An Allobiography

 Having just lately reread William Maxwell's They Came Like Swallows – one of the most heartbreaking novels of the 20th century (and one of the best, I'd say, also one of the hardest to write about: I had a go, somewhere in here), I felt in need of something more cheering. When I spotted Kingsley Amis's Memoirs (1991) on the shelves of my favourite charity bookshop, I snapped it up, and have been enjoying it as my bedtime reading ever since. Amis characterises it as an 'allobiography' as much as an autobiography, as it is mostly about other people. Kingsley having divided his life between what might euphemistically be called 'affairs of the heart' – about which he wished to say nothing – and writing, about which there is nothing to be said, this narrowed the field of autobiographical possibilities, so he shifted the focus on to other people in his life. However, as they are all seen through Amis's sharply, sometimes viciously, comic eye, they all play their part in building a portrait of the writer himself. There are chapters on, for example, Philip Larkin, Bruce Montgomery (Edmund Crispin), Lord David Cecil and Robert Conquest, all of which I'm looking forward to reading. So far, only John Wain (in the chapter 'Oxford') has come in for a full-on drubbing, but Amis gives the best of it to Larkin: 
'It was Philip Larkin, looking up from as it might have been an advertisement of one of John's later books, who said: "Isn't England a marvellous free, open country? Take a fellow like old John Wain, now. No advantages of birth or position or wealth or energy or charm or looks or talent – nothing, and look where he is now. Where else but in England could a thing like that happen? You know, a few years ago I think he got to be Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Just imagine."'
Ouch.
  I had another happy find in another charity shop yesterday – an Oxford India Paper edition of Pickwick Papers, all 900-plus pages in a pocket-sized volume, but still perfectly readable, thanks to the ultra-thin (but strong and opaque) paper and clear type. I brought it home and straight away replaced my doorstop Fireside Dickens edition, thereby freeing up a little precious shelf space. The Fireside Pickwick is of course going to my favourite charity shop.