Bit of a headache, you know
by chuckofish
“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”
From Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (Chapter six)
Oh, I laughed out loud as I typed this!
Lucky Jim, published in 1954, was Kingsley Amis’s first novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. Set sometime around 1950, the book follows the exploits of the eponymous Jim Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. Christopher Hitchens described it as the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century. The New Yorker said in their review that it was a “highly unusual first novel by a young English writer who is endowed with, and in control of, more than his share of talent, humor, and human sympathy.” Well. It is very funny.
dual personalities 
I read that book in an English Novel class in college. Regrettably, that paragraph is the only thing I remember about it (the book, not the class). It is a perfect, perfect hangover description and a good Wednesday morning laugh! Thanks.
The whole chapter is really funny. Cutting up the bedspread that he has partially burned…I laugh every time I think of resolving never to move my eyeballs again.
Everything has already been thought by your readers, since every one of them has read, laughed out loud at and recalls this passage from “Modern English Novel” in college. I am always struck in conversations to discover (as Chamberville wrote) how many people remember and identify with and still laugh with this passage – but remember nothing else of the book (or of their entire college experience).
IIRC there is another line – to the effect of the Prussian Army performed field maneuvers on the back of my tongue – that laways made me laugh the loudest.
I need to add this to my must-read list!
“He felt bad.” Something tells me this will be the mantra of quite a few of my friends a week from Sunday.
haha. Bit of a headache, you know.