—from Lucky Jim(Chapter I)
Kinsgley Amis
[1]Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright green after a wet April.It wasn’t the double-exposure effect of the last half-minute’s talk that had dumbfounded him, for such incidents formed the staple material of Welch colloquies ; it was the prospect of reciting the title of the article he’d written.It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article’s niggling mindlessness , its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo -light it threw upon non-problems.
[2]Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but his own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance.‘In considering this strangely neglected topic,’it began.
[3]This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool.‘Let’s see,’he echoed Welch in a pretended effort of memory: ‘oh yes; The Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques.After all, that’s what it’s...’
[4]Unable to finish his sentence, he looked to his left again to find a man’s face staring into his own from about nine inches away.The face, which filled with alarm as he gazed, belonged to the driver of a van which Welch had elected to pass on a sharp bend between two stone walls.
[5]A huge bus now swung into view from further round the bend.Welch slowed slightly, thus ensuring that they would still be next to the van when the bus reached them, and said with decision: ‘Well, that ought to do it nicely, I should say.’
[6]Before Dixon could roll himself into a ball or even take off his glasses, the van had braked and disappeared, the bus-driver, his mouth opening and shutting vigorously, had somehow squirmed his vehicle against the far wall, and, with an echoing rattle, the car darted forward on to the straight.Dixon, though on the whole glad at this escape, felt at the same time that the conversation would have been appropriately rounded off by Welch’s death.He felt this more keenly when Welch went on:‘If I were you, Dixon, I should take all the steps I possibly could to get this article accepted in the next month or so.I mean, I haven’t the specialized knowledge to judge...’His voice quickened:‘I can’t tell, can I? What it’s worth.It’s no use anybody coming to me and asking “What’s young Dixon’s stuff like?”unless I can give them an expert opinion of what it’s worth, is it now? But an acceptance by a learned journal would...would...You, well you don’t know what it’s worth yourself, how can you?’