Lodge, David

Average customer rating:

funny and smart
Laugh Out Loud Goofball Professor [T]
An Absolute Yawnfest!
Time have changed my perception.
Amis' Lucky Jim: Humor Hides Frustration

Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics)
Kingsley Amis
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140186301

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Although Kingsley Amis's acid satire of postwar British academic life has lost some of its bite in the four decades since it was published, it's still a rewarding read. And there's no denying how big an impact it had back then--Lucky Jim could be considered the first shot in the Oxbridge salvo that brought us Beyond the Fringe, That Was the Week That Was, and so much more.

In Lucky Jim, Amis introduces us to Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer at a British college who spends his days fending off the legions of malevolent twits that populate the school. His job is in constant danger, often for good reason. Lucky Jim hits the heights whenever Dixon tries to keep a preposterous situation from spinning out of control, which is every three pages or so. The final example of this--a lecture spewed by a hideously pickled Dixon--is a chapter's worth of comic nirvana. The book is not politically correct (Amis wasn't either), but take it for what it is, and you won't be disappointed.

Book Description

Kingsley Amis has written a marvelously funny novel describing the attempts of England's postwar generation to break from that country's traditional class structure. When it appeared in England, LUCKY JIM provoked a heated controversy in which everyone took sides. Even W. Somerset Maugham reviewed the book, happily with great favor: "Mr. Kingsley Amis is so talented, his observations so keen, that you cannot fail to be convinced that the young men he so brilliantly describes truly represent the classes with which his novel is concerned."

Customer Reviews:

funny and smart.......2007-05-31

LUCKY JIM is funny, smart, and never gets tired or dull. Jim's musing on the horrors of the middle ages is worth the book in itself, and his review of his shipbuilding article laden with "yawn-inducing facts" which "threw pseudo half-light on non-problems" is hilarious. The language is non-stop sharp and it seems that Amis, like Jim, should have simply quit the business after this one.

Laugh Out Loud Goofball Professor [T].......2007-03-14

Sometimes a book is about undertones, imagery, hidden or hard-to-find symbolism, or dreadful cynical askance of another's work. This is not such a book.

This is a great tale - full of laughs about the boyish personality of an overachieving academic named James - who we get to know as Lucky Jim.

He doesn't know exactly what or how he got into the university life, and soon learns he is really out of his element. He is not stuffy enough, he is not arrogant enough, he is not . . . enough.

Within a few months, a few hundred pages, he manages to burn his boss's bed and table - and opts not to confess to the embarrassing act, lusts and seeks the love of his boss's son, makes not one - but two - prank calls to the home of his boss, makes numerous false statements face-to-face to his boss, and plunders a speech his boss requests him to give. Best yet, the plundering involves mimicking his superiors while practically belching his words from his inebriated state.

At the end, you almost hear him say, "Take that you lout, and `yer whole family too." But, this occurs in the 1950's, in educated England, where and when people acted and spoke civilly to one another, even when the topic of discussion was anything but civil. So, there is no "out loud" in-your-face confrontation like that.

As someone who probably grew up reading Waugh, Shaw and Forster, Amis's dialogue richly resembles their great works as it depicts the unique and invariably different method of speech than what we entertain daily in 21st century America.

This was a lot of fun to read and "full of good laughs, old boy. Good show."

An Absolute Yawnfest!.......2006-12-11

When I read stuff on the back of this novel like, "preposterously brilliant", "a classic comic novel", and "Amis was a genuine comic writer, perhaps the best", I immediately snatched this book up and started rummaging through the sentences, paragraphs, and chapters with heightened interest. The book was interesting enough for me to buy it from Borders bookstore 30 minutes after reading a bit. Even though I didn't laugh, I believed I just had to read it from beginning to end. So I took this book home expecting something hilarious; the result: a genuine cure for insomnia. I don't care for all these praises of "masterpiece" or "this book explores the complexities of human condition and human relations". I want an interesting read; I'm not calling for an action-packed Ian Fleming, James Bond novel, I'm asking for something engrossing. I didn't get what I asked for.

