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Just doing some updating in Librarything I noticed on a sidebar that it’s David Lodge’s birthday, so I thought I’d highlight this quintessentially British author who is 75 today.
Lodge is a fellow South Londoner, but these days lives and works in Birmingham which he has immortalised in his fictional university city of Rummidge, indeed the halls of academe loom large in much of his work, and that’s where the first book I read by him was set…
Changing Places is a tale of two campuses, Rummidge and Plotinus (modelled on Berkeley, CA), and two lecturers both forty, (as was Lodge when it was published in 1975) do a job-swap. Brit, Philip Swallow is very conventional – the exact opposite of the loud and snobbish Maurice Zapp, but they gradually find themselves fitting in, especially with each other’s wives! It’s very much a novel of its time – takes me right back to the 1970s. It makes a Rummidge trilogy along with Small World which explores the academic gravy train, and 1984′s Nice Work; Swallow and Zapp appear in both. The latter two were both televised, and Lodge adapted Nice Work himself.
The last Lodge book I read, which was a couple of years ago, was The British Museum is Falling Down – one of his 60s novels, set in swinging London and about Catholics, contraception and procrastination. It was funny, but it wasn’t until I got to the end and read the afterword, that I realised it contained a whole series of literary pastiches in from Joyce’s Ulysses to Kafka – only having read one of the spoofed texts I could be forgiven this though.
I’ve got around four other Lodge novels in the TBR plus his book about how literature works The Art of Fiction; in particular I have been meaning to read Deaf Sentence (2008) for ages, so I shall go and ’rummidge ‘ around for it …
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID LODGE
To check out books on Amazon UK, click below:
Deaf Sentence
I’ve often been told that Lodge is an author I would like and yet I’ve never picked up anything by him! It always seems like his books are part of a series, but I don’t think that’s exactly true… still I’m worried that I’ll pick up something by him and be completely lost!
He’s very British – however his style is eminently readable and full of humour. Although Changing Places is a little dated, it or Small World which came out a decade later might be a place to start. Doubtless others would recommend other starting points, but it was alright for me!
I like your collage of Lodge covers. I must come back to David Lodge – I’ve read quite a few of his books, but not for a few years, the last one being Therapy, which was pretty good. I see that the trilogy is now available in a combined volume – that would be a great place for Steph to start perhaps http://goo.gl/Y6gbZ
One of my all time favourite authors. I even loved Author, Author which wasn’t funny (nor was it meant to be). I loved Nice Work, I loved Thinks… and I am very fond of the British Museum and Out of the Shelter. Belated Happy Birthday David Lodge from me too!