novels, he has written a survey of contemporary science fiction. His literary journalism is straightforward, lucid and highly intelligent.1961 Kingsley Amis lectured on English literature at the University College, Swansea, then in Cambridge.the publication of his first two novels Lucky Jim and That Uncertain Feeling Amis became one of the most popular prose writers in England. Bourgeois criticism laid stress on the comic nature of his novels. He became a popular talented English humourist. The most characteristic feature of Amis s novels, is, however, the central hero, the angry young man , dissatisfied with everything and everybody in his surrounding world. The novels contain many farcical scenes. But it is not the comic side which is the most important. The main value of Amis s novels lies in the realistic portrayal of young English intellectuals, and in the presentation of the social scene in the post-war fifties.60s and 70s of the XX -th century Amis turned his attention to science fiction (New Maps of Hell. A Survey of Science Fiction. 1960; The Alteration. 1976) and to the theme of crime (The Crime of the Century). In 1986 he became the winner of the Booker prize.Jim. The hero of the novel Jim Dixon, honest but a bit awkward and not self-confident youth, is a recent university graduate where he has taken up medieval history because it is the easiest subject at the university. But he had no interest in it, although he recognizes and respects good teaching and scholarship. He gets a post as an assistant at a provincial university. Dixon finds the whole atmosphere at the university uninspiring and dull. He despises his work and his colleagues, especially professor Welch whose accent he parodies. Dixon is in a kind of opposition to the genteel hypocrisy at the university. But Jim s aim, however, is not so much any opposition as a kind of advertisement of his wounded egocentricity.acting has become Jim s second nature. It has also made him gloomy, sadistic and solitary. He does not mix with anybody. The reader realizes that Jim has been attached to the university by some mistake. An academic career does not suit him. Once in a drunken state he reveals his real self, and becomes bold and determined. He delivers a lecture on Merry Old England before the academic people, a lecture in which he pours out his bottled-up anger at them. This also marks the end of his university career; he is dismissed on the spot.would have been more natural, perhaps, if Amis had ended the story at this point. The author had, however, no intention to be too radical and undermine the foundations of bourgeois society. Thus he made the novel end happy. A good-natured and unprejudiced businessman, who likes Jim s bold address to the hypocritical academics decides to take Jim into his service and makes him a new person, a < span align = "justify"> lucky Jim . Jim is engaged to a girl from a wealthy family and gets a good profitable post. Like that of other angry young men his revolt against hypocrisy and falsity becomes meaningless. He makes a compromise with bourgeois society, and stops being an angry young man .
John Braine
1922-1986Braine was born in Bradford and spent his early years there. He is well remembered in Bradford and he was included in the local newspaper s survey of Bradford s best 100. John Braine attended Bradford Grammar School. After taking various odd jobs he became a library assistant at Bingley, and followed this career, with an interval for war service in the Royal Navy, until the success of Room at the Top (1957) enabled him to devote his whole time to writing. In 1951 he spent some time in London in the vain hope of making a living by writing. His verse play The Desert in the Mirror was produced, but without success.the early 1950s Braine wrote a short piece Number Nine Rock about courting in Ripley Glen, which is as much part of the Blackersford district as the textile mills. The line of happiness is the route by which the people of Blackersford reach the Glen which is freedom and space and where there is Number Nine Rock which is simply the place where you take your girl: The happiness can be pinpointed, a line starting at the top of Edward s Way, the broad avenue that leads into Ripl...
