Lucky Jim’s morning after
More from that hangover expert, Kingsley Amis:
Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eye-balls again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.
Fom Lucky Jim (pub. 1953).
Roger said,
December 30, 2011 at 6:13 pm
A favourite passage – as is the one where Dixon manages to set fire to his bed,
At the start Amis really was a more demotic Wodehouse or Waugh – pity is that he ended up as such a monstrous reactionary misogynist.