The visually descriptive details in this novel are thoroughly lacking. Amis doesn't bother to write about the setting, the atmosphere, the people (except for Bertrand, Christine, and Margaret to some degree); as a result I have no idea what Welch, Dixon, Beesley, etc. look like. They all could be wearing bedsheets all the time for all I know.

All in all, this novel is not recommended: it lacks physical detail and humor.

P.S. If you search all the previous good recommendations you'll see the high reviews were simply given by "a reader"; probably the same dude.

Time have changed my perception........2006-08-20

Years ago, when I had the first oportunity to read this book, it seemed to be real fun, while today it is just description of general problems of academic enviroment, it looks that nothing have realy change or will change. The stagnation of academia
is a pemanent dilema: today teachings are the absolite truths, defended by the old guards.

Amis' Lucky Jim: Humor Hides Frustration.......2006-08-14

Those who come to LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis usually do so because thay have heard that it is a funny book. And so it is. But when one finishes and tries to analyze the source of the humor, one finds, somewhat surprisingly, that the hero Jim Dixon, drifts in and out of situations that construct backgrounds that are patently phony, mostly to the reader and only partly to Dixon himself. It is his reaction to all this encrusted phoniness that serves as the ideology that led to the existence of the Angry Young Men dogma that was then afflicting a post-war England. For Amis, humor was the means by which this frustration at not being able to do anything about it caused him and his readers to laugh at a society whose only saving grace was that what you saw was definitely not what you got.

Jim Dixon is a young college instructor, trying hard to fit in when he quickly realizes that he should not fit in but plows ahead anyway. Since he is non-tenured, his continuing employment depends on the good will of his department chair, Professor Welch, a man who argues that life ought to be unhampered by the restraints of a confining culture, but whose deeds shout out the contrary. Dixon is dating a younger colleague, Margaret Peel, a rather plain-jane type who inexplicably sees in Dixon the salvation to her own need to have free love without the responsibility to maintain it. At a party, he meets Welch's equally pontificating son, Bertrand and his date Christine, to whom Dixon is attracted. The humor of the novel resides in some slapstick scenes, a leading example of which occurs when Dixon falls asleep while smoking with predictable results--he very nearly burns down the guest room of the Welches in which he was staying.

Amis hints early on that his true reason to write LUCKY JIM was his dissatisfaction with the compacency that he saw as ossifying England. He deduced that far too much of England was an empty facade full of empty people performing empty functions. Jim Dixon himself lectures on topics of which he is ignorant but hopes that no one can see his lack. Professor Welch is much like himself, only on a higher level of incompetence. Both Dixon and Welch are involved in an equally spurious revival of folk art. When at the novel's end and Dixon is seen as "lucky" in the sense that he has a new job and a new girlfriend, the reader is puzzled what Dixon has done to deserve his luck. And that is the point. He has done nothing to be lucky, but he has had the sense to avoid the excesses that afflict the Welches. Jim Dixon is simply not ossified enough to avoid his luck. For him, coming in third in a four man race is good enough to win the top prize. For Amis, that was not good enough. LUCKY JIM tells the world that.

Average customer rating:

David Lodge rocks my world.
Funny but seriously contrived.
sheer pleasure
a socially important book
A delightful novel on the underwritten subject of academia

Small World
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140244867

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The unbridled greed, pettiness, buffoonery and intellectual gobbledygook in the world of higher scholarship are the topics of this thorough and thoroughly funny roman a' English department. It's interesting for a couple of reasons, aside from its humor and spoofiness: it's an insider's view of things -- always the best kind -- and it takes its old-fashioned time telling a story, complete with reasonable digressions about the state of literary criticism and what may or may not be a realistic view of the academic life.

