The Letters of Kingsley Amis edited by Zachary Leader this has only 83 (now 84) ratings and 9 (10 including this one) reviews on Goodreads – if I misbehave and write about the calamity of this world, Orange Woland, it may get back to the incredible, minuscule number of notes – but if we consider that this is 1212 pages long and it contains more than 800 letters, then we can see a reason for this obscurity, however, Kingsley Amis is a Magister Ludi, as is evident on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

The Letters of Kingsley Amis edited by Zachary Leader this has only 83 (now 84) ratings and 9 (10 including this one) reviews on Goodreads – if I misbehave and write about the calamity of this world, Orange Woland, it may get back to the incredible, minuscule number of notes – but if we consider that this is 1212 pages long and it contains more than 800 letters, then we can see a reason for this obscurity, however, Kingsley Amis is a Magister Ludi, as is evident on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

Kingsley Amis is my absolute favorite author  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html there is Marcel Proust, only the latter is less accessible, and then I have not read his letters, just A La Recherche, admittedly this is about as long as the…Letters, at more than one thousand pages

 

The Letters seem to compliment The Memoirs, indeed, there are aspects that I remember and cannot place them, did I read this in the Letters or The Memoirs, albeit they surely support the same points of view, for most of the time – we find exhilarating pages on various writers, from Nabokov to Elizabeth Taylor

 

Elizabeth Taylor was a magnificent novelist https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/angel-by-elizabeth-taylor-10-out-of-10.html and Kingsley Amis wrote about it ‘Angel by Elizabeth Taylor is a powerful story, triumphant narrative skill, a wonderful eye and unfailing humor, though not of the 'robust' nor of the  'savage' variety, often delightfully catty. But importance is not important. Good writing is…’

Some writers that I like are not favorites of the Magister Ludi, on the contrary – if Somerset Maugham was in my top five, and Evelyn Waugh in the Best 10, well, they do not come out resplendent from The Letters, although the latter has his reputation affected more on a personal level, seeing as he behaved badly, as an utter snob

 

Whenever we hear about ‘the great, luminaries’, a splendid work comes to mind, Intellectuals by Paul Johnson  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html from which we find how horrible Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others could be…

There is a third category of writers that appear in The Letters, those that I have not liked, and considering that Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis severely criticizes, or even destroys their alleged magnum opera, I feel not just relieved, but near liberation, I mean I could approach Virginia Wolf without fear, and put away Henry James

 

‘First you want to get hold of something to say, then you fudge up a plot of a story of some kind, and then you put in bits of things you have seen and heard round the place, and then you try and make it all sound sort of interesting or witty or funny or unusual or striking in some way. If you find some bit that isn't that, you work at it until it is, or at least as near it as you can get…’ this is what The Master of The Game had to say

In contrast ‘All the thought- stream business strikes me as a sodding bore; once in 1000 times something stands🧍‍♀️out as a good touch, but hardly more often’ I could not agree more, summarizing, I love everything that Sir Kingsley Amis has written, with a few exceptions, from the acclaimed Lucky Jim to A Fat Englishman

 

https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/one-fat-englishman-by-kingsley-amis.html this glorious book and The Memoirs will have an impact, the downside is that there are novelists I used to like – even more than that – such as Vladimir Nabokov, even EM Foster - about him there is this quote ‘isn't the old bastard tedious and diffuse? Could you ever read 'A India'? Because I never could.’ And it will be in my mind…along with other amusing, memorable takes on Anthony Burgess, William Boyd, Ian McEwan, Kafka: ‘now there's another man who can't tell a story, who's incapable of illustrating the slightest thing, or the most important thing, by action. I don't think I've ever seen so many abstract nouns in a supposedly narrative writer before…’

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’