Word: englishman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...unusual batch of fine literary comedies: ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN, by Kingsley Amis. A rich, arrogant British libertine comes to an Eastern university town to renew his affair with a faculty wife, is thwarted and discomfited at every turn by the colonials he scorns...
...music was mainly Monk's own? nine compositions from the early / Mean You to Oska T., which he wrote last summer under a title that is his own transcription of an Englishman's saying "Ask for T." ("And the T," says Thelonious, "is me.") The concert was the most successful jazz event of the season, and Monk greeted his triumph with grace and style. At the piano he turned to like a blacksmith at a cranky forge? foot flapping madly, a moan of exertion fleeing his lips. The music he made suggested that the better he is received...
...Englishman is very funny. But by the time Amis lets his ployman homeward plod his weary way, the reader finds his heart wrung with pity. In a puzzling way, the appalling Roger has endeared himself. It is not just that Roger himself in odd moments has recognized that he is a pretty dreadful character. "Very angst-producing, being a snob," he confesses to his mistress. Something deeper is involved. The secret may be that the totally selfish man is pathetic as well as detestable; Roger has some of the heartbreaking quality present in the rapt self-absorption of a child...
True as Tape. In the ten years since Lucky Jim appeared, that frenetic farce of provincial English academic life has become a minor classic. In One Fat Englishman, Amis has faced and triumphantly cleared the hazards of translation. Most English novelists cannot manage a single sentence in demotic U.S. speech without setting on edge the big white American teeth. But Amis' mimic's ear is true as tape...
High spirits, deft wit and an elegantly sketched stage mark Amis' comic theater; the face-pullings, pratfalls and brisk tattoo of slapstick are the devices of a master. His aim is serious comedy. And, like the skewered and flayed Englishman of the fable, it never hurts except when he laughs...