Book Description

Veteran rivals for an exclusive academic chair (recently endowed with $100,000 a year) do scholarly battle with each other in what the Washington Post Book World called a "delectable comedy of bad manners . . . infused with a rare creative exuberance". From the author of the award-winning Changing Places.

Customer Reviews:

David Lodge rocks my world........2007-03-07

Okay, here's the history and this is my first ever amazon review. I have read Small World and Changing Places many, many times. I read it first in 1992 because the post-modern boy I was in love with was reading it for his brit. fiction seminar. So I had to read it, and I got a good chunk of it, but not nearly as much as I do now. But some of the parts I love, like Frobisher who gets the computer print-out of his novels and is distracted by his word choicage, the prof hiding behind the Klaeber version of Beowulf, which I only got in a re-reading. And so many other parts. I've re-read it at least twice and the last time I was struck by how "dated" and somewhat old white boys network it is. Like if it was written now, there would be way more women in it. LIke more women in power, I mean. One of my students read it and really liked it. He's 20 and is very, very not normal for my students. I went back and did Changing Places which I also like. One of the things I tend to do is try and figure out which academic is which academic, which is abit like trying to figure out who the people in Tales of the City are based on. Like what's the point of me trying to figure out which theorist Sy Goodblatt is based on out of Penn from the 80s as he's likely not there still.

And okay, I love Morris, probably as a character and if I met him in reality, he'd probably drive my crazy. I feel cheated that we don't get his and Thelma's relationship in Jerusalem, but we get everybody else's. It's interesting my sense of Phillip changes throughout the two books. I liked him abit in CP, but towards the end of SM, he becomes seriously schmucky. With Joy and so forth. Oh come on.

So, where do you go after those? The problem is that Morris and co are so fabulous that they're hard to top. I was trying to find info. on imdb. about the miniseries and apparently Cliff from Cheers plays Morris. No disrespect for the man at all, but that totally doesn't work for me. I see him as a Harold Ramis character or the guy who played Daphne's fiancee on Frasier. I would like to see it, but I think the odds of me finding it aren't great.

Funny but seriously contrived........2006-05-22

Small World is the second installment of a trilogy. Basically a satirical send up of academia, the trilogy by and large (well, for the first two installments, anyway) follow a wild cast of characters as the seek sex, fame and fortune along with academic recognition. The First effort, Changing Places, chronicles the adventures of two professors--one English and one American--as the swap assignments for a year.

This installment follows the two, along with a cast of what often feels like thousands, on the convention, conference and lecture circuit.

Lodge is blessed with a wonderfully sardonic and sharp sense of humor and a deep appreciation for farce. These skills are in admirable display in this book. The comedy level matches--possibly even exceeds--that of the first book--which is saying something.

On the whole, though, this is a somewhat less satisfying read. The cast of characters, as previously mentioned, is huge. It's so big it's often difficult to remember who's who. Moreover, the plot is singularly complex. And contrived. That everything is tied up neat as a pin by the end only adds to the level of contrivance.

This is a very clever book--perhaps too clever by half, as the Brits would say.

However, it is hysterically funny. If you are in need of a good laugh--actually, dozens and dozens of good laughs, this should be your cup of tea.

sheer pleasure.......2005-08-12

Early one Saturday morning (many years ago) I happened to pick up Changing Places, the 'prequel' (horrible word) to Small World. I read Changing Places to the end without putting it down, then walked straight into town and bought a copy of Small World, which I also read to the end pretty much without putting down, finishing early the following morning.

That sort of thing used to happen to me as a boy, but it's a rare experience since I grew up. Small World is sheer pleasure, and also very clever.

a socially important book.......2004-12-18

Small World makes light of a terribly important social phenomenon. On the other hand, the book was published in 1984, before academia had become the place it is now. The novel is also slow by American standards, taking its time with each scene, including scenes that make the reader wonder why the scenes are there at all. One reviewer commented on this being a rare novel about academia. It is that. But academia now is not the place it was twenty years ago. What has happened in America has also happened in the U.K, as Small World makes clear. These people are networking on an international scale. Perhaps, Lodge thought these literary ideas were so silly they would blow over in a short time and he could laugh them out of existence. ("Then, what's it all for?!") But the grim-faced neoMarxist of the present universities have no sense of humor and are not about to be laughed out of their entrenched positions of power. The situation is now very serious. But read this book if you like. Then, however, get other books like The Rape of Alma Mater and find out what it's like now.

