Rating: 
Summary: Still Funny After All these Years
Review: Lucky Jim remains one of the funniest books I have ever read, and Jim Dixon one of the most engaging anti-heroes. Sure, the book is a little dated in terms of the society it satirizes, but so what? Jim is still hilarious, Neddy Welch is still a pompous old fool who gets what he deserves, Margaret is the attention-seeking neurotic we've all met, and Tristram is still odious and still instantly recognizable in any self-consciously "arty" group. I love Jim's story--he is lucky, but he deserves his luck more than most. Amis wrote a very funny book that has held its ground, despite the vast social and economic changes that have taken place since Lucky Jim was written, because he targets human foibles and pretensions that men (and women) will always be prey to.
Rating: 
Summary: Rude, unlucky, not always funny Jim
Review: When I first read this twentieth century classic, I said to myself: "Am I missing something here? This is the work of one of England's angry young men? Now I'm one of the angry ones." It took a BBC series to bring the characters to life in a way not immediately clear to me on the written page. Putting the words on video greatly increased my sympathy for Jim.Nonetheless, I think son Martin Amis did a funnier job with a similarly self-absorbed, self-centered slob in "Money: A suicide note". While I can see where son Martin found and derived his inspiration, I found less humor and little insight from the father. Lucky Jim Dixon is often more loathesome than likeable. His own sense of humor -- childish practical jokes of revenge on his enemies -- is more petty and mean than inspired. He doesn't much care for his students (except perhaps the pretty girls), his colleagues, or (for better reasons) his "superiors". Reading "Lucky Jim", I pictured a young Peter O'Toole or perhaps Hugh Grant drinking and stumbling his way through a good job, more concerned about his cigarette and beer budget than anything intellectual, romantic, noble, or heroic. Other than his contrast to the even more boorish son (Betrand) of Dixon's superior, it is still hard to understand the basis for the lucky outcome that concludes the book. Lucky for Jim, not just his students that, Dixon found another career.
Rating:
Summary: A malt whisky of a book
Review: For people who love a certain sort of England, post-war, depressive and near solipsistic - the England of Larkin and Bacon and Osborne - Lucky Jim will stand out as a great achievement; sabre-like humor slashing the pomposity of another sort of post-war England, soft, flatulant, conceited without much reason. Amis' characters are juicy and he is as violent as Wyndham Lewis but more gripping. It will be a rare reader who doesn't escape the odd thrust at his own expense but he should emerge at the end more smiling than wincing, I did. It's only if you have high and mighty principles that you'll really be for the chop. Principles, that is, unallied with genius: a situation that is not discussed in this book. He never lets us lose sight of the important things in life: money and sex, and ultimately his hero is rewarded with both. To qualify that: it's all about the right sort of money and the right sort of sex too, money for independence and comfort (especially of the alcoholic sort) and sex with an attractive sensible girl. It's difficult to argue with logic like that. But all that steady, grounded, laudable stuff is well and good. It's set against a great plot, wonderfully stage-managed that ends with the lecture on Merrie Englande, a literary crescendo of embarrassment as memorable, in its way, as Ravel's Bolero is in another. Much to be recommended to graduates thinking of doing brainy stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Read it carefully! It's really good!
Review: I have a tendency to allow my imagination to wander. This was the case when I tried to fly through the book. You have to read it very carefully to not miss what's going on. It took me longer to read it than usual, but if you pay attention, it's one of the best books you will ever read. Especially if you are one who enjoys the psychology of human nature. The British tone and the fact that it was written in 54 with different slang to me made me pay closer attention to what I was reading.
