LUCKY JIM

You would have thought I'd had enough of English Humor of the 30s after Powell's Dance and try something completely different next. But instead I picked up Lucky Jim by Powell's friend, Kingsley Amis.

No dry humor here, this is slapstick. The story is about an agreeable and easily victimized new PhD of history trying to make his start in a back-water college in England. He is mentored by an old professor who prefers putting on plays to teaching history classes and who invites him to preposterous parties where he drinks too much and gets into hilarious fixes. He is befriended by and nearly betrothed to a neurotic colleague who plays suicide games to get what she wants. He is nearly done in by an exercise to create and give an "important" lecture on the topic of Merrie England. However, there is hope in the form of a lovely lady, the fiance of his mentor's son, who conspires with him in various ways. This, of course, causes more problems, but by the end, he pops out of the tangled mess, lands on his feet and  thumbs his nose at the bunch of them. This is a very silly book. Not sure why it is on the Time 100 except to fill out the humor genre. Pleasant enough. **