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SUMMARY The Green Man ô PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB DOWNLOAD Û PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB à Kingsley Amis Kingsley Amis à 6 SUMMARY Dicate his sanity Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers All the while the skeletons in the cupboard of Allington's own domestic affairs rattle to get out to Maurice Allington is a fifty something twice married inn keeperhotelier For Maurice life is a high speed roller coaster ride of juggling his various commitments in this case commitment euates to womanizing drinking heavily running his period inn The Green Man and embellishing his establishment with tales of the resident ghost On top of this he needs to find time to appease the boredom of his teenage daughter oh yes and did I mention whisky and womenIn case I haven t made it clear Maurice is a scoundrel of the highest order He relishes being a cad almost as much as he relishes bemoaning his lot Oh and I should have mentioned his hypochondria Boy it s tough being MauriceNow I appreciate that none of what I have written makes Maurice sound a likely or likable protagonist but he is Maurice s antics are about to open the door for a very dark presence and as the tone of the book takes an unsettling turn we are treated to a contemporary ghost story This is a book about the supernatural but in a very old fashioned sense It is also and I realize this seems a contradiction an extremely funny book There is as much sexual innuendo slapstick and satire as there are chillsAn absolute joy of a book
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SUMMARY The Green Man ô PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB DOWNLOAD Û PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB à Kingsley Amis Kingsley Amis à 6 SUMMARY A ghost story for adults Like all good coaching inns the Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost Dr Thomas Underhill a notorious seventeenth century practitioner of black arts and s I have no novelists finding theirs a puny and piffling art one that even at its best can render truthfully no than a few minor parts of the total world it pretends to take as its field of reference So declares Mr Maurice Allington while scanning the books of his personal library in the study of his rustic country inn The Green Man And what manner of narrator did Kingsley Amis create to tell his novel s story Maurice is a fifty three year old self centered boozehound an accomplished womanizer living with his second wife thirteen year old daughter and eighty year old father Maurice also happens to be charming articulate Cambridge educated and in possession of both keen intellect and vivid imagination Does this sound a lot like Kingsley Amis himself The British author would undoubtedly answer yes since he stated directly he could relate to Maurice Allington than any of his other characters Above all else Maurice has one compelling suspenseful story to tell I can assure you by the end of the first chapter you will want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next As not to spoil the book s many surprises I will go light on plot and focus on a number of themesSEDUCTION AND SEX What is a Kingsley Amis novel without a bit of the old slap and tickle Actually Maurice doesn t go in for anything too kinky but he does suggest to Diana his gorgeous blonde new lover that she consider a m nage trois that is going to bed with both himself and his wife For Maurice the art of seduction is a very fine art indeed during one fling with Diana he compares his techniues of arousing a woman to a virtuoso playing a concerto however he acknowledges he is beyond his stud prime not to mention the fact he must also deal with a batch of distractions both natural and supernatural All told similar to other dimensions of the novel Maurice s sex life is laced with large helpings of vintage Kingsley Amis comedy mostly of the parody and satire varietyGHOST STORY The Green Man is most certainly a ghost story and literary critic Michael Dirda outlines in his helpful Introduction to this New York Review Books NYRB edition precisely how the author masterfully incorporates traditional ingredients of atmosphere and crescendo to create his chilling tale Since this is the 1960s modern world Maurice s encounter with ghosts raises the skeptical eyebrows of his family and friends as well as the local parson who judges the supernatural as so much humbug But Maurice knows what he has seen with his own eyes and grits his teeth when everyone immediately provides psychological explanations of how his visions are the conseuence of his own mental states brought about by stress fatigue and drinking Ah the modern world where science and psychology are kingMYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEN MANThe Green Man has been part of many world cultures going back to time immemorial most usually connected with the forces of the natural world in its vegetable forms trees plants leaves vines fruits and is one of the prime symbols of regeneration and rebirth occurring in spring Accordingly many of the sculptures of the Green Man depict the nurturing helpful positive ualities he symbolizes Much different than what we encounter in this Kingsley Amis where the Green Man is the horrifying destructive agent of diabolical forces I wouldn t want to push the point too far but we might well consider how on another level the Green Man could also represent the alcohol consumption Maurice must do battle to overcomeTHE BIG GUY PAYS A VISIT With the entr e of a trim well groomed young man in his late twenties via the inclusion of an eerie parallel spacetime reality we have a shift from ghost story to tale of the fantastic Sitting at ease in an armchair in Maurice s study the young visitor informs his host that he is not a representative of God rather he is God As he breezily explains the reasons for his taking corporeal form and outlines the scope of his powers we are given a clearer picture this gentleman isn t so much the all powerful all knowing God of the Bible as the less powerful less knowing Demiurge of Plato s Timaeus Our young man explains a few things to Maurice one of which is how the universe is best seen as a play a work of art in progress In many ways this brings to mind the Hindu concept of lila the creative play of the divine Also between sips of scotch he goes on to suggest how all forms of life will not survive eternally All things no matter how soul filled or divine dissolve and come to an end With these words we see an affinity with the Buddhist concept of emptiness A number of other subjects are addressed certainly one of the most intriguing sections of the novel PHILOSOPHICAL INUIRYMaurice is obsessed by the inevitability of death Maurice s prime philosophical uestion Do we survive in some way spiritual or otherwise beyond the grave I suspect this was also among the foremost of Kingsley Amis s conundrums about our earthly existence What better way for a literary novelist to dig deeper into the puzzle of life and death than introducing elements usually confined to various genres such as ghost stories fantastic stories and science fiction In this way I found The Green Man to be a deeply probing expansion of how a literary novel can address fundamental metaphysical uestions And let s not forget Kingsley Amis was a big fan of genre writing such as mystery and science fiction THE HERO S JOURNEYMaurice has serious issues in his dealing with the other people in his life his wife Joyce and his daughter Amy just to name two Turns out toward the end of the novel Maurice faces life and death challenges and unflinchingly take on the role of a hero Such is the power of love In this way his relationship with Amy opens up and we have hints his own life will be transformed To discover the details you will have to read for yourself Highly highly recommended I thought to myself how much welcome a faculty the imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not Kingsley Amis The Green Man
DOWNLOAD Û PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Ã Kingsley Amis
SUMMARY The Green Man ô PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB DOWNLOAD Û PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB à Kingsley Amis Kingsley Amis à 6 SUMMARY Exual deviancy rumoured to have killed his wife However the landlord Maurice Allington is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill Led by an anxious desire to vin There are two apparitions in this ghost story of a novel one explained and one not And there is the obligatory Amis political incorrectness some intended and some not I read this elder Amis becausea I like to see who he s skewering b I want reassurance that by comparison I do not drink too much andc his dialogue never disappoints like this snippet between our protagonist and the local rector You don t imagine it s a coincidence do you that this was the great age of masochism chiefly in England but by no means confined to here No I said An age of masochism couldn t be a coincidence Turns out God drinks Scotch with a little water