Difficulties With Girls by Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis is one of my favorite magnum opera, indeed, I admire all the works of the author, it is the second time I read this and the plan is to take all the about thirty books or so by this luminary and read them again – all the reviews on this and more than four thousand other features from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites, plus more than five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists are available on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Difficulties With Girls by Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis is one of my favorite magnum opera, indeed, I admire all the works of the author, it is the second time I read this and the plan is to take all the about thirty books or so by this luminary and read them again – all the reviews on this and more than four thousand other features from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites, plus more than five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists are available on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

Lucky Jim https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/lucky-jim-by-kingsley-amis-author-of.html by Kingsley Amis is included on The All-TIME 100 Best Novels list, while it is ranked only 386th on The Greatest Books of All Time page, and the problem is that other oeuvres by my favorite writer are way down in the hierarchy

 

I did not even find Difficulties With Girls, ergo I should pay less attention to this GOAT in particular and wait for AI to develop the individual ChatGPT or whatever, so that it can offer me my own algorithm, which in fact we all know we have at work on Netflix, goggle, where they show us what we are likely to want

 

Plus some rage bait – one of the dictionaries, maybe it was Oxford, or Webster, had this as the word of 2025 – anyway, back to this magnificent novel, which I had reviewed for the first time here https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/11/difficulties-with-girls-by-kingsley.html it was a second part for Take a Girl Like You

Patrick Standish is married to beautiful, charming, resilient, near perfect Jenny, but he is not loyal to her ‘What had happened to make him change? Anything: five seconds’ temptation and ten seconds’ opportunity had always been more than enough for him. Where had he taken her? Not here in 1B, she hoped.’

 

The hero appears to be just as much the ‘bad guy’, in that he has sex with the neighbor, after he has said she is incompatible, and any chance he has he does not miss – I am not saying I am better, any different, perhaps even worse – and then he has this idea, that he will push a friend to get intimate with his spouse

This infuriates Jenny, albeit she is not sure how much this was a plan, and then she may see, with the reader, that this was some sort of compensation – ‘hell is paved with good intentions’ though – there are more characters and themes in here, one of which is homosexuality, there are two gay men, Stevie and Eric in the plot

 

Another, Tim, has had some issues, and he moves in an apartment near Jenny and Patrick – at least that appears to be the plan – and he in the process of ‘exploring his sexuality’, maybe that would be the term today, although there is this absurd backlash, what with Orange Baboon in charge of the (former) free world

We have these talks at the club downtown, some people support the Orange Woland, and one reason they give is that he pushed back on gays, there is too much wokeness, unfairness and now that things changed, they are so happy, to which I say bulshit, that idiot will cause a calamity, if not Armageddon sometime soon

 

Tim is not a homosexual, even if he believes he is, some psychiatrist has told him that his Difficulties With Girls are an indication of his preference for the other sex, even if Patrick and Jenny explain to him that this is a mistake, Tim is willing to experiment and the real gays, Eric and Stevie, offer to take him to the proper places

The experiment is a failure, in that Tim is appalled, but furthermore, Eric and Stevie do not have just a regular fight, the clash this time is bloody, Eric stabs Stevie with a knife, the police and ambulance arrive and it is all a sort of allegory, though I am not sure as to how much this is supposed to be amusing and/or tragic

 

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/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.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…’

Comentarii

Trimiteți un comentariu

Postări populare de pe acest blog

Epistolary edited by Gabriel Liiceanu http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/11/50-minutes-with-plesu-and-liiceanu-10.html - 10 out of 10

  Epistolary edited by Gabriel Liiceanu http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/11/50-minutes-with-plesu-and-liiceanu-10.html 10 out of 10     This wonderful book contains letters exchanged between the brightest minds we have in this realm – there is the exception of Eugen Simion, the late president of the Academy here, a rather horrid attack on luminaries that were so much wiser than this fellow, who came to lead a forum that should be only for the crème de la crème, yet, his presence at the top in fact reveals the ‘values’ that have reached what should be the chamber of the nec plus ultra – and as such, much of what is being debated is quite inaccessible   Ergo, the spoiler alert, warning, disclaimer, and maybe the way out of accusations of spam – one of the notes I have posted on Goodreads, Cleo From 5 to 7 http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/cleo-from-5-to-7-aka-cleo-de-5-7-by.html has been deleted, because it was considered spam, while the one who is the #...
Citiți mai multe

The Killer by Luc Jacamon 10 out of 10

  The Killer by Luc Jacamon 10 out of 10     Reading about killers, or watching the stupendous The Killer, with fabulous Michael Fassbinder in the leading role may seem like the wrong idea, in a world that has some nasty wars taking place in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, and the danger is that they might be expanding, as it is, Iran is attacking the USA, through its proxies Hezbollah, Houthis in Yemen (they have launched missiles) and militias in Iraq and Syria   It all depends on how good the author is, what the adaptation looks like, cast, director, you could have a magnum opus that is a crime story, such as Crime and Punishment http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor.html by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - an algorithm has recently looked at various relevant compilations and established the 50 Greatest Novels and the story of Raskolnikov is on it, together with other astounding works, Marcel Proust is at number one The Killer starts...
Citiți mai multe

The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett – included on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read List http://poemeglume.blogspot.com/2023/04/1000-novels-everyone-must-read.html - 7 out of 10

  The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett – included on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read List http://poemeglume.blogspot.com/2023/04/1000-novels-everyone-must-read.html 7 out of 10     The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom was first published in 1753, which might mean that it is not for the tastes of readers from our times, not even middle aged ones, like yours truly (who is actually sixty in a couple of months, but like to adopt the ‘the sixties are the new forties’ slogan) who has abandoned this   Hence, the spoiler alert, warning, disclaimer to avoid being (again) censored for spam – though I did not get the inclusion in that category, a reading of the definition could help, but this being my note, until it is obliterated by the Goodreads staff, and then it will still be available at the new blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/ I say that spam is used for the unrequested messages we receive, meant to make us buy things ...
Citiți mai multe