The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986) by Kingsley Amis was a Booker Prize winner for that year. I had previously only read the brilliant Lucky Jim, but always wanted to read more since I was big fan of his son Martin Amis' writing. Martin wrote appealing about his father's novels in his autobiography Experience, and The Old Devils was one of the novels he singled out as being a good read. I feel as though I am missing out on some of the fun since I am not British and I can't see what all the fuss about being Welsh alluded to in the novel is all about. An infamous Welshman Alun Weaver who has a made a literary career out of being Welsh returns to Whales with his wife Rhiannon disrupting a community of long time friends who curmudgeonly gather to discuss the state of Wales and being Welsh while getting pissed on a daily basis. It is full of inter-sex miscommunication, adultery, dealing with the usual foibles of people you've know for ages and the condition of growing old. I enjoyed the novel, but perhaps not as much as I might have if I could be in on the joke of what it is like being Welsh.

Comments

[Edward]

Not that it's going to help you much, but being Welsh to the British is a bit like being Tasmanian or Kiwi to mainland Australians - sheep shaggers basically ;-) Perhaps you have equivalent states in America, though I don't know enough about America to pick one with any confidence.
Of course I'm massively over-simplifying, and to be honest, before I went back to England for the first time in 16 years I never thought anything stereotypical of the Welsh except that they were coal miners, keen rugby players and good singers. But then I heard a few sheep references which alerted me to an element of, shall we say, 'playful' prejudice. Of course they also have their own living language, and I suppose there must be quite a distinct culture there somewhere.

[MC]

I didn't get the feeling that they were considered hill billy-yokels like you are suggesting. (I think the American equivalent of what you're suggesting would be Kentuckians or West Virginians-think "Deliverance").

It's got more to do with the language and obsession with the Welsh culture in the book-specific foods, home decorations, pubs, the landscape, heavy drinking, etc. I would be curious as to what a Welsh person would make of Amis' summation of their country.