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Raising a glass to Kingsley Amis
IN THE LAST CENTUBY, English writers came in crops or vintages. Maybe the greatest was the first, born in the reign of Edward VJJ during the first decade of the century: Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, and Anthony Powell all began life within 30 months of one another. Then there was the crop born in the years after World War II: Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Ian McEwan.
In between had been another generation, flanked by the wars. Two names in particular stand out: Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, both born in 1922. Unlike the vintage of 20 years earlier, they came from modest lower-middle-class homes and didn't attend public schools (as the English call elite private boarding schools), but they went to Oxford where they met at St John's College in 1941.
They remained close friends for more than 40 years, not meeting often - Larkin always lived a long way from London and Swansea, when Amis was there in the 1950s - but corresponding in letters that were scabrous and indecent, childish but funny. Both men were insular to the point of xenophobia: Amis had a couple of spells at American colleges, Princeton in the late 1950s, Vanderbilt ten years later, but didn't return, not least because an acute fear of flying meant he could only travel by sea. Larkin never visited the United States.
Their friendship ended only when Amis stood in the pulpit of St. Mary the Virgin in Cottingham, a Yorkshire village church, one chilly December day in 1985 and gave a touching and perceptive funeral address for his oldest friend. Larkin had died of cancer. Ten years on, Amis died at 73. He had no specific illness but, weakened by many years of intimate acquaintance with the bottle, was carried away by a bout of pneumonia.
By the time both died, they were famous, though not quite as they had once hoped. Amis originally wanted to be a poet and published a few volumes of poetry, but became a novelist. Larkin wanted to be a novelist and published two early novels, but became a poet. It was Amis who was first established as a "celebrity writer," his opinions eagerly sought...