Luke G's Reviews > The Alteration

Before this I had only read a little of Lucky Jim, and Kingsley Amis seemed a little too macho and mean-spirited a writer for me. This book has that feel too, but it is still pretty good. This is an alternate history narrative, like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. Events take place in a social-conservative's wet-dream version of England, circa 1970: almost every instance of technological or social progress starting with the renaissance has failed to happen. The Vatican still rules the western world (all of "Christiandom" except "New England"), and though low-life "inventors" have managed to sneak trains, dirigibles, and photography into people's lives, electricity is the work of the devil, and so there are no lightbulbs, telephones, or Thames Television to help Londoners swing. The protagonist's dad reads from the paper at the breakfast table and gets worked up over the two great threats to civilization: science and muslims. So depressing that this book was written in response to attitudes in 1976 UK, and here we are in 2006 US.

As a story, this book is only a little interesting: 10-yr-old Hubert Anvil is the best soprano in the world, and church authorities want to remove his balls to preserve the purity of his voice (the alteration). It is sometimes alarming to see that authors were plotting books around tired Freudian symbols well into the seventies. Amis mines that one for all it is worth, which isn't much. Amis is good at telling the story, though, and there isn't a lot of lag here.

What makes The Alteration worth reading is that the author seems intellectually opposed to the kind of traditionalist zeal that rules this book's world, but emotionally aligned with it. His careful and loving descriptions of quince jams, boarding-school discipline, cathedral naves, honor, pomp, hierarchical finery, starch, and galloping horses show that he is mourning the same values that he is mocking. That conflict comes across as weird and fascinating to a regular ol boring ol lefty like me. Amis is a spy back from the other side, and he shines a little light on conservative thinking and imagination. At one point a priest defends his toady behavior to another by saying, "[A] man does what he's told, goes where he's sent, answers what he's asked. And, after seeing to that, one is free." That strategy of public masking and loyalty to protect private reality explains all kinds of wide-stance hypocrisy to me.