FREE THE OLD DEVILS PDF Kingsley Amis | 400 pages | 04 Oct 2007 | Vintage Publishing | 9780099461050 | English | London, United Kingdom The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis () | Books & Boots Viewed through the reverse telescope of history, Kingsley Amis 's success at the Booker prize seems like the natural culmination of a long and distinguished writing career. One of the finest comic writers of his generation — century even — had done the natural thing and written a bloody brilliant book that easily scooped the country's top literary award. At the time, however, it came as something of a surprise. There are notable similarities between the way Amis Snr was regarded then and his son Martin is now. Kingsley was widely seen as past his best before The Old Devils came out and more column inches were devoted to denunciations of what commentators imagined he thought than to the words he wrote. Unlike Martin, he also had the disadvantage of being a well-known The Old Devils and to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens the booze was beginning to get to him and rob him of his wit and charm. Few expected the Old Devils to be as good as it was — but that just makes it all the sweeter. Another surprise from a man so frequently accused of misogyny and bitterness is just how tender this book is — and how The Old Devils love with love. The Old Devils of the title are old friends from Wales. Because they are mainly retired, their day starts winding down shortly after breakfast and so they start drinking. The men imbibe dangerous amounts in The Old Devils unpleasant pubs, the women in various unpleasant kitchens. They bitch and moan and say outrageously rude things about anything and everybody, but — crucially — they all tolerate each other. They even The Old Devils up with a chronic alcoholic called Dorothy. They just desperately try to keep talking whenever she's around so she isn't able to cut in with one of her The Old Devils monologues about New Zealand tribal customs. A task that is described with The Old Devils virtuosity as being "like trying to start a motorcycle in the path of a charging elephant. What's The Old Devils, over the course of the book, they find a way to forgive each other's past transgressions, admit to past cruelties and even rekindle snuffed- out love affairs. Their memories about their shared experiences have become unreliable, they don't all have their own teeth and at least one of them has become convinced he is too fat and hideous to ever bother about again — but human warmth wins through. It's moving and life-affirming — all the more so thanks to Amis's frankness about the infirmity and imminent death faced by most of his characters. But that's not to say the old rogue has gone soft. The novel is also satire of the The Old Devils quality. One of the main story strands, for instance, follows professional Welshman Alun born Alan Weaver and his return to "this land of river and hill" from a successful career he has carved out in London by banging on about his affinity to "Brydan" a thinly disguised stand-in for Dylan Thomas. Cue countless barbed riffs on Pays-De-Gallic posturing. Well that's splendid news, by George," comes the reply. Most blunt and wonderful is the invitation: "Show me a Welsh nationalist and I'll show you a cunt. There are also fine evocations of the thousand daily pinpricks of existence in the UK; of suburban ennui and its bored love affairs, of the indignities of age, of hopeless drunks, and of hideous modernised pubs and even worse untouched ones. The temptation here is to start reeling off supporting quotes again, especially some beauties relating to bowel movements and farting. The trouble is that quoting Amis never does him real justice. His comic genius relies so much upon build-up, context and impeccable timing that it can only be fully appreciated in its correct setting. You'll just have to take my word for it that I was laughing so much that I was frequently unable to continue reading. The Old Devils, better still, The Old Devils hold of The Old Devils book yourself. It's that rare and precious thing — a novel that is a delight from start to The Old Devils. Next time: Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. Topics Books Books blog. Kingsley Amis blogposts. Reuse this content. Order by newest oldest recommendations. Show 25 25 50 All. Threads collapsed expanded unthreaded. Loading comments… Trouble loading? Most popular. Booker club: The Old Devils | Books | The Guardian The area had once been called Monmouthshire but because of a decision taken in London was now called Gwent, after an ancient Welsh kingdom or whatever it was that might have formerly existed there or thereabouts. Anyway, it was Wales all right. The Old Devils this little pool of alcoholic mediocrity arrives one-time poet, media celebrity and professional Welshman, Alun The Old Devils and his wife Rhiannon. Rhiannon, for her part, has a moving reunion with her first love, Peter Thomas, now grotesquely and The Old Devils fat, before allowing herself to be taken for a drive out to The Old Devils formerly romantic church down by the sea by the hopelessly boring old sod, Malcolm Cellan-Davies. The main players are:. Plenty of time is spent on unflinching portrayals The Old Devils the physical and mental weaknesses of age. The first section opens with Malcolm struggling to instal his dentures and The Old Devils against his failing body to get dressed. Charlie, Alun and The Old Devils are getting pissed in a pub somewhere and talking loudly enough about how shit everything is to provoke three The Old Devils men to push their table over and punch harmless Malcolm on the nose. And so, pissedly, grumpily, on, The Old Devils about this side of despair, The Old Devils frank despair occasionally breaks through:. With a conviction undimmed by having survived countless run-offs he felt that everything he had was lost The Old Devils everyone he knew was gone. Then again, quite a few moments make you shiver with horror at the prospect of getting old and bald, with varicose veins and bad-fitting dentures, subject to fierce pains in the side, all kinds of physical limits and ailments, unable to bend over or even stand up by yourself. And of course, where not so long ago it had been hake and chips, The Old Devils cockles, pork pies and pints of Troeth bitter, these days it was canneloni, paella, stifado, cans of Fosters, bottles of Rioja and — of course — large Courvoisiers and long panatellas, just like everywhere else. Women come in for scathing, bitter criticism throughout, by all the men, for being incomprehensible enemies The Old Devils to make emotionally wounding attacks at any moment. In it, a sadistic sergeant broke the spirit of a soldier in a military prison by beating him up at systematically random intervals, from more than a day down to a quarter of an hour, so that the victim never knew when the next attack was coming, never felt safe. Life with Muriel, it seemed to Peter, had over the last seven or eight years The Old Devils into a decreasingly bearable version of that. There were times, it was true, and this was one of them, when you could be morally certain a drubbing was on the way, not from anything she said or did but because you had spotted something disagreeable to her, either in itself or in its associations, drifting to the surface over the past few minutes or so; that was enough for her. For some strange reason, though, The Old Devils kind of early warning did little to soften the eventual impact. He actually felt the sweat break out now on his forehead. Discomfort because these old bastards express their The Old Devils about women far more crudely and angrily than anything The Old Devils remember. The novel is set in Wales, all the characters are Welsh and there is a great deal of chat about Welshness, which is treated with The Old Devils of cantankerous affection, with a running theme about whether the poet they all pretend to revere — the Dylan Thomas figure, Brydan — was a genius or a selfish, drunken charlatan, and whether he was really Welsh at all. Amis would have done us a favour if he had produced a penetrating novel about old age since we now, inare more aware than The Old Devils of the coming boom in numbers of the elderly, living longer, dominating our society, requiring expensive healthcare and support. Put another way, the ostensible subject matter of this novel — old age — should make it more relevant, a more compelling read, than ever before. Instead I think it, and Amis generally, were never so marginalised and forgotten. His earlier novel about old age, the cruelly black comedy Ending Upis more penetrating and a lot shorter. These grotesques and their dismal affairs are painted in prose which is slack, repetitive and aimless. It is like reading soggy cardboard. But no. Dangling clauses at the end of sentences, making them weaker and vaguer. Afterthoughts, second The Old Devils, demotic tags and fragments, just one more bit, after all, in the end, so to speak, at the end of the day, in general, more or less, and all the rest of it, The Old Devils part of it, or something…. But they were soon past there now and on to where she had not been for at least ten years, probably a good deal more.