Cuentos completos

by Kingsley Amis

Esta recopilación reúne por primera vez y en un solo volumen la totalidad de la prosa breve de Kingsley Amis, uno de los más reconocidos maestros de la edad de oro de la narrativa inglesa. Un agente literario es víctima de un misterioso secuestro. Unos hombres crean una máquina del tiempo para intentar averiguar a qué sabe la bebida en el futuro. El padre de Elizabeth Barrett Browning realiza un desesperado intento por impedir su matrimonio con el poeta. Un profesor de Literatura de Cambridge es en realidad un espía del MI5… Los relatos de Amis son oscuros, juguetones, conmovedores, sorprendentes. Escritos a lo largo de cinco décadas, y nunca hasta ahora publicados en castellano, estos cuentos alternan géneros como el misterio, el horror o las reflexiones satíricas sobre la vida y el amor desgraciado. En ellos descubriremos al mejor Amis: fino, satírico y mordaz, extremadamente inteligente y con un estilo implacable que pone al límite las posibilidades del lenguaje.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literary Fiction

576 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Best known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include Lucky Jim (1954) and The Old Devils (1986).

This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.

William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.

Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner

Reviews

[José · Rating 1 out of 5]

No estamos hechos el uno para el otro.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still reading his first highly-acclaimed novel "Lucky Jim" first published in 1954, I found reading this 24-story hardcover literally challenging and tough due to his narrations and writing style so I planned not to read from story numbers 1-24, rather I browsed through its pages to find which title was interesting enough to captivate me till the end. I had to design this seemingly amateurish reading plan since I could predict I would never finish reading this book written by "one of Britain's best-loved writers" (inner front cover) if I simply followed suit like I generally do when I read other short story books written by more familiar ones, to me, like Roald Dahl or Yasunari Kawabata.

These three quotes, from five, on its back cover might reveal something extraordinary inside its 500+ pages, that is, why should we read him at all?
'A key figure in post-war British culture, whose importance and influence cannot be measured ... distinctive and original' DAVID LODGE
'Among the English comic masters of the twentieth century' GUARDIAN
'A ceaselessly fresh and adorable body of work ... exasperation made poetry' JULIE BURCHILL
... Etc.

First, I found 'Boris and the Colonel' (no. 20) comprehensible and interesting since we could enjoy reading its three-part content more readily than some tough ones that in the meantime remain mysterious for those hoping to have a go with this "Complete Stories". One of the reasons is that I liked how the first opening sentence starts as you can see from this excerpt: "Edward Saxton was the Fellow and Director of Studies in English at a small Cambridge college, and concurrently a lecturer in that subject at the university." (p. 370) I mean it is clear, precise and informative enough to his readers without vanity, in other words, we know his name, his academic position and responsibility, his workplace and his ongoing work. Then 'Lucy Masterman' his pupil arrives to meet him as arranged and soon they cooperate in finding the truth on a dubious text of Gray's Elegy. I also liked this dialog between the two protagonists:
...
'Oh. But you brought your pistol with you.'
'So I did.' He laughed. 'Just company training. Motto, better safe than sorry. Well, your adventure duly turned up, didn't it?'
... (p. 404)

[Toño Piñeiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

♦️7 de diamantes ♦️


Hay ideas excelentes aquí: gemelos separados al nacer, que se conocen y descubren con tristeza que sus vidas son un espejo entre sí; Un crítico de literatura que es, en realidad, un agente del MI5; Un grupo de científicos que viajan al futuro para probar el vino del futuro...ideas, repito, muy buenas y que cuando se aterrizan, crean un cuento fantastico.

Amis es un escritor de mucha calidad, y aún sus cuentos más flojos tienen alguna característica que los rescata del olvido; en este caso fueron los temas (quizá demasiado locales para atraerme) los que restaron valor a algunas historias. Las mejores fueron las que apelan a valores mucho más humanos y menos ingleses.

Lo recomiendo como recomendaría un puño de aceitunas: solo mascando varios cuentos encuentras el sabor.

Y ya está.

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a mixture. At their best (in my opinion): My Enemy's Enemy, Court of Inquiry, The Friends of Plonk, Something Strange, Who or What Was It, Mr Barrett's Secret, To See the Sun, were exceptionally good. However, others were dull or read as if they had been written with an eye on the publisher's cheque.

The army stories, which include My Enemy's Enemy and Court of Inquiry, have such believable characters. They are stuck at the end of the war in Europe (1945), and they are wondering what to do, or waiting to be sent home, or hoping they would not be sent out to Burma to fight the Japanese. Officers who are desperate to maintain their rank and privilege, other ranks who are losing the little respect they may ever have had for them. It all comes through in the stories: frustration, anger, the belief that at last it's all over and life can begin again where it left off. The stories have a realism that is conjured up masterfully.

The fantasies – science fiction? - about wine and alcohol: The 2003 Claret, The Friends of Plonk, Investing in Futures. They are clever and funny, undemanding to read – which is just as well if there is a half-empty bottle of Malbec on the table. As for the other two SF stories: Hemingway in Space is a prolonged joke about Hemingway's writing style, but Something Strange goes deeper. It is set in a dystopian future, a small group of people who are kept in isolation believing they are on a space station out in deep space. They are not. They have been cloned many times, each new clone replacing the one before, as part of a behavioural experiment. Finally there has been a change of government and they can be released, but whether they can survive emotionally is unknown.

