For a while there it looked as if readers in the land of the free and the home of the brave were going to be protected from Author Kingsley Amis' 17th novel. Although it had won considerable acclaim when it appeared in England during the spring of 1984, Stanley and the Women did not find U.S. publishers begging for the rights to reprint it. Odd, thought some people, including Amis' literary agent Jonathan Clowes, who offered the novel to three houses only to receive "somewhat embarrassed" turndowns. Representatives from two of the American publishers told Clowes that their negative decisions were made because of "opposition from lady members of their board of directors." When rumors that one of Britain's most prominent and popular postwar novelists was being censored Stateside by a feminist cabal hit print last January, the literary flap echoed on both sides of the Atlantic for weeks. The attendant commotion and reams of free publicity also guaranteed that someone, for reasons noble, shrewd or both, would finally issue Amis' book in the U.S.
No American publisher, naturally, has admitted rejecting Amis on the basis of suspected misogyny. But if a few zealous feminists in positions of editorial power did try to squelch Stanley and the Women, they chiefly succeeded in shoring up an old truth: ideologues, of whatever persuasion, make lousy readers of fiction. They want useful truths, whereas good novels offer unbridled and possibly subversive speculations. Amis has excelled at rattling preconceptions ever since the appearance of his classically comic first novel, Lucky Jim, three decades ago. This time out he is near the top of his offensive, infuriating, intolerable and utterly hilarious form.
Stanley Duke, 45, is the advertising manager for a London daily newspaper. The fact that his first wife Nowell walked out on him after twelve years still rankles Stanley, when he bothers to think of it. His second wife Susan, assistant editor of a literary weekly, is both a cut or two above him in class and still devoted after 2 1/2 years of marriage. All in all, Stanley's life suits him just fine. He passes for a liberated gent, supporting his wife's career and ordering drinks for ladies who drop in at one of his favorite pubs, where the rules make it, as even Stanley allows, "hard on women."
This routine is violently interrupted by the arrival of Stanley's son Steve. The young man, whom his father has not seen for some time, has begun behaving oddly. He rips up Susan's copy of Saul Bellow's novel Herzog. He pays a call on his mother and hurls an ashtray into the TV set. He tells Stanley that Old Testament patriarchs are spying on him. Stanley phones Cliff Wainwright, a doctor and an old friend, and asks for help with Steve: "I'm afraid he's mad." This judgment is confirmed by Dr. Alfred Nash, a crusty old psychiatrist who examines Steve and diagnoses acute schizophrenia. Nash asks the father about mental illness elsewhere in the family, and Stanley opines that ex-Wife Nowell "is a bit mad." He explains, "Her sense of other people's not good. They can be sweet to her, and they can be foul to her, and that's about as much scope as they've got." The doctor puts another question: "Would you say, would you assent to the proposition that all women are mad?" Stanley replies, "Yes. No, not all. There are exceptions, naturally."