The right of reply
Sir: Mr Summers and Miss Collins would have done better to go on sheltering behind the screen of anonymity I had chivalrously erected in front of them. Both, in different degrees, give further evi- dence of the shortcomings for which I chided them in my original article.
It is Mr Summers who offers the richer blend of incapacities. 'Since it is me alone, that [Amis] is crying in his porridge about,' he writes, 'I trust it is oic for "the thickest student" ever in •Swansea Univer- sity . . . now to have the right of reply too?' Evidently so; but a glance at my article, or at Miss Collins's letter, or at Mr Roberts's earlier letter, will show that it was not at all him alone (as he would put it) that I was in tears over, and another glance will show that I did .not call him the thickest student ever in Swansea University, but merely 'an unusually thick student in my classes at the University College of Swansea' (today's italics). However, in view of his letter we may have to consider seri- ously his claim to the majestic nadir he mentions. '
To misquote a man within quotation marks is a rather novel
and appealingly simple method of distortion. Mr Summers uses it again in the course of misrepresent- ing my views about the Welsh. He says: '[Amis] described all us Welsh as "slathered in woad and sheepshit."' What I wrote, which was 'woaded in pit-dirt and sheep- shit', was part of a jocose caricature of ignorant or hostile English views of the Welsh, for which as a whole
I retain a deep respect and affec- tion, as my many Welsh friends will testify.
Anyway, according to Mr Sum- mers, I cannot hope to surprise anybody now that I have sunk to my 'proper level masquerading as the concocter of crypto-fascist fake James Bond tee yarns'. I suppose he refers to the single yarn, Colonel Sun, which I published under a pseudonym while letting everybody know I had written it. I did not masquerade as its concocter, or concoctor: I concocted it. ,Mr Summers comes near libelling me by implying I got someone else to write`the thing and then passed it off as my own work. And anybody who has read a Bond adventure and a few tee yarns, and imagines the one to be an example of the other, cannot have understood what he has read.
. As to Miss Collins: her claim that her account of our conversa- tion was accurate is false simply in that she omitted from that account the vital qualification (to my un- friendly remarks about film pro- ducers) which I repeatedly stressed to her while we were talking and her omission of which started this whole business off. I cannot under- stand why she goes on about libel: all I wanted put into the record was a statement that I had been kindly treated by certain individuals in the film industry—not very flagrant de- famation. I wonder too why she bothers to mention the unchal- lenged fact—dwelt upon, indeed, in my article—that I did not ask to see a proof of her piece. Does she mean that, in such a case, the man interviewed must expect to find himself misrepresented? That is what I think, especially these days; but it is odd to find her seeming to agree.
Yours and all that, Kingsley Amis Lemmans, Hadley Common, Barnet, Herts
Previous page
