Lucky Jim

The young British writer Kingsley Amis has written a marvelously funny novel describing, through one young adventurer in particular, an attempt of England's postwar generation to break from that country's traditional class structure. When it appeared in England, Lucky Jim provoked a heated controversy ín which everyone took sides. Somerset Maugham began his highly critical review in the London Sunday Times: "I am told that today rather more than sixty per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. Mr. Kingsley Amis is so talented, his observation so keen, that you cannot fail to be convinced that the young men he so brilliantly describes truly represent the class with which his novel is concerned."