Sympathy for the Old Devil

In his criticism of Sainte-Beuve’s biographical method, Proust observes that it ‘ignores what a very slight degree of self-acquaintance teaches us: that a book is a product of a very different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.’ I would not enter the argument stirred up by Professor Terry Eagleton’s attack on Kingsley Amis if it weren’t for the fact that those who have leapt — gallantly in the case of his second wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard — to Kingsley’s defence have spoken of the man, rather than the writer. This is understandable. Nobody can be happy to have someone they have liked, and indeed loved, dismissed as ‘a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals’.

To do justice to Eagleton evidence to support his opinion may be found in Amis’s letters. But letters are an imperfect guide. Few of us would care to be judged on throwaway lines written in letters to amuse friends. What, however, of the novels where what Proust calls ‘the innermost self’ (le moi profound) is revealed? I have the horrid suspicion that Professor Eagleton has either not read them or read them with inadequate attention.

Take drink. There’s certainly a lot of drink and drunkenness in Amis’s novels, and in the early ones — Lucky Jim, for instance — this is associated with having a good time and is matter for comedy. Later, The Old Devils, which won him the Booker Prize, is indeed ‘drink-sodden’, but there’s not much suggestion of authorial approval. For the characters it’s mostly a way of getting through dreary, otherwise miserable, days. And in The Folks that Live on the Hill the horrors of alcoholism are made wretchedly clear.