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List Price: $39.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.37 You Save: $13.58 (34%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 828.91409
EAN: 9780375424984
ISBN: 0375424989
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1008
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Publisher: Pantheon
Release Date: April 24, 2007
Sales Rank: 412730
Studio: Pantheon
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Here is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned for his blistering intelligence, savage wit and belligerent fierceness of opinion: Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation–having first achieved prominence with the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and as one of the Angry Young Men–but also a dominant figure in post—World War II British writing as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist.
In The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader, acclaimed editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis, draws not only on unpublished works and correspondence but also on interviews with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of whom have never spoken out before. The result is a compulsively readable account of Amis’s childhood, school days and life as a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural commentator, professional author, husband, father and lover. Even as he makes the case for Amis’s cultural
centrality–at his death Time magazine claimed that “the British decades between 1955 and 1995 should in fairness be called ‘the Amis era’”–Leader explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts and ambitions; the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements, domestic turbulence and personal disaster.
Dazzling for its thoroughness, psychological acuity and elegant style, The Life of Kingsley Amis is exemplary: literary biography at its very best.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Seven Pounds
Zachary Leader's book intrigued me even though I'm not much of a fan of the novelist Kingsley Amis, but I had followed something of the fallout that attended the previous biographer Eric Jacobs when he got "fired" by the Amis family and given the sack and prevented pretty much from editing Amis' letters (often quite witty) and writing this biography.
I would think it would take a certain kind of person to step in on top of such a disaster and actually take the reins and do the book. ... Read More
Rating:  - boring
I found it a struggle to stick with this biography, though I am a big fan of Kingsley Amis and was eager to learn more about his life. I wasn't impressed with author's writing style, found it a bit labored and muddy, and the way he keeps looking for confirmation of Amis's persona in his fictional characters got extremely tiresome and distracting. I think the biggest prblem for me here is that the narrative just isn't smooth enough or captivating enough. I got the feeling that Leader was afraid ... Read More
Rating:  - Big But Good
This a hefty read -- there are relatively few biographies of literary figures that are as long. But, the length is worth it. Leader writes gracefully and interestingly about a man who often is hard to like but difficult not to admire. Most of us know Amis either as the author of "Lucky Jim" (book and movie) or as the father of the Booker Prize winner Martin Amis. Kingsley's career, however, is more important than those two claims to fame. He was one of the initiators of the Angry Young Men who ... Read More
Rating: - Exhaustive/exhausting biography of a great writer
I love Amis' work and expect that he'll be read as long as literature has legs, but this bio requires a lot of stamina. It's all there: drinking, carousing, family life, contrarian politics, the wicked sense of humor. Leader did an enormous amount of research and doesn't pull punches about some serious character flaws. One thing that bugged me throughout was the implicit assumption that the books and poetry were autobiographical - besides being factually wrong, this drags things out unnecessarily. ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 828.91409
EAN: 9780375424984
ISBN: 0375424989
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1008
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Publisher: Pantheon
Release Date: April 24, 2007
Sales Rank: 412730
Studio: Pantheon