Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
Let’s begin with the everyman, title character James Dixon. Dixon holds a low-level professorship at an inexpensive provincial university, seeking tenure. He teaches medieval history, which he does not enjoy, and his career rests in the fate of the head of his department, whom he does not respect. He is unlucky in love, attached to a dowdy, asexual Margaret, with whom he drinks and occasionally sees shows. He is not particularly skilled or gifted, nor is he very moral or benevolent. His goodness is borne out of a lack of evil actions, imbued into him by the typical British culture of repression. He drinks to excess despite his asocial tendencies, and he is hardly charming. Yet, as the story progresses, we as readers quickly identify with and support him. This simple fact is the supreme accomplishment of the novel, more than its style or its parody of the education system, both of which the author does quite well.
The character that shares the most in common with James Dixon is, surprisingly, Arthur Dent, of Hitchhiker’s fame. Both are luckless, somewhat cynical, and both blessed with being sharply narrated. Both characters dangle over the edge of the existentialist void: Arthur over the destruction of the earth, Jim over the destruction of his career. The two respond to this sense of futility, unlike the French, with a shrug and a smirk. It’s not enough to save the novel that Jim is a loser, nor that he is aware of it. Nor is it the result of whether he gets the girl in the end, or flubs it. What makes Jim resonate, and feeds the tension of the novel, is whether Jim deserves the happy ending: whether he can unearth the goodness inside of him and employ it before it is too late. Amis proves that self-discovery does not require navel-gazing. Jim’s epiphanies do not arrive as he stares into the sunset or the bottom of a cup of coffee, but in the moment of action, usually when he is receiving the lesser of it.
The contradiction of James Dixon is that, while lost in the academic, social, and romantic machines, he remains absurdly perceptive. Upon seeing a wallflower friend at a party, Jim reflects on the differences between them: “But, fourthly, the possession of the signs of sexual privilege is the most important thing, not the quality nor the enjoyment of them.” How can someone who understands so much have so little control over his place? He continues: “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.” Dixon appreciates his own powerlessness in the grand scheme, the theme of which harmonizes effectively with the meaningless verbiage of the dinner-party and the academic lecture. “What, finally, is the practical application of all of this?” he demands, at the end of a lecture that has delved unintentionally into mockery.
In the end, of course, there is none. And though the book has no more answers to the question than Kafka, we can enjoy the process with the same ironic smile that Dixon does. Lucky Jim is an excellent book because it is a funny book: it makes the novel argument that one is not forced to gouge out their own eyes or shoot an Algerian. In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the novel, David Lodge compares it to Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter (1948), revealing the former as a response to the latter’s dour, tragic morass. Lodge continues by pointing out several deus ex machina that save Dixon from the fate of Scobee, Greene’s protagonist; such contrivances on Amis’ part could only be excused in the comic.
This is all true, and yet while we may find Greene’s novel the deeper of the two, Amis comes away as the more satisfying (except perhaps to Roman Catholics). The Heart of the Matter deserves lampooning, and Amis does it admirably. That Jim is, in fact, rather fortunate, and that this fortune is provided by his own humble author, is undeniable. The difference in the two characters is still their reaction to the void: Scobee has no answer, while Jim at least throws up his hands and tries something. He is many things, but he is no coward. It’s this that succeeds in making Jim, despite his flaws and his failures, actually feel lucky, and us for knowing him.