If you have more than one copy of a beloved book, you can be the charming, laissez-fair book owner who lends freely and says “return it never,” instead of the saturnine turd who continues to brood over a two-dollar copy of Lonesome Dove which someone may have, but probably did not, fail to return in 2003.
With this in mind, I was glad recently to find a paperback “twofer” (or whatever it is called), with Lucky Jim (Kingsley) on one side and The Rachel Papers (Martin son of Kingsley) upside down on the other. Lucky Jim is, of course, one of the most wonderful books every written, and thus in perpetual danger (in my mind) of theft disguised as borrowing. I am sort of dubious about this two-in-one format, but the price was unbeatable, and the Lucky Jim cover reproduces the delightful Edward Gorey illustration from the dust jacket of the first American edition (which, as Edan’s poignant last post reminded me, was the first nice book I ever bought, and which I bought for someone as a gift, and which I sort of wish I had kept for myself. That’s me, a real peach). [Ed. Note: That same Gorey illustration now graces the cover of the new Penguin classics edition pictured above]
Anyway, the bonus of purchasing this Lucky Jim insurance policy was that I got to read The Rachel Papers. I haven’t read much Martin Amis, only Time’s Arrow, which I thought was painfully great (painful because of subject and painful because demonstrative of real live contemporary virtuosity, and not the non-threatening dead sort). The Rachel Papers, his first novel (written when he was 24, the bastard), is not, understandably, in the same class as Time’s Arrow, but it is retro and foul and a lot of fun to read.
It is similar in its theme to Lucky Jim (which explains the cutesy father-son edition): there’s an obsessive, ostensibly relatable comic Everyman, who outwits frauds and gets the girl. But The Rachel Papers is a post-Sexual Revolution fairy tale – Jim Dixon thinks about putting his hand on a breast, while Charles Highway (the the younger Amis’s protagonist, just out of high school), masturbates furiously to his sister and talks about genitals smelling like wounds. Unlike Jim, Charles inspires rather less admiration than he does pity and mild horror. But he’s precocious, and he’s got a way with words, and I like any book that can make me laugh aloud.
Here’s Charles in his room, preparing for seduction:
“Not knowing her views on music I decided to play it safe; I stacked the records upright in two parallel rows; at the head of the first I put 2001: A Space Odyssey (can’t be wrong); at the head of the second I put, after some thought, a selection of Dylan Thomas’s verse, read by the poet. Kleenex well away from the bed: having them actually on the bedside chair was tantamount to a poster reading “The big thing about me is that I wank a devil of a lot.”
In other passages, I was reminded of Nabokov, and also Günter Grass. Charles has a distinctly Oskar Matzerath quality, smart and disgusting. Here’s Charles with his tutor:
Twenty-minute Maths lesson with Mr Greenchurch. Vacuum-chamber office redolent of dead man’s feet; hairless, cysty-eared octogenarian sucking noisily and ceaselessly on his greying false teeth (I thought at first he had a mouthful of boiled sweets; on the Wednesday he allows the coltish dentures to spew out half-way down his chin before drinking them back into place); mind like a broken cuckoo-clock, often forgets you’re there). Ten minutes in the hall, talking to Sarah, the less ugly girl.
The novel also recalled a dim memory of a book I read years ago called Wilt, written by Tom Sharpe in 1976. Wilt (and its sequels) came after The Rachel Papers, but they seem born of a similar raunchy zeitgeist, although I seem to recall the eponymous hero being a grown-up, and thus significantly more pathetic than young Charles.
Ultimately, The Rachel Papers’ snazzy style could only elevate its lacklustre plot so far. Nearing the end I was the slightest bit bored with Charles and the lessons he learns about girls and love (here’s a hint: the main lesson is skidmarks). I prefer old-fashioned Lucky Jim, where we relish only the triumph, and don’t have to hear about Jim breaking up with Christine because her slightly imperfect teeth and large breasts begin to try his nerves. That said, I think even if you didn’t know that Martin Amis would become one of the bigger deals in living novelists, when you finish the book you suspect that both he and Charles (still vile, but Oxford-bound and one year older), have extraordinary things in store.
