Bibliography - David Lodge edition
Aug. 31st, 2009 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilySo, when I went back to the UK, I mentioned that I wanted to read the David Lodge books about campus-swapping, which I knew my father had somewhere. My father then unearthed them, along with a couple of other David Lodge works, and I spent a week doing the bookworm book-devouring thing. Hence, a special Bibliography David Lodge edition.
Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses - David Lodge
The original campus-swap tale, this tells the story of Philip Swallow, an academic from the British university town of Rummidge, who has never published anything substantial and always seems to get a bit caught up in side tracks, and Morris Zapp, from Euphoria State university, he of the bold academic manouvering and forthright career zest. A lecturer of English and a professor of same, the two exchange places on a career swap scheme; Zapp discovers that he's actually not a bad people manager, and Swallow discovers a blossoming utopian wild-child side. Of course, what wasn't predicted was that they both fall for each other's wives at the same time, which is a bit of a turn up for the books, and the novel closes with a film-freeze still of the four of them in NYC, trying to work out what the hell to do.
The main point of this novel seems to have been to satirise the vast, gaping differences between the British and American university cultures - the difference in student activism, pay rates, attitude to work and courses, expectations of faculty. Having seen both sides of the divide, I can now smile with rueful appreciation, even if the politics of the novel are rather mired in the mists of time. The characters, however, feel somewhat self-centered, but what else would you expect? There's a definite emphasis here on the self-discovery mode, the plumbing of hidden depths, the attempt to self-identify that studying a humanity is supposed to ensure. It fits in with the period, too - all about Free Love and Understanding Oneself and Teach-ins, that sort of thing. But it doesn't quite stand up next to the sequel...
Small World: An Academic Romance - David Lodge
The sequel is more successful because it uses a wider range of characters and depicts them in rather deeper detail. Swallow and Zapp still feature, but Lodge takes the opportunity to introduce a whole range of other figures from the fictional world of literary criticism via the medium of the summer conference season. Our guide to this insanity is Persse McGarrigle, a young man who has ended up with a professorial job at the University of Limerick by mistake, and who has come along to his first conference at Rummidge to see what all this theory lark is about. Alas, it is impenetrable - and probably is to most of the book's readers as well, but that's alright, because you have Persse gamely trying to understand it, so you don't feel like you're being a total idiot if this obviously intelligent and good-natured young man can't get it at first blush.
The problem for me, as a note aside, is that I can read all the lit crit quotations that Lodge gamely throws in, and actually start having an intellectual reaction to them, which is a very embarrassing thing to do when you know that it's been put there as an example of theoretical insanity. But I digress.
The plot revolves around Persse's search for Angelica, a blooming beauty he meets at the Rummidge conference and then follows all over the world in the hope of finding her. It doesn't work, of course, and even the discovery of what's gone wrong is couched in deeply theoretical 'you are in love with the image you have constructed rather than the object itself' terms (rather good fun). The book is full with literary allusions, and there's a nice subplot about a mooted UNESCO chair of literary criticism about which the senior characters prowl. As I say, this is a much stronger book than the first, mainly because of the depth of the characters and the sheer learned allusiveness of the writing; I think I will definitely be coming back to this. She says, as a woman with three conferences in the next five months. Ahahaha.
Nice Work - David Lodge
Of course, after all of that, the question has to be asked of what good studying a humanity, particularly one as obviously abtruse and full of theoretical jargon and fluff as English, can actually do. Lodge does not shy away from the challenge, but tackles it head-on in Nice Work. Again based on the Rummidge campus, our protagonists on this occasion are Robyn Penrose, a strongly feminist academic born of academics, and Vic Wilcox, manager of an engineering firm. The two are paired on a shadow scheme that aims to put people in academia in touch with people in industry; Robyn, as a temporary lecturer on a three year contract, takes one for the team to her immense dismay.
