Comedy is really social, maybe even socio-political. Which is why a book like Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis hasn’t aged well. It’s funny (I can see that, or at least some of that), but the British academic satire from the 50s was mostly beyond me, at least emotionally. There were a few scenes that I was laughing out loud (and the most amazing hangover paragraph), but I couldn’t wrangle quite the enthusiasm that Amis’s contemporaries did. Even still, and besides some wandering away from it out of disengagement, I liked it. Just for how much longer will people even be able to relate to this humorous classic, though?

Jim is a professor (not the terminology here) of Medieval History at maybe not the most prestigious school because that’s the job that he could get. And he’s not very enthusiastic about his job, about his profession, about his lot in life. He’s just going to float along doing the least amount of work that he can, all the way through his probationary year the same way he’s floating through his almost-relationship with the only available woman his age, Margaret. But as his review approaches, he senses his job is very much on the line at the same time he’s sorta got a thing for his clueless boss’s pompous son’s disaffected girlfriend. And Jim just can’t help himself: he’s fond of evading responsibility, making wild faces, and pulling pranks.

I grew up with a certain level of Monty Python. This book read to me like Monty Python meets The (American) Office with its brand of physical humor and mocking satire. Which may seem weird because it’s a book, not a movie. Which was one of the things I found most impressive about this book: the way that it somehow dialed in the physical humor in the literary form. I have never read another book quite like that, and once I saw it for what it was, I was impressed.

Still, as I implied above, this book was not meant for me. It was written in the late forties, early fifties and is British. Humor doesn’t translate enormously well across time and cultures, despite the luck of someone like Jane Austen. And this is comedic writing. It also has its satirical finger very closely on the pulse of academic life in English colleges in the forties, and, yeah, there was a lot to miss here (was there something about the Welsh?!) because of that. However, I can appreciate several things about it: the glimmer of humor and satire that I can almost get, that I can tell is there; the humor that does translate and is pretty darn funny; the writing style coming across as this amazing, dysthymic rom-com (a la Garden State or Ghost World or Eagle Versus Shark or something). I can understand the reverence others have for it.

But let’s not get too carried away with the rom in the rom-com. I wasn’t even sure it was going to be a romance until very late in the book. And I was on tenterhooks about which direction we were going here: romance or anti-romance. Like until the last pages. (I won’t tell you.) Also, more importantly, the women characters are just horrific. This is expected from a male writer in the 1940s, but in a couple scenes it is so bad. And the book had this scene where one of the women had a nervous breakdown (so we would have called it back when we thought this was still a real thing) and a male character slaps her and that makes her come around. Then she thanks him. Giant sigh. I have read this scene no less than three times in my reading adventures, most recently in And Then There Were None (review forthcoming), and it is always an eye-roller. First off, did the “brain fever” of Victorian times (and all that bed rest!) become the meltdown and healing slap of the early twentieth century? None of it can possibly be a reflection of reality. And must the woman always thank the guy who hits her in these scenes? (Yes. The answer is yes.) See?: big sigh.

Then again, this book is not meant to be taken seriously, and we might want to keep in mind that the woman in question is playing these men. There are things being said about class and nationality and, who knows?, maybe gender roles too. But the last of these just reads as simply outdated because, let’s face it, it is. Quite. There is some great wordsmithing. And at book club we all laughed together as we remembered some of the scenes. I really liked the writing style, and I liked the context.

Who would I recommend read this? Someone who has been assigned it for book club, for one. It’s worth the read. It’s short. But there will be some struggling along with the laughs and the admiration. Other than that? People who insist on reading all the classics. Or people who have a 1940s British academia fetish.

“For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand’s work unfavourably” (p47).

“A stimulus cannot be received by the mind unless it serves some need of the organism.’ He began laughing, an action he soon modified to a wince” (p61).

“This, of course, would give him time to collect his thoughts, and that, of course, was just what he didn’t want to do with his thoughts; the longer he could keep them apart from one another, especially the ones about Margaret, the better” (p62).

“…the possession of the signs of sexual privilege is the important thing, not the quality nor the enjoyment of them. Dixon felt he ought to feel calmed and liberated at reaching this conclusion, but he didn’t, any more than unease in the stomach is alleviated by discovery of its technical name” (p109).

“It was doubtful, he considered, whether he was capable of being at all sweet, much less ‘so’ sweet, to anybody at all. Whatever passable decent treatment Margaret had had from him was the result of a temporary victory of fear over irritation and/or pity over boredom” (p113).

“All the same, what messes these women got themselves into over nothing. Men got themselves into messes too, and ones that weren’t so easily got out of, but their messes arose from attempts to satisfy real and simple needs” (p117).

“Another thing you’ll find is that the years of illusion aren’t those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they’re the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head” (p127).

“This ride, unlike most of the things that happened to him, was something he’d rather have than not have” (p143).

“Words change the thing…” (p148).

“Don’t be fantastic, Margaret. Come off the stage for a moment, do” (p165).

“Oh, of course, Professor; I’m sorry,’ he said, having been well schooled in giving apologies at the very times when he ought to be demanding them” (p181).

“Doing what you know you’ve got to do’s horrible sometimes, but that doesn’t mean to say it isn’t worth doing” (p211).

“But, anyway, he’d met her and talked to her a few times. Thank God for that” (p259).

My husband and I turned on the movie from the 50s. We didn’t make it very far before we turned it off. It has that overbearing 1950s aura and, what’s more, we were thoroughly bored.