Volume 36, Number 10 · June 15, 1989
The Old Devil
By Gabriele Annan
Difficulties with Girls
by Kingsley Amis
Summit, 276 pp., $18.95
John Dollar
by Marianne Wiggins
Harper and Row, 214 pp., $17.95
Difficulties with Girls, Kingsley Amis's eighteenth novel, finally reveals him as the W.C. Fields of English letters. His comedy has always rested on his own droll taking-the-mickey technique. His prose swarms on to the page like clowns into the ring and clambers all over the characters' food, clothes, interiors, and inadequately camouflaged intentions, mimicking their speech, facial expression, and body language:
Review, 2726 words
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