Litnet

Die Britse outeur Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) "could ’do’ the sound of a brass band approaching on a foggy day. He could become the Metropolitan line train entering Edgware Road station [London]. He could be four wrecked tramps coughing in a bus shelter (this was very demanding and once led to heart palpitations). To create the hiss and crackle of a wartime radio broadcast delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for him scant problem ... The pièce de résistance, an attempt by British soldiers to start up a frozen two-ton truck on a windy morning ’somewhere in Germany’, was for special occasions only.One held one’s breath as Kingley emitted the first screech of the busted starting-key. His only slightly lesser vocal achievement - of a motor-bike yelling in mechanical agony - once caused a man who had just parked his own machine in the street to turn back anxiously and take a look. The old boy’s imitation of an angry dog barking the words ’fuck off’ was note-perfect.

I am aware at all times, gentle reader, of the ’perhaps you had to be there’ element in a memoir. I strive to keep it permanently in mind. In the case of Kingsley, you don’t absolutely have to have been there. Try this, from one of his many wonderful letters to Philip Larkin. Amis is imitating the ingratiating announcer of the BBC’s condescending weekly program, Jazz Record Requests: ’ ... Archie Shepp at his most exhilarating. Now to remind us of jazz’s almost infinite variety, back almost fifty years to Nogood Deaf Poxy Sam and One-Titted Woman Blues: 'Wawawawa wawawaa wawa wawa wa wa Oh ah gawooma shony gawon tia waah, wawa wa yeh ah gawooma shony gawon tia wawawwa waah wa boyf she ganutha she wouno where to put ia.'

I was reading this late one night, several years after Kingsley’s death, and once I’d tried it out loud a couple of times I felt, through my hot tears of astonished laughter, that it was as if he were in the room. And he went to all this trouble for a private letter!"

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: a memoir, London: Atlantic Books, 2011, p 162.

Markus Quotus