Explores not only Amis's literary works but his outspoken personality, his praise for Thatcherism, and his devotion to whiskey A man who considered boredom the worst offense in fiction and nearly the worst offense in life, British novelist Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) is wrought larger than life in Eric Jacobs's engaging biography. Through his student years at Oxford (where "drinking, smoking, and behaving badly" formed the basis for many a friendship), his marriages and simultaneous affairs, his less-than- stellar teaching career, and his highly routinized years as writer and pub dweller, Amis was a merciless raconteur both in print and in person. He shunned all manner of things phony, fashionable, and, of course, boring, and honed his intellect into the acerbic observations that run through all his novels, from Lucky Jim to You Can't Do Both . Jacobs plays to the Amis anti-academic mentality. The biography contains no scholarly apparatus and is happily footnote-free. The many colorful anecdotes are drawn from scotch-laced afternoon conversations with Amis in his later years and from peppery correspondence between Amis and such lifelong friends as poet Philip Larkin (whom Amis befriended because they were "savagely uninterested in the same things"). Jacobs is diligent about forming connections between the characters in Amis's fiction and the real-life sorrows and anxieties of their author: losing his virginity when an Oxford undergraduate to a girl who primed him with a sex manual is closely replayed in the novel You Can't Do Both . The overall effect is a clear view into a man of outrageous wit and genius and into the large legacy of novels, poetry, and essays he bequeathed. --Joan Urban Praised as a superb prose stylist, British writer Amis, who died in 1995, was nonetheless controversial, variously labeled a Communist, Thatcher conservative, alcoholic, misogynist, and philander. Even in The King's English, an entertaining manual that is hardly meant to be exhaustive, Amis's wit and candid opinion prevail. Anyone wishing to distinguish between the words belly and stomach (don't even consider tummy) or feeling particular angst over the crossed 7, the disappearance of Latin, and the use of such popular expressions as in-depth, in terms of, or whatever will find a discerning explanation. For insight into Amis's life and work, readers can turn to the authorized biography by Jacobs, a Fleet Street journalist and broadcaster. Amis wrote 24 novels, including the acclaimed Lucky Jim, plus several works of poetry and nonfiction. Focusing on the novels, Jacobs deftly reveals a man who is not always admirable or likable but is certainly intriguing. Recommended for literary collections.ARobert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Although Jacobs' lengthy biography of the late Kingsley Amis is altogether too "authorized" and admiring to be considered definitive, there is plenty to commend it. Jacobs does an admirable job of summing up Amis' childhood and adolescence. A Communist and a Stalinist in his young adulthood, Amis later became a curmudgeonly conservative, an attitude that manifested itself in comic novels such as Lucky Jim (l954) and One Fat Englishman (1964). Amis' sad marriages and numerous affairs are treated rather gingerly here, though Jacobs readily notes Amis' "late-life reputation as supreme clubman, boozer and blimp." The only modern novelist Amis admitted reading (other than his son Martin, whose work he had little use for) was George Macdonald Fraser, author of the Flashman series. Jacobs draws on Amis' correspondence with old friends Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, and Anthony Powell for a lot of his material, but also draws from his own observations and personal contact. Amis died in 1995 at age 73 with 23 novels to his credit, plus dozens of volumes of poetry, stories, and criticism. Ron Antonucci A lucid, unvarnished biography of novelist Kingsley Amis (who died in 1995), father of Martin and one of Britain's famously outsize literary personalities. Jacobs, a London-based journalist for more than 30 years, timed his research perfectly: When he began interviewing Kingsley Amis for this book, the septuagenarian was still in good health, his spiky, contrarian wit undimmed. Over the course of two and a half years, the two men met frequently in Amis's favorite pubs, where the author regaled the journalist with bizarre anecdotes, caustic opinions, and bawdy rhymes. Amis seemed to enjoy recounting his florid past, andseen through the amber glaze of many a single-malt Macallanit gained clarity and sharpness. Jacobs observed, however, that Amiss physical life had become sharply constricted, his body heavy and leaden, almost monstrously childlike. Yet Amis was always a man of contrasts, his emotional neediness and hypochondria offset still by fierce, dismissive intellect. One of the most prolific and plainspoken authors of his generation, Amis wro