Of course, as the shadowing progresses, Robyn (whose specialism is industrial literature of the 18th century and so has a rather antiquated view of the manufacturing process) feels she's getting a lot out of it, and begins to get a sense of Life Beyond Academe, strengthening her feeling that people like Vic's daughter should be at university and the ivory tower should be opened to all. Vic, however, entranced by intellectual conversation and ideas he's never been encouraged to develop, falls in love. This leads to a one-night stand that Vic believes is the beginning of true love and Robyn thinks back on as - well, misjudged.
It's a rather good novel, in that it does address the 'what is it for?' question, but also makes an interesting case for what the real world can feed back into academe. If I could put this across Lord Mandelson's desk and ask him to read it for public policy content rather than for the sex, I would. It is also going on my list of books to tell people to read when they want to know how what I'm doing has any relevance. Exposure to literature and culture makes a difference to Vic and his family, and that's what it's supposed to do.
The British Museum Is Falling Down - David Lodge
An earlier book, this still pursues the academic theme, but also incorporates another strand of Lodge's interests, namely Catholicism. The plot is a day in the life of Adam Appleby, a scholar working on his PhD in the British Museum Library (before, of course, it was moved into its new home), his worries about his wife and whether or not she is, as he fears, pregnant (thus adding to their three-child brood), plus the usual pains and strains of writing a PhD and having massive angst about it and one's relationship with one's department. Academia plays a balanced part of the concern here, creating neat counterpoint with the practical concerns of how one feeds one's family and the ethical obligations that a Catholic married couple of have to fulfill. The description of the 'safe period' method, with its scientific charts and temperature takings, is - well, horrific, to put it frankly.
The day is marked by several opportunities to make some money and get well known quick, most of which fall through (although the last one, out of the blue, does not). While the ups and downs of academic life are rarely quite that speedy, it sometimes doesn't feel very much different. There's a subplot revolving around papers of a little known but possibly to be known writer, which Adam extricates from the clutches of the dead man's mistress, only to see them destroyed - the reader groans.
Apparently the novel is deliberately written so as to create pastiches of literary genres - for instance, the scene where Adam must renew his ticket to the reading room is meant to be reminiscent of Kafka, although I only spotted this when it was pointed out. More obvious was the end, which takes up the internal monologue style of Joyce's Ulysses. The other passages, alas, I shall have to leave for readers more educated than me to pick out, but I'm sure they're all jolly good.
How Far Can You Go? - David Lodge
This novel is the one where Lodge takes Catholicism and sees what happens. He starts with a group of undergraduates attending the university Catholic society and follows them, plus their priest, through the next twenty years of their lives. They get married, have children, have affairs, leave the church, return to the church... while the title of the novel initially refers to the game of 'how far can you go?' played by unmarried courting couples, eventually it becomes a reference to theological experimentation - how far can English Catholics go in an attempt to redefine and own their own church before the heavy hand of Rome descends?
The time frame of the novel, from the 1950s to the 1970s, is (as Lodge painstakingly explains, to at least this reader's gratitude) a vital time for Catholicism in general. You have the Second Vatican Council, which continues under a change of Pope, there's the hope that contraception might be allowed - and lo, the encyclical Humanae Vitae puts the foot down, while also crushing any hopes that life under the new pope, Pope Paul VI, would be any freer. The theological growth and development of the characters is absolutely vital to the novel; without their spiritual inner lives, there really wouldn't be much of a novel at all. They all develop in interesting ways. One becomes a nun, who loses her drive until a visit to the US exposes her to evangelical Pentecostal-style prayer. Another starts as a Catholic, then traipses through the various religions along with nervous breakdowns. A new convert, staunchly upholding the doctrine, has to cope with what the religion says to him when he turns out to be gay. A married couple have to deal with the faith in the context of a disabled child and a daughter killed in a car accident. It's... well. It's very black humour, but the engagement with the internal spiritual and intellectual life makes it very much worth reading, and I thoroughly recommend it.
Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses - David Lodge
The original campus-swap tale, this tells the story of Philip Swallow, an academic from the British university town of Rummidge, who has never published anything substantial and always seems to get a bit caught up in side tracks, and Morris Zapp, from Euphoria State university, he of the bold academic manouvering and forthright career zest. A lecturer of English and a professor of same, the two exchange places on a career swap scheme; Zapp discovers that he's actually not a bad people manager, and Swallow discovers a blossoming utopian wild-child side. Of course, what wasn't predicted was that they both fall for each other's wives at the same time, which is a bit of a turn up for the books, and the novel closes with a film-freeze still of the four of them in NYC, trying to work out what the hell to do.
The main point of this novel seems to have been to satirise the vast, gaping differences between the British and American university cultures - the difference in student activism, pay rates, attitude to work and courses, expectations of faculty. Having seen both sides of the divide, I can now smile with rueful appreciation, even if the politics of the novel are rather mired in the mists of time. The characters, however, feel somewhat self-centered, but what else would you expect? There's a definite emphasis here on the self-discovery mode, the plumbing of hidden depths, the attempt to self-identify that studying a humanity is supposed to ensure. It fits in with the period, too - all about Free Love and Understanding Oneself and Teach-ins, that sort of thing. But it doesn't quite stand up next to the sequel...
Small World: An Academic Romance - David Lodge
The sequel is more successful because it uses a wider range of characters and depicts them in rather deeper detail. Swallow and Zapp still feature, but Lodge takes the opportunity to introduce a whole range of other figures from the fictional world of literary criticism via the medium of the summer conference season. Our guide to this insanity is Persse McGarrigle, a young man who has ended up with a professorial job at the University of Limerick by mistake, and who has come along to his first conference at Rummidge to see what all this theory lark is about. Alas, it is impenetrable - and probably is to most of the book's readers as well, but that's alright, because you have Persse gamely trying to understand it, so you don't feel like you're being a total idiot if this obviously intelligent and good-natured young man can't get it at first blush.
The problem for me, as a note aside, is that I can read all the lit crit quotations that Lodge gamely throws in, and actually start having an intellectual reaction to them, which is a very embarrassing thing to do when you know that it's been put there as an example of theoretical insanity. But I digress.
The plot revolves around Persse's search for Angelica, a blooming beauty he meets at the Rummidge conference and then follows all over the world in the hope of finding her. It doesn't work, of course, and even the discovery of what's gone wrong is couched in deeply theoretical 'you are in love with the image you have constructed rather than the object itself' terms (rather good fun). The book is full with literary allusions, and there's a nice subplot about a mooted UNESCO chair of literary criticism about which the senior characters prowl. As I say, this is a much stronger book than the first, mainly because of the depth of the characters and the sheer learned allusiveness of the writing; I think I will definitely be coming back to this. She says, as a woman with three conferences in the next five months. Ahahaha.
Nice Work - David Lodge
Of course, after all of that, the question has to be asked of what good studying a humanity, particularly one as obviously abtruse and full of theoretical jargon and fluff as English, can actually do. Lodge does not shy away from the challenge, but tackles it head-on in Nice Work. Again based on the Rummidge campus, our protagonists on this occasion are Robyn Penrose, a strongly feminist academic born of academics, and Vic Wilcox, manager of an engineering firm. The two are paired on a shadow scheme that aims to put people in academia in touch with people in industry; Robyn, as a temporary lecturer on a three year contract, takes one for the team to her immense dismay.
Of course, as the shadowing progresses, Robyn (whose specialism is industrial literature of the 18th century and so has a rather antiquated view of the manufacturing process) feels she's getting a lot out of it, and begins to get a sense of Life Beyond Academe, strengthening her feeling that people like Vic's daughter should be at university and the ivory tower should be opened to all. Vic, however, entranced by intellectual conversation and ideas he's never been encouraged to develop, falls in love. This leads to a one-night stand that Vic believes is the beginning of true love and Robyn thinks back on as - well, misjudged.
