Where to start: Kingsley Amis and Alan Bennett

February 28, 2013 7:31 PM

I was reading this week's NYRB when I came across this: “The talent for these sorts of small-bore social observations is peculiarly English—it kept Kingsley Amis in business for years, and still makes Alan Bennett’s diaries feel like required reading. Maybe it’s the bad weather. (All those hours trapped indoors, watching one another.) Or maybe it’s the literary side effect of a middle-class culture in which people are expected to be painfully self-conscious, clammy in their own skin, and alert to their own folly and deceptions, lest they be spotted first by others. Whatever the reason, the English really are just better at this sort of thing than anyone on the planet." What books would you recommend to someone who has never read anything by these authors? (I'm not really interested in poetry.)
posted by jtothes to media & arts (14 answers total)

Lucky Jim, Take a Girl Like You.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:41 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Bennett writes scripts mostly. I think looking up BBC radio dramatizations of his works would be better than reading him first off.

Be warned – I've got recent British ancestry and family connections and even northern ones, but there are subtleties in Bennett's observations of class and behaviour that I know are escaping me. And it's not cheerful stuff.
posted by zadcat at 8:10 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I liked watching and reading The History Boys (Bennett).
posted by mlle valentine at 8:11 PM on February 28

I know you said read, but as Alan Bennett is playwright I thought you might be interested in a radio play coming up on BBC 4 Extra in a couple of days (and available to stream for seven days afterwards): The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith. The events in the play also come up in his book Writing Home.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 8:13 PM on February 28 [3 favorites]

Lucky Jim fits that description to a tee.

I enjoyed Amis's The Alteration, but that's a very different book entirely.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:34 PM on February 28

Lucky Jim is my favorite novel largely for this reason. You might also find his underrated Autobiography to be of interest.
posted by Mr. Justice at 8:58 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Lucky Jim or Take a Girl Like You. Possibly The Old Devils although you may have to already be interested in Amis to enjoy that. I liked The Green Man best, but it's not typical and the social observations are not particularly keen.

I think Kingsley Amis is mostly really about alcoholism, though. There's this horrible emphasis on what mood people are in, and how they generally just don't feel right in their skin, and how they have to drink to escape all that. For the tightly observed social commentary, I'd be more into someone like Margaret Drabble (early and middle periods), or Angus Wilson, especially for Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.
posted by BibiRose at 9:25 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader is a tiny, delightful novella about what happens when the Queen accidentally discovers the existence of the local library bookmobile. She borrows one book to be polite, then returns it borrows another, until soon she is addicted to reading, pretending to be sick so she can stay in bed and read all day, and hiding books in her purse while she attends (boring) public events. Instead of her usual small talk about the weather, she starts greeting her public by asking what they are reading and recommending books to them. She befriends one of the kitchen staff she met in the bookmobile (he is its only other patron, it seems), which garners great disapproval from her royal advisors. It's a clever, witty little book about the transformative power of reading that includes plenty of trenchant social observation. I read it very quickly in one sitting.

I have also read "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson," the first story from Smut. It is amusing and really only slightly racy ("smutty"). Like The Uncommon Reader, it contains quite a bit of commentary about social expectations and proper behaviour, but I won't tell you the plot because it is better if you don't know what it's about.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:26 PM on February 28 [4 favorites]

There’s an Alan Bennett book with "The Clothes They Stood Up In" and "The Lady in the Van" together that’s really good. The first one is a fiction piece.
posted by bongo_x at 9:37 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

If you want "small-bore social observation" of 20th-century England, let me recommend the works of Pamela Hansford Johnson, C. P. Snow, and William Cooper. Johnson and Snow were married; Snow and Cooper (real name, H. S. Hoff) were close friends. All wrote highly autobiographical fiction, which makes things even more interesting. Cooper is by far the funniest of the three.

Shooting with the tiniest bore possible, Barbara Pym managed to strike to the heart of genteel English post-war society. Everything she wrote was great, but my favorites are Less Than Angels and Excellent Women.

Oh, and Muriel Spark was great at both England and Scotland. And Margery Sharpe, who's not read enough today.

For 21st-century English "small-bore social observation" in the Amis vein, I am very partial to Jonathan Coe.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:58 PM on February 28 [5 favorites]

Nthing Lucky Jim, which is neck-and-neck with Thee Men in a Boat for the funniest book I've ever read. Some of Amis's early short stories are also very good for "small-bore social observation".

If your taste extends to comic strips and graphic novels, investigate Posy Simmonds, who is an absolute genius at this. here's the best sample I could find online, but there is much more and better in print. John Allison (who has cited Simmonds as an influence) is also a master of social observation. This strip is a little unsubtle for him, but it's impressive just how many class indicators he crams into this single scene: ornamental pots in background, laptop at breakfast table, tasteful matching cups, calling parents by first names, brioche, French press, ecological concern, giant fridge, Tupperware, fresh fruit, goat sponsorship. (Consider Shauna's kitchen for contrast.)
posted by pont at 12:59 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Lucky Jim is the funniest book ever!
posted by henry scobie at 5:04 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

It's nonfiction, but Amis's The King's English is a joy. It initially comes across as pompous and overbearing, but as you progress the sly humour comes through. He knew he was seen as pompous and overbearing, but he also knew he was good at it, made money from it, and it was what people expected of him. In a way, it was his protection and security, and he appeared to enjoy every minute of it.
posted by scruss at 7:56 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Another vote for Lucky Jim (which I happen to have spent most of today re-re-reading). Be forewarned that it contains a good bit of causal period misogyny, but if you can see past that it's chock-full of original, wonderfully phrased observations of the kind you're after, not to mention laugh-out-loud funny.
posted by zeri at 6:07 PM on March 1