Lucky Jim

Took a very brief haitus from Shakespear’s drama to reread Lucky Jim* by Kingsley Amis for The Civil Life Civil Readers meet-up last night (February 18). We had a pretty nice crowd of about 14 people. Great beer. Great food. Great conversation.

Amis is kind of an “old boy’s club” boy. He’s in the category of authors called “Angry Young Men,” and that’s fairly obvious in this, his first, novel. Patrick says he only gets more crochety as time passes (I haven’t read anything else by him).

LJ is really hilarious though. Last night we were all laughing about our favorite antics… The ruined bed clothes, Bertrand’s “obviouslam,” etc., the “faces,” “Hysterics, eh?”… just a lot of great fun. I’m not the only one who said I’d laughed out loud more than once while reading this — and I’d read it before and knew what to expect for the most part.

One thing that came up that really interests me, and I can’t find anything about it on the Interwebs, is the college porter’s name. Brice was mentioning how he thought it was interesting that, and did Patrick have any idea why, his name was “Maconochie,” which is the name of a penal reformer from the 1800s… and also, (Brice didn’t mention this, but Wikipedia did, and I sure love food…) a stew of sliced turnips, carrots and potatoes in a thin soup. I said something like, “Oh, was that one of Dixon’s nicknames?” much to everyone’s dismay, I think. No, it was actually the guy’s name. I really didn’t remember that at all. In fact, I’d remembered his name as “Montgomery.” So Brice and I tried to get on the same page (literally) to see what was up. Sure enough, his copy says “Maconochie” and mine (well, Patrick’s) says “Montgomery.”

I’ve Googled like a mad woman, and I have to say, I’m pretty good at finding what I want to find that way… but I have found nothing about why this porter has different names in different editions of the book. If anyone out there has info, I’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment or send a private message on facebook or send an email to teresa [dot] s [dot] hurley [at] this site’s domain.

And as a sort of side note, if you’re interested in becoming a Civil Reader, send an email to Patrick at bloomsday [at] thecivillife [dot] com, or stop by the brewery and talk to him in person, and he’ll make sure you get added to the email list. Our next meet-up will be April 15 at 7pm at the brewery. We’ll be discussing White Teeth: A Novel* by Zadie Smith. The previous link will take you to amazon.com’s page for the book, but if you’d prefer to shop locally, we’ve got a Civil Reading Group book club page at Left Bank Books, where you can see what we’ve got coming up and even purchase the titles we have on our list.

BTW, yes, the cover illustration on our copy is by Edward Gorey, in case you were wondering….