It's a rather good novel, in that it does address the 'what is it for?' question, but also makes an interesting case for what the real world can feed back into academe. If I could put this across Lord Mandelson's desk and ask him to read it for public policy content rather than for the sex, I would. It is also going on my list of books to tell people to read when they want to know how what I'm doing has any relevance. Exposure to literature and culture makes a difference to Vic and his family, and that's what it's supposed to do.
The British Museum Is Falling Down - David Lodge
An earlier book, this still pursues the academic theme, but also incorporates another strand of Lodge's interests, namely Catholicism. The plot is a day in the life of Adam Appleby, a scholar working on his PhD in the British Museum Library (before, of course, it was moved into its new home), his worries about his wife and whether or not she is, as he fears, pregnant (thus adding to their three-child brood), plus the usual pains and strains of writing a PhD and having massive angst about it and one's relationship with one's department. Academia plays a balanced part of the concern here, creating neat counterpoint with the practical concerns of how one feeds one's family and the ethical obligations that a Catholic married couple of have to fulfill. The description of the 'safe period' method, with its scientific charts and temperature takings, is - well, horrific, to put it frankly.
The day is marked by several opportunities to make some money and get well known quick, most of which fall through (although the last one, out of the blue, does not). While the ups and downs of academic life are rarely quite that speedy, it sometimes doesn't feel very much different. There's a subplot revolving around papers of a little known but possibly to be known writer, which Adam extricates from the clutches of the dead man's mistress, only to see them destroyed - the reader groans.
Apparently the novel is deliberately written so as to create pastiches of literary genres - for instance, the scene where Adam must renew his ticket to the reading room is meant to be reminiscent of Kafka, although I only spotted this when it was pointed out. More obvious was the end, which takes up the internal monologue style of Joyce's Ulysses. The other passages, alas, I shall have to leave for readers more educated than me to pick out, but I'm sure they're all jolly good.
How Far Can You Go? - David Lodge
This novel is the one where Lodge takes Catholicism and sees what happens. He starts with a group of undergraduates attending the university Catholic society and follows them, plus their priest, through the next twenty years of their lives. They get married, have children, have affairs, leave the church, return to the church... while the title of the novel initially refers to the game of 'how far can you go?' played by unmarried courting couples, eventually it becomes a reference to theological experimentation - how far can English Catholics go in an attempt to redefine and own their own church before the heavy hand of Rome descends?
The time frame of the novel, from the 1950s to the 1970s, is (as Lodge painstakingly explains, to at least this reader's gratitude) a vital time for Catholicism in general. You have the Second Vatican Council, which continues under a change of Pope, there's the hope that contraception might be allowed - and lo, the encyclical Humanae Vitae puts the foot down, while also crushing any hopes that life under the new pope, Pope Paul VI, would be any freer. The theological growth and development of the characters is absolutely vital to the novel; without their spiritual inner lives, there really wouldn't be much of a novel at all. They all develop in interesting ways. One becomes a nun, who loses her drive until a visit to the US exposes her to evangelical Pentecostal-style prayer. Another starts as a Catholic, then traipses through the various religions along with nervous breakdowns. A new convert, staunchly upholding the doctrine, has to cope with what the religion says to him when he turns out to be gay. A married couple have to deal with the faith in the context of a disabled child and a daughter killed in a car accident. It's... well. It's very black humour, but the engagement with the internal spiritual and intellectual life makes it very much worth reading, and I thoroughly recommend it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 04:48 pm (UTC)Yes, Robyn's ability to discuss high-faluting ideas with everyone and anyone she meets is impressive - I do my best, but inevitably end up falling over my own feet.
The edition of Nice Work at home has a cover with a still from the television series, but I too have not seen it.