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4.5
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,The reason why, I cannot tell;But this I know, and know full well,I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.--Thomas BrownThere is a long tradition in many cultures of the lovable rogue the charming con man and his female counterpart the hooker with a heart of gold. Enter Roger Micheldene. Even his name is somewhat aggravating and in fact it's longer and more complicated than this but we only have to deal with that one obscure paragraph deep in the book. Roger is a man of some standing with his publishing firm but outside of whatever hold he has on an evidently comfortable job there is nothing likable about Roger. He is fat and irascible; given to adultery with as many women as have managed to hold his otherwise short attention span. He eats too much drinks incredible amounts, storms and threatens impotent violence over things that couldn't possibly be proper provocation and in fact the large mystery and perhaps the source of the satire is that people either befriend him or pretend to befriend him.To be sure author Kingsley Amis intended One Fact English Man to be darkest humor and sharpest satire. In this short novella, 162 pages in this edition, we follow him as he moves about Budweiser College where for some strange reason he has visiting professor status. (One of the jokes of this short book is to see how many names of American beers you can identify.) Not only lionized in the college set but frequently serviced by various women even as he pursues the married Helene and ponders his second failing marriage back in England.My suspicion is that the real satire here is not Roger but the various pretenses and shows of deference being staged partially for his entertainment by a presumably clever and sophisticated college set with whom he is mingling.In one short phrase I do not remember laughing once at any point during this book. I rather doubt I ever smiled or otherwise quite got the humor. Part of the reason for my response to this book is one of the worst introductions I have ever read. David Lodge the author of this brief intro is normally one of my favorite writers and can usually be counted upon to say something humorous. Instead in about five pages Lodge focuses entirely on the possible link between the Roger of this book and Kingsley's own pending self-destructive habits.There are autobiographical elements to this book based on the fact that both the author and Roger had visiting professor status in American colleges. There is more than some evidence that Kingsley Amis lived in a very dissipated life among his American counterparts. It is something of a legend that upon reading the script to this book Kinsley's first wife proceeded to divorce him.There are swipes at all manner of pretensions whether academic literary gastronomic or for that matter cigars but the humor is so bleached bone dry that that it is difficult for a lover of dry humor to catch much of it.Two things redeem One Fat Englishmen: it is very short and Kingsley Amis is a very adept wordsmith. I can recommend this book as an opportunity to enjoy the use of English. Indeed there are a few mostly unnecessary segues into minor differences between the English language as spoken in America and as spoken in England. The fixation on some of these very minor constructs may have been funny in the very early 60s.Roger Micheldene is an Englishman, forty-ish, who works for a publishing house and is in the States on a two-week trip, part business and part pleasure. For Roger, pleasure consists of gluttony, brow-beating virtually all males he comes across, and fornicating with just about all females. He is abominable. He also is fat - a bothersome handicap in the sexual chase. As the novel opens, Roger is beside a swimming pool on a warm Indian Summer afternoon; others join him, some to go swimming, including a woman he keenly wants to bed. Perspiring heavily, Roger removes his tan-and-slate tweed jacket. "He would have liked to take off far more than his jacket, but knew he was the wrong shape for this. For instance, his mammary development would have been acceptable only if he could have shed half his weight as well as changing his sex." Hence, many of Roger's coups occur in dimly lit places, with women who are either as soused and/or as randy as he.Kingsley Amis works this shtick to a fair-thee-well. He has one other comedic theme: the differences in speech, custom, and culture between the Brits and the Yanks. It, too, is over-flogged. There are many witty lines - this is Kingsley Amis, after all - but overall ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN is sour and dyspeptic. It is the sixth, and least by far, of the Kingsley Amis novels I have read. I cannot warmly recommend it, even to Amis enthusiasts.KIngsley Amis at his best, and this book surely qualifies, is anti-everything. Most of all he's against a loathsome, pathetic, drunken example of a fat Englishman abroad, patterned most accurately after himself during his Princeton years. How can you fault a man who casts a cold eye on the worst in all of us and doesn't spare himself? Amis is not so much a satirist as he is a realist in the great Russian and French tradition. His people as not caricatures. They are fully dimensional and brutally so, with all the weaknesses, hypocracies, and strength of character that human beings display on varied occasions. Amis was a incorrigible womanizer and knows his subject. He writes about the female as few males have ever been able to do, both lovingly and cruelly when the moment calls for it. There have been many books about American academe and those who people and profit from it, none more on the nose than this one. The final showdown between a self-adoring American, a confused Danish beauty, and the fat man is among the best moments in modern English literature.I've read and enjoyed almost every Kingsley Amis book. The main character in this one is not likable so I suppose a lot of people will be turned off and go back to watching The Bachelor or MSNBC, or some other sewage, and in so doing they'll miss out on gems like this:Then he went down the slope to join her. He slid about a bit in doing so, either because of the gin or because he was holding his stomach in so tightly that his legs worked like stilts or because the grass was slippery.As one reviewer stated his amazement on how this one got published, I must say it is probably the biggest rubbish to come out of the shores of England since the days when Nelson sailed to fight at the battle of Battle of Trafalgar. The best one can say that if you like books in this genre of non-stop nonsense - P.G. Wodehouse is another name that conjures up in the same league - feel free to burn couple of hours of your time.This silly book is only for Kingsley Amis admirers. It tells of an articulate, obese, philandering English literary agent who when he isn't drunk, belligerent or lost, is strangely attractive to women. The obnoxious fatty is among East Coast academics whose own morals aren't much stronger but who are far more amiable. Colleges are given the names of popular beer labels (Budweiser, Schlitz, etc.) and the students are largely hostile to learning. Fun to read.some very funny stuff, but a little sad given that I've read it mirrors Amis' later years.I was hugely disappointed with this novel. There was not one character in the whole book with whom I could sympathise. I could not have cared less what happened to any of them! I did not even find the 'humour' amusing! Why did I persevere to the end? I can only think - masochism!
