KINGSLEY’S ENGLISH

Regarding Merle Rubin’s review of Kingsley Amis’ “The Folks That Live on the Hill” (Aug. 12):

To read an Amis book with pleasure, you have to imagine it being spoken in an emphatic slurred gabble by a man with a bountiful amount of under-chin skin to another like lump, also in a leather chair, in a club enrolling exclusively elderly post-Bacchants.

An Amis sentence always has one or several key words, spoken like burps, that expel humor from the drone of verbiage. I grunted with pleasure, paws in the air, tickled by the craftsmanship of the sentences your joke-proof reviewer quoted as examples of Amis’ alleged padding.

Get a sense of humor, Merle, would be Amis’ advice, or might he simply bend over in a thoughtful posture, back-Merle-wards?

BART MILLS

MANHATTAN BEACH