Rating:
Summary: A liitle outdated now
Review: Okay, so saying it's a little outdated sounds a bit harsh. After all, classics like Lucky Jim never lose their appeal. But 1954 humour is different to today's humour, though passages of Lucky Jim will certainly cause more that a few guffaws. Also, the humour and style is dated English (and I don't mean Monty Python). You need to understand the English culture to understand some of the 'jokes'. Having said that, Lucky Jim remains a delight to read as it satirises the pretentious lives of the university professors and their pathetic wives. Amis's use of internal dialogue is truly remarkable, keeping us handsomely amused with the thoughts of the principle character, James Dixon, as he moves in turn through cynical, rude, crude, catty, nasty, incisive, indecisive, mocking, and always insecure. It is a work that achieves a rare combination of being a literary treasure and also a humorous novel. I can happily recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly Hilarious
Review: No wonder this book is deemed a "Classic." James Dixon is a 20th Century everyman. Poor beleaguered James Dixon. With his academic career hanging on a thread, not-so-lucky Jim has to kowtow to his witless superior and his witless superior's hugely annoying wife and equally obnoxious son during a weekend get together. From there, everything goes downhill fast for Dixon. But out of Dixon's dilemma comes wonderfully comic moments as he attempts to extracate himself from a bad situation. Amis creates wonderful, quirky but believeable central characters (and secondary) and Dixon's hilarious internal dialogue kept me laughing out loud -- I should think we can all relate to Dixon's thoughts (rude, catty, cynical, nasty, incisive, mocking, witty and insecure by turns) as we routinely censor what we will say aloud. There are so many terrific moments in this book that I immediately re-read it so as to savor them all over again.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant novel
Review: Some people--a few who have written reviews here--don't seem to find Lucky Jim very funny. It's their loss. The rest of us think this book is hilarious. Read the opening paragraph of chapter 6: if you don't think it's the best description of a hangover, pass this book by. But I think you'll be hooked. And it isn't really a satire: for those of us who teach, it's hard to find one thing that is out of place in Lucky Jim. Senior professors are still, often, bores and pedants; many women professors still like to dress like peasants; and most of us find that our classes attract the Michie's of this world rather than the three pretty girls. It's so funny that it's easy to overlook how well constructed, and how well written, this novel is. The only thing wrong with Lucky Jim is the horrible cover on the most recent Penguin edition. (But horrible covers are themselves a venerable academic tradition.)
Rating:
Summary: Funny stuff
Review: Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" is a novel in the tradition of Wodehousian humoristic writing. But whereas Wodehouse wrote about silly characters worming their way out of silly situations with silly dialogue and behavior, "Lucky Jim" presents a scenario in which humor is developed more subtly through natural irony, cynical sarcasm, and things that are implied rather than said. The protagonist, Jim Dixon, is a lecturer in the history department of a not-so-highly acclaimed British university. He is lazy, immature, and hates his job and his boss, Professor Welch, the head of the department. Jim feels obligated to attend Welch's boring weekend parties, singing corny madrigals with insufferable members of the university faculty. At one of these parties, Jim runs afoul of Welch's son Bertrand, a pompous, self-important painter and self-declared pacifist who threatens Jim with bodily harm when piqued. Jim falls in love with Bertrand's voluptuous girlfriend Christine, but he is stuck in a contentious relationship with Margaret, another lecturer in his department. He dislikes Margaret intensely, considering her neurotic and unattractive, but he can't help but feel a little guilty over her recent suicide attempt. This background is used for further comic developments in which Jim must extricate himself from various quagmires, such as his attempt to conceal the damage to the Welches' bedsheets caused by his burning cigarette, his ploy to get Bertrand to bring Christine to a dance to present him with an opportunity for a rendezvous, and his attempt to deliver a scholarly lecture on "Merrie England" while quite inebriated. Amis is masterful in the way he sets up these predicaments for his protagonist and allows him to conquer them one by one, capitalizing on each scene's full comic potential, finally emerging with something like a twisted fairy-tale happy ending. Overall, "Lucky Jim" is a novel that deflates intellectual and artistic pretentiousness in a smart (as opposed to vulgar) manner.
Rating:
Summary: Still Funny But a Little Dated
Review: There are hilarious moments in this book, particularly when Amis describes protagonist Jim Dixon when drunk or hung over. Starting chapter six, Amis writes: "A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse... His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a secret cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad." At the same time, the social assumptions of the character seemed dated, with Dixon, an assistant professor, wondering, for example, what responsibility he would acquire by kissing a young woman. Bottom line, the humor is timeless in this campus novel. But the book captures the social dynamics of your parents or grandparents-provided they were English.
Rating: 
Summary: "And now he badly needed another dose of luck."
Review: What to make of 'Lucky Jim' (and its title, whose ironic status is in doubt until the end)? As a frothy, comic satire of post-war British academia, it fares quite well. Amis' depictions of Old Man Welch as a staggering boob and a loathsome bore are spot-on. He gets the details just right here. Same goes for Welch's infuriatingly pretentious family (foppish painter son and overbearing wife). As for the title character, Mr. Dixon's interior dialogues are hilarious, when contrasted with the lines he actually says aloud. He lives quite an entertaining and vitriolic Walter-Mitty-style inner life. Some of the punishments he fantasizes about cooking up for Welch are delightful in their venom. The problem I have with the book is that none of it made a lick of difference. Sure, it is nearly forty years since its first publication, but I just can't help feeling that this terrain has been done with more relevance by someone like Robertson Davies (see his 'Cornish Trilogy'). His pretentious academics actually manage to be fully formed characters, instead of the crudely drawn sketches Amis depicts here. That being said, the prose is magnificent. What else could you expect from an Amis?
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