The Green Man (New York Review Books Classics)

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In June 1941, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. [11] He broke with communism in 1956, in view of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin in his speech " On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences". [12] In July 1942, he was called up for national service and served in the Royal Corps of Signals. He returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and earned a first in English in 1947, he had decided by then to give much of his time to writing. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-06-25 15:35:51 Boxid IA1117320 Boxid_2 CH129925 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Containerid_2 X0008 Donor Just so, the wisest of us men wear the Green Sash - a badge of moral compromise - for all to see, to this day. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable story, but at the same time, it's far from superficial. Obviously, ghosts and death go hand in hand, but here death is treated largely from the existentialist point of view, as is, of course, life. So it makes one think about one's obsessions, fears, and actions, - but not in a way that would be incompatible with a drink :) I'd never read anything by Kingsley Amis and I now know that this book was out of the ordinary for him. He was known as a cynical, yet amusing writer, with a unique take on the world and people around him. This is supposedly his only book of this kind. (He also wrote a sci-fi, though his usual genre was sarcasm and humor.) Anyhow, I might try another of his novels...

The last stages of the conversation were lengthened by my guest's habit of pausing frequently in search of some even more roundabout way of expressing himself than the one which had occurred first to him.' What makes The Green Man readable and re-readable is the skill with which Amis, like Henry James before him, turns the narrative screw. It is, quite simply, a rattling good ghost story. Mr. Amis' new novel, superficially at least, is a ghost story in which his hero Allington who runs The Green Man (a very elegant inn but also a haunted house) is beset on all sides—by his own nocturnal hallucinations, by everpresent hypochondria, and by the encroachment of delirium tremens since he drinks a bottle a day. But when he stops, he is even more prone to the beyond-the-grave disturbances of a 17th century scholar, Underhill, who did a fair amount of damage in his own time (two murders are attributed to him). On the other hand, Allington, who has every reason to be exhausted, is contemplating an orgy a trois between his own listless (to him) wile and the very attractive Diana. From these disparate and indeed disjunctive materials one is not sure just where the novel is going or whether it's getting anywhere. But in between, and emphasized at the close, there is a good deal said about life (which would justify the impulsive sexual vagaries) and death (which validates the absorption with the deceased Underhill and his apparent afterlife) and the pressing, overburdened matters of sheer existence, let alone endurance, during this brief five day period. If none of it coalesces altogether, there is still Mr. Amis' catchy, sophisticated talk which however small is always diverting. How rarely do we come across the really frightening ghost story now. Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man was a rare and honourable exception, and Amis followed the classic pattern of earlier writers, letting the story progress carefully from a recognisable normality, through unease, to the rapid unfolding of horror that marks out the most successful and scarifying of all horror story writers.”In the meantime Maurice has discovered his own notes of a drunken, and forgotten, midnight conversation with Underhill, during which Underhill begins to enlist Maurice's help in his as yet undisclosed scheme. This involves Maurice's unearthing of Underhill's nearby grave, in which he finds an ancient silver figurine that Underhill requests be brought to another midnight meeting in the inn's dining room. The ‘threesome’ between Maurice, his wife Juliet and his best friend’s wife Diana may be the most infamous scene in the book, but bear in mind the other goings-on, such as desecrating Underhill’s grave and the chinwag with a ghostly character clearly meant to represent God. The discovery of Underhill’s power brings Maurice to a deeper consideration of the question of survival after death and prepares him for a conversation with still another supernatural agent, of quite a different kind from Underhill. Amis personifies God as a character in his own right, in the guise of a young man who expresses puzzlement and a certain degree of helplessness over the events unfolding in the world of his creation. Maurice’s transformation from an alienated man to an unwitting hero who chooses to take on the responsibilities of an absentee God forms the dramatic core of the novel.

urn:lcp:greenman00amis:epub:42d7d0b5-6d1c-447a-abf1-8765d234fcad Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier greenman00amis Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t99625d67 Invoice 11 Isbn 0151370400 Amis became associated with Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which he admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with Bond, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular James Bond Dossier under his own name. The same year, he wrote The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007, a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner being M's chief of staff in many of Fleming's novels. In 1968 Amis wrote Colonel Sun, which was published under the pseudonym " Robert Markham". Maurice Allington is the owner of "The Green Man", a country inn that he claims is haunted by ghosts. He is usually either frightening guests with his ghost stories, or trying to seduce them, but he slowly comes to realise that some of his stories may be true.Then, one day, Maurice sees a strange woman at the top of the stairs which go to the private part of the Inn where he lives with his father, daughter and his second wife. She is dressed in the manner of women from a previous century. He looks away for a second, and she is gone. The conversation with God. I do think it's really difficult to right one without it sounding awkward, though.