About Time THE OLD DEVILS

By Paul Gray

American admirers of Kingsley Amis, 64, were cheered last October to learn that The Old Devils, his 18th novel, had won the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award. "About time" seemed a fitting response to the news, especially from those readers who had discovered the writer's incendiary comic skills as far back as his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954). On the other hand, the thought of Amis' being toasted across Britain was enough to provoke an unsettling question among Stateside fans: Could it be possible that the aging bad boy wrote a book that did not insult or offend anyone?

The new novel, it turns out, manifests little of the female bashing that made the satiric Stanley and the Women (1985) so scandalous. In fact, dissatisfied wives are given some tart remarks to make about their variously unsatisfactory husbands. And if Amis continues to put liberal ideas through scorching ridicule, he also allows one of his men an expression of sympathy for Britain's unemployed, albeit loutish, youth. Even so, these concessions never denature Amis' characteristic bite; instead they suggest a new pathos behind the comic facade.

% The people in the title are all in their 60s and living in south Wales. The most prominent among them are Malcolm and Gwen Cellan-Davies, Charlie and Sophie Norris, and Peter and Muriel Thomas, each couple a tottering example of long-term marital pathology. Peter and Muriel have not touched each other in ten years; Charlie is a night-after-night drunk; Gwen is restive in the presence of her ineffectual husband. These people find their routines interrupted by the return of Alun and Rhiannon Weaver, friends from their youth who have decided to move back home. Alun has made a name for himself in England as a televised authority on the land of his birth ("I peddle Wales to the Saxons"). For her part, Rhiannon comes back to find two old flames still stirred by the remnants of her youthful beauty.

The Weavers galvanize everyone around them. The already spectacular level of drinking escalates, as Alun and his mates gather each midday at the Bible and Crown, the local pub. From there, it is on to expeditions in search of other watering houses that have not been rendered horrible by modern redecoration. At one such ruined spot, Peter pays ironic tribute to the affluent society: "In the bad old days only very rich people could hope to enjoy surroundings like these. Now they're within the reach of all." While the men pub-crawl, the wives gossip, drink wine and discuss the problems of having idle men about the premises: "It's quite a problem for retired people . . . All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast."

With the exception of death, nothing seems likely to interrupt the boozy monotony of such played-out lives. Amis does, as it happens, kill off one of his major characters, with no warning at all. But this end is not a climax. The novel's conclusion echoes with small regenerations, salvages hoarded against the arrival of the inevitable. The comfort is cold but no less welcome for that. The Old Devils is not quite Amis' funniest book; it is his wisest and most humane.