To the Editors:
Terry Teachout’s discussion of Kingsley Amis (November 1988) is laudable, and it’s meet and right for The New Criterion to treat of Amis. However, a couple of tiny quibbles: first, Martin Amis’s latest novel is not Einstein’s Monsters but Success, an eminently unreadable 1987 British Yuppie novel (hence Teachout can easily be forgiven for overlooking that flatulent little book).
Second, Ego and Id are not dogs in Lucky Jim. Rather, if memory serves, Id is the surviving Welch household cat, two others named Ego and Super-Ego having died. Dixon encounters Id on entering the Wefch house one evening. He admires her because she never lets Professor or Mrs. Welch pick her up. Dixon pets her and whispers to her that she ought to scratch her masters and pee on the carpet. On hearing these suggestions she purrs loudly.
Edward Meadows
New York, NY