Kingsley Amis's "The Old Devils'

In theory, Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils, which won the Man Booker prize in 1986, seems like unappealing fare. It's a novel about a pack of reactionary, privileged old Welsh people who lash out at the unemployed, the young, and— horror of horrors— female priests. (None of the characters is remotely religious, but they don't like women doling out the sacramental bread because change, it seems, is bad by definition.)

Little of moment occurs— just plenty of drinking, a couple of sightseeing tours and the odd husband-wife discussions of the morning's bowel movements or lack thereof.

But it's a testament to Amis's art that The Old Devils, which has just been republished in America, avoids the literary equivalent of a Thanksgiving with your more vitriolic relatives. The Old Devils is a powerful example of a good writer's ability to render sympathetic those who seem nothing like us and who, if made flesh, would quite possibly loathe us.

That applies to the author, too, who was a boozing arch-reactionary old devil himself (he supported apartheid!) when he wrote The Old Devils.

Return of a love object

The novel takes place in Wales of the 1980s, where three couples and their assorted compatriots wind down their lives in a state of drowsy intoxication. But their stodgy routines are threatened by the news of the return of Rhiannon, the beautiful love object of many of the men's' younger days, and her husband Alun, who has conducted periodic affairs with most of the women in this social circle.

Actually, their routines aren't overly threatened. Almost everyone is already aware of Alun's philandering ways (only he seems to believe he's still fooling everyone), while his drinking simply increases the group's consumption from heroic to Herculean.

"It's quite a problem for retired people," one character muses (over drinks, naturally). "All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for."

But it isn't the epic imbibing that makes The Old Devils memorable. (Or it isn't merely that: Amis does drinking and its aftereffects better than any other writer I've encountered.) And while The Old Devils is funny, it doesn't feature the simple, straightforward hilarity of Lucky Jim, his first novel, which is also being re-printed by NYRB Classics.

War between the sexes

Instead, The Old Devils almost feels like a secular benediction, a finely crafted exit line for a novelist whose misanthropy, and particularly his misogyny, blighted and, in at least one case (1984's Stanley and the Women, which basically writes off women as universally crazed), ruined many of his later novels. The Old Devils wasn't Amis's last novel (he wrote six more), but it's the finest of his autumnal work, largely because it features some of his best female characters.

His grasp of women is aided by the novel's clear-eyed depiction of male misconduct and self-obsession. The marauding, manipulative womanizer and the misty-eyed romantic (who imagines an idealized version of his love) both have little regard for the thoughts and opinions of the women in question.

Rhiannon is a woman who has put up with both, although her attempts to handle the latter are particularly memorable. "The idea was to show him that she was not the curious creature, something between Snow White and a wild animal, that he had seemed to take her for," Amis explains, "but an actual friend of his, and by now quite an old one."

Spouses, not friends

The old devils are my grandparents' age, or would be if I had any left. They lived their adult lives in a societal context where honest communication between spouses wasn't the norm (and husbands and wives didn't often consider each other their best friends or friends at all).

The men and women of The Old Devils rarely share their feelings with the other camp. Even the most sympathetic of the men rely on stock generalizations to explain female behavior that they don't like or don't understand.

The meanest of the wives, Muriel, constantly belittles her husband— not because she's an evil shrew, but because they're both stuck in an unhappy marriage where long-term lack of communication has ossified into fear (in his case) and loathing (hers).

Marriages gone rotten

"Its like when somebody like a dissident or a minority finds they can't get anywhere through legal channels," she tells a (female) friend over bottles of wine, "so they go around blowing up power stations. Of course I don't hold with people actually literally doing that, but by Christ I promise you I know how they feel."

Amis's depictions of marriages gone rotten are pitch-perfect, without making you hate any of the parties implicated (Muriel and Alun occasionally excepted). One husband struggles to etch out a smile in response to his wife's joke: "He had thought that line quite funny on its first appearance about the time of the Suez."

But Amis also lets us see the mundane, happy little bonding moments that can provide the saving grace of most relationships, as when he reveals Alun's dyed snowy hair: "Most of his friends were pretty sure that he improved on nature in this department, as in others; not many of them would have guessed that Rhiannon put the whitener on for him while they giggled and had drinks."

Humanizing the ugly

The Old Devils humanizes, for at least a chapter, even its ugliest characters. The point of good literature (beyond enjoyment, which this novel delivers too) is to extend our care and attention to those who are not like us, people we may not even like. It explains them, even if it doesn't necessarily excuse them.

In the process, The Old Devils performs the same service for an author. Kingsley Amis tried very hard, and quite successfully, to become an ogre in his later years. The Old Devils demonstrates that he was a good deal more.