odious, but it’s hard not to be aware of the gap between the fundamental decency and godliness of Tolkien and the sad drunkenness, atheism, and (shared by his son) philandering of Amis. However, more to the point is the contrast between the outlook of the literary circles to which each belonged. How different were the ideals (naive though they may sound) of the young Tolkien’s small circle of friends, who aimed to ‘reestablish sanity, cleanliness, and the love of real and true beauty in everybody’s breast’. And which novel has done more enduring good in the world, Lucky Jim or The Lord of the Rings?