That Saturday Morning Feeling

This weekend being the conclusion of Freshers' Week, it seems appropriate to quote the following description of Dixon's hangover, from Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim. I am preparing to teach this academic comedy in a couple of weeks to students who will shortly have to emerge from an alcohol haze, and enter their books as term proper begins:

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 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.

Labels: English Literature, hangover, Lucky Jim

0 Comments:

<< Home