Lucky Jim

I just started listening to Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. It is an anglophile's dream. All Oxbridgey and full of very dry humor. The main character, Dixon, is new to, and trying to keep, his teaching post at a we're-not-quite-Oxford-or-Cambridge university. He has to remain in the good graces of an absent-minded professor named Welsh. Here are some funny bits:

• Niggling mindlessness
• When listening to Welsh drone on in no particular direction, Dixon realizes he needs to remain "present and conscious"
• Pretended effort of memory
• Dixon's internal dialogue: "How had he made his bad impression? The most likely thing he always thought was his having inflicted a superficial wound on the professor of English in his first week."