Who or What Was It is a ghost story. Nicely told, if a little old fashioned and as scary as a tickle in the dark. Mr Barrett's Secret is about Elizabeth Barrett's father, Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, and involves the legacy of mixed racial heritage seen from the viewpoint of Victorian English society. To See the Sun is a very good vampire story with a bit of blood and gore but not enough to disturb the gentle minded.

Of those I had little time for: The Darkwater Hall Mystery, a Sherlock Holmes story without Sherlock Holmes, centres on little more than the sting in the tale of Dr Watson's sexual impropriety. The House on the Headland is OK – a little secret service tale in which an agent uncovers a trade in disabled people to satisfy a pervert, rather than the spy he expected. Affairs of Death is an unassuming affair of the real Macbeth's meeting with Pope Leo IX pointing out that, while Macbeth is an educated man of affairs, medieval Scotland is a pretty grim place. And Boris and the Colonel is a lively little story that could have been adapted into an episode of any British police or secret service TV show you can imagine from the early 1990s, or earlier.

[Lucy_k_p · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the stories were four star, but some were two or one star so I averaged it out.

The good ones were funny and clever, and had deep and believable characters. They are in a variety of genres and styles. I particularly enjoyed the stories about the scientists time-travelling to work out what happens to alcohol in the future.

But the bad ones...

Hemingway in Space could be alternately titled: Women are shit. Don't you think women are shit? Let me show you how shit women are. (They should get back in the kitchen.)

Mr Barrett's Secret tries not to be racist in its treatment of the subject and fails miserably.

The House on the Headland is about how 'horrifying' conjoined twins are. (The mere sight of one makes a man babble insanely for hours.)

Captain Nolan's Chance speculates that the mix-up that caused the Charge of the Light Brigade was in fact the deliberate action of a man desperate to prove the worth of the Cavalry. Fortunately there is a secret Russian plot afoot to invade India, and the futile charge convinces its supporters that the British are too strong and brave and obedient and resolute for such a plot to succeed.
Making a real military tragedy, brought about by mismanagement and incompetence, into a 'glorious success' because of a fictional plot is an insult to all the men who suffered through it. And if it was deliberate, as Amis came to believe, that is even worse, and all the posturing about how 'wonderful' it was is just sickening. Even if such a plot had existed (and it is something Amis completely made-up) the events of the Light Brigade would not realistically have been able to influence it. And even if they had, it would not have excused or made-up for the massive loss of life.

I guess it's up to you if you want to see if the good stories are worth it. Read at your own risk.

[David Lowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kingsley Amis is a lot easier to fathom than his son Martin and these Complete Stories are a celebration of his easy-to-read prose, his wit and his great ability to lead the innocent reader into trap after trap with his clever plotting.
Each character jumps off the page at you and the dialogue (of which there is much) sparkles throughout.
Read these if you're an aspiring writer in need of an education or just a reader in need of being totally absorbed in an extraordinary cross section of tales.

David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil and Liberating Belsen (both published by sacristy.org.uk)

[Wayne]

Kingsley Amis' reviews were brief:
Good...some good...no good

Brief AND...to the point, we may add!!!

Looking forward to these 24 stories.

[Jordi Planas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aunque en las últimas décadas su hijo Martin (autor de “Campos de Londres”, “La información” o la divertida “Lionel Asbo”), le ha robado protagonismo, Kingsley Amis es uno de los escritores ingleses más destacables de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Perteneció a la corriente de los “jóvenes airados” y ya triunfó con su primera novela, “Lucky Jim” (1954). Tuvo una vida movidita: además de novelista, poeta, crítico y profesor, fue adúltero recalcitrante, miembro del partido comunista (aunque acabó abjurando de sus ideas políticas), y el alcohol fue uno de sus amigos más íntimos. Ahora aparecen reunidos en un solo volumen (más de 500 páginas) los 24 variadísimos relatos que escribió en diversas épocas. Algunos tan logrados como “Sangre en las venas” (poniendo en duda la eficacia de los servicios sociales), “Toda la sangre que hay en mí” (reflexiones en torno a un funeral), o “Querida ilusión” (con una verosímil entrevista a un poeta en su madurez). Pero los hay de todo tipo, nada escapaba a la curiosidad de Amis: de tintes bélicos (de sus inicios, quizás alargados en demasía), uno protagonizado por el Dr. Watson (el fiel compañero de Sherlock Holmes), otro por Macbeth, otro de tintes vamíricos e incluso algunos de ciencia ficción (encabezados por “El clarete de 2003”), con los que Kingsley entroncaba con la vena de humor absurdo de Monty Python. El mejor: “¿Quién o qué era?”, una estupenda historia sobrenatural que le ocurrió al propio autor y que, a su vez, emulaba un relato de Amis: la realidad “inspirándose” en la ficción.
JORDI PLANAS