How Devilish are The Old Devils? Sarcasm and Forgiveness in Kingsley Amis’s Booker-Prize Novel

Abstract

Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils (1986) has received little published critical analysis despite its status as a Booker Prize winner for that year. Part of this may be due to Amis’s irascible reputation, deserved or not, as a bibulous bête noire of English letters—but nevertheless, it is curious that one of Amis’s final masterpieces has been so overlooked. This work attempts to remedy this absence and calls to attention the extraordinary amount of sarcastic and vitriolic dialogue in the novel, seeing an intelligent syntax: its speech acts serve the interests of predatory power relationships in strategically undercutting others, hoarding information, and confusing others via ambiguity or deniability. The characters’ verbal hostilities help structure and index The Old Devils’ final tonal change into greater generosity and forgiveness. Despite the warmer ending, sarcasm is the overlooked key to understanding Amis’s late triumph.