{"id":7269,"date":"2010-01-29T16:47:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T21:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2010-01-29T16:47:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T21:47:53","slug":"conversations-with-kingsley-amis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/conversations-with-kingsley-amis\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with Kingsley Amis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrived at Swansea University as a student a few years after Kingsley Amis left, which was a shame because I would like to have met him. I\u2019ve never much cared for the output of his increasingly obnoxious son, Martin who seems to think euthanasia booths for the aged are a good idea<\/a>. Considering Martin Amis is 60, one would think that the instinct for self-preservation would deter him from advertising such boorish ideas; he grew up in a less civilised time than his father, of course. Kingsley Amis showed little interest in his son\u2019s work, apparently,<\/p>\n

Kingsley Amis had a keen eye for the absurdity of the cherished ambitions of the elite, although in his personal life he was not averse to indulging them. His novel \u201cStanley and the Women<\/a>\u201d particularly appealed to me; by today\u2019s standards it was rabidly misogynistic \u2013 it\u2019s main proposition was that all women are mad, a notion that resonated with me greatly at the time. It must have been a phase I was going through. He didn\u2019t much like Dylan Thomas, but I forgave him that.<\/p>\n

I was thinking of plagiarising one of Amis\u2019s bon mots for this blog: “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A new book, \u201cConversations with Kingsley Amis<\/a>\u201d\u00a0<\/a> has just been published; I am looking forward to reading it (hint for birthday present).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I arrived at Swansea University as a student a few years after Kingsley Amis left, which was a shame because I would like to have met him. I\u2019ve never much cared for the output of his increasingly obnoxious son, Martin … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2062],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}