Journal of Humanistic and Social Studies (Nov 2014)

The Amises: Lucky Jim vs. The Rachel Papers

  • Manuela Odeta Belei

Journal volume & issue
Vol. V, no. 2
pp. 57 – 62

Abstract

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With all the literary and political differences between father and son, what is striking about their literary careers is the way they parallel each other: Kingsley was thirty-one when his first novel, Lucky Jim, was published (1953); Martin was twenty – four when he published The Rachel Papers (1973). Lucky Jim was a runaway best seller and a book that defined a generation. That was not quite true of Martin’s early books, but he had enough precocious reward. No other father-son tandem has produced a corpus as sizable and significant as that of Sir Kingsley Amis and his son. They have maintained not only a quality of writing, but also duration of productivity that other literary families have simply not matched.

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