May '13 / David Lodge Reading: Changing Places

[kev67]

I was not sure what to make of the letter writing chapter and the newspaper article chapter. I think overall it may have hurt the book, because they made it seem yet more farcical and slapstick. On the other hand, I thought it was farcical anyway. I found the rest of the book quite funny. It had a sort of 70s sitcom feel in places, in particular at Dr O'Shea's home.

I have read several other campus comedies, including Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury. Solar by Ian McEwen could be considered an academic comedy. Lucky Jim is often listed as one of the best British novels of the 20th century, but I don't know why. I have read Lucky Jim twice and I enjoyed it both times, but I could not say why it was a much better book than Changing Places. Changing Places somehow seems slight, but Lucky Jim was hardly deep. I would say The History Man was a better book than Changing Places and on a par with Lucky Jim. Overall I would say Nice Work was the best campus novel I have read, but that was hardly a comic novel.

[neilgee]

Dr O'Shea's home is where Morris Zapp moves into in England, I point this out because I had to look it up myself I wasn't sure what you meant. The scenes where Zapp is puzzled by British radio made me smile, I would have begun listening to Radio One myself only four years after when this novel is set and some of the dj's I listened to like Tony Blackburn would have been on the channel Zapp was listening to.

If I may add a byline reading this has made me glad that university lecturers are no longer allowed to sleep with students. How easy was it to be exploited by an unscrupulous Proffessor like Zapp in those days? Frightening.

Kev your views of the other campus novels almost exactly tally with mine (which is quite extraordinary on this forum!) I too couldn't see what the fuss was about Lucky Jim and could only assume that it's one of those books that was trendy when published but has not aged well.

Thanx to you and Scher for some illuminating comments, you have both enhanced my reading (I expect to finish it tomorrow) and that's what book of the month forums are all about when they are at their best

[kev67]

Perhaps I was getting mixed up with Milo O'Shea (who played Duran Duran in Barbarella among many other things) and Richard O'Sullivan, who wasn't actually Irish, but seemed to be in a lot of those 70's British sitcoms.

It is over forty years since the events in the book. One thing that struck me was that international travel is similar. The aircraft more or less look the same. It takes as long to get there. Cars were not quite as reliable, but still widely available. Telecommunications were not quite so easy. It would be emails or skype instead of letters these days, but Phillip Swallow's wife did manage to make a transatlantic telephone call to him. I was struck that most British houses were cold and draughty (like my flat still is) but I think this must be the time when a lot of people started to install central heating in their homes.

I suppose it is gender roles, student politics and attitudes to sex that have changed the most. I cannot remember what Phillip Swallow's wife is called, but it is doubtful she would be a housewife now. I was slightly surprised to read that she had re-applied to complete her Masters degree by the end of the book, because I assumed there were not many mature students at university in those days.

Student politics did not stay active very long. In America, I suppose, the Vietnam draft motivated a lot of students to take action. In Britain there was no draft, but the left wing political scene was much stronger than it is now. Communism had not yet collapsed, and the unions had not been beaten down.

I gather with the advent of the contraceptive pill and the relaxation of the censorship laws, the mainstream media went sex mad for a while, and that that is reflected in the book. Some popular British comedy films, television comedies and stage farces were filled with sexual innuendo and titillation, now considered strictly unfunny and unacceptable. Many of David Lodge's books contain a lot of sex, which made Author, Author!! a slight surprise (because Henry James did not get any).

[Scheherazade]

I have not read any of the campus novels you have mentioned but last year I read On Beauty by Smith. Even though it is compared to Howard's End thematically, I think it is a campus novel as well because the main characters are academics and their choices. It is interesting to see that academic world (at least the American one) has not changed much in 40 years.

Kev, I agree with you that attitudes towards gender roles, student politics and sexuality are different today but they are still high on the agenda... Albeit for different reasons.

[neilgee]

I finished the book today, actually yesterday in English time, and I was disappointed to find Lodge messing with genres again in the final chapter which is written in the form of a play. Now plays (unless we are talking about Shakespeare and his contemporaries where language is important) are something I'd rather watch performed than read, and especially this last chapter where the action is very visual and not very coherent. I marked the book down from a 3.5 to a 3 in my rating just because of that ending! I was in two minds about whether the journalist and letters chapters worked but this definitely didn't for me.

Again, Kev, I'd be interested in your opinion on this.

Scher I would hope the academic world in America has changed more than you think. I know a tutor of mine (in England, obviously) had to wait until a student he fell in love with had left Uni before he could declare the relationship and marry her, but I've no idea what the situation is in America.

[kev67]

I thought the last chapter may have been Lodge's take on the problem of endings. There was a bit in a book, Let's Write a Novel, that Philip asks Hilary to send him, which discussed endings:

"And there are three types of story, the story that ends happily, the story that ends unhappily, and the story that ends neither happily or unhappily, or, in other words, doesn't really end at all... The best kind of story is the one with a happy ending; the next best is the one with an unhappy ending, and the worst is the story that has no ending at all. The novice is advised to begin with the first kind of story. Indeed, unless you have Genius, you should never attempt any other kind."

Presumably Lodge does not agree with this, unless he thinks he's a genius. The structure of the Changing Places is referred to in other places in Let's Write a Novel. Hilary tells Philip there is a chapter on how to write an epistolary novel.

The last chapter contains a discussion of Jane Austin which I thought was quite interesting. Phillip refers to the point in Northanger Abbey in which Austen senses that her readers will work out that a happy ending is about to conclude.

On the subject of Austen, there was also an interesting bit on the previous page where Philip says: "It's the great tradition of realistic fiction, it's what novels are all about. The private life in the foreground, history a distant rumble of gunfire, somewhere offstage. In Jane Austen not even a rumble." That amused me. I have read all the Aubrey-Maturin seafaring adventures set during the Napoleonic Wars. I have only read one Jane Austen book, Pride and Prejudice, but you would hardly know from reading it that the Napoleonic Wars were going on. Two or three of Jane Austen's brothers were in the navy. Either her brothers did not tell her anything about wars, or she was not interested, or she did not think she could write about them.

While I was reading Changing Places, I was also reading A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell. Coincidentally, A Clergyman's Daughter also has a chapter written in stage play format. I once saw a stage adaption, which I thought was the best stage play I have ever seen. The chapter that was written as a play was particularly amusing, although a bit different to the rest of the play.

[neilgee]

Thanx Kev for another brilliant reply, I couldn't have put any of that any better although I do think it's a little churlish of Lodge to criticise Austen's lack of worldly realism when she is remembered and celebrated as a writer of romantic fiction. If you are looking for worldly realism you don't read romantic fiction, surely?

I'm going to order Lodge's biography of Wells, perhaps to read alongside Anne-Veronica for next month's bom, hope you are joining us for that.

[mona amon]

Just finished reading. I enjoyed all your comments, but didn't join the discussion as I hadn't anything much to say. At first I thought it was awfully bad but began to warm to it during the letters chapter, after which it became a lot more fun.

Now, on to Ann Veronica!