A delightful novel on the underwritten subject of academia.......2003-04-06

SMALL WORLD easily takes its place among the very finest books ever written about academia. This provokes the question: Why are there so few novels, good or bad, on the world of higher education? A huge number of novelists and writers have attended graduate school, many are themselves teachers or professors, and yet the number of first-rate books covering the world of scholars are rare. Off the top of my head, I can think of Kinsley Amis's LUCKY JIM, A. S. Byatt's POSSESSION, John Barth's GILES GOAT BOY, Robertson Davies CORNISH TRILOGY, and several other novels by David Lodge, including the prequel to SMALL WORLD, CHANGING PLACES. I should also add Malcolm Bradbury's THE HISTORY MAN and magnificent parody MY STRANGE QUEST FOR MENSONGE. Many novels have characters attending college or university at some point, but as a whole it is a genre that is underrepresented.

Even if novels on academic life were plentiful, this one would stand out. Lodge has written many superb books, but this one just may be his best. It was also one of the first to be widely available in the US. I still remember vividly in the 1980s having to search out Penguin editions published in Canada because he was largely unavailable in the US.

The novel features some of the characters we came to know in CHANGING PLACES, including Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, and takes place to a large extent at a number of academic conferences. Although a first-hand acquaintance with higher education isn't a prerequisite, anyone who has been to graduate school or taught will find a host of familiar characters and situation. Lodge magnificently lampoons the intellectual posturing and gamesmanship that fills the small world of the scholar. The novel manages to be both accurate and quite funny at the same time.

At one point in my life, I worked in a number of bookstores. One of my happier experiences was to have been employed at a campus bookstore in Chicago during Lodge's first reading tour of the United States (I believe this was around 1990). I was happy to spend some time with him along with other employees before his reading, and I remember his being so surprised that so many in the US had read his work, given the difficulty at the time of getting his novels in the states. He was an enormously pleasant person, and he gave a fine reading from NICE WORK. A final word on that: many speak of NICE WORK as being the final novel in a trilogy. I have trouble with that. CHANGING PLACES and SMALL WORLD feature many common characters, none of whom reappear in NICE WORK. Fans of the first two may be disappointed to find that NICE WORK, as fine as it is, does not continue the story of the other two novels.

Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (2nd Edition)
Average customer rating:

Excellent Anthology of short essays and excerpts

A Graduate School Must

Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (2nd Edition)
David Lodge , and Nigel Wood
Manufacturer: Longman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0582312876

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Anthology of short essays and excerpts.......2005-11-14

This "Reader" is a collection of some of the most influential and famous essays, or exerpts of larger works, by critics of the past 100 years. The works that are anthologized include: Ferdinand de Saussure's "Nature of the Linguistic Sign," Gerard Genette's "Structuralism and Literary Criticism," Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author," Edward Said's "Crisis in Orientalism," and even Umberto Eco's "Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage." As far I can tell, the collection begins after New Criticism, although there are essays from the Russian Formalists. If you're interested in Structuralism/Semiology, Deconstructionism, Reader-response, Feminism, and Cultural Studies, then this anthology will work well for you.

This book is extremely useful to readers who are interested in literary criticism, and who do not necessarily want to do library searches to find the particular essay. The short biography of the author, as well as the "cross-reference" notes at the end of the biography, are helpful too. A similar anthology is *Literary Theory: An Anthology* edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, which also collects the highlights of the theorists's work. However, I prefer Professor Lodge's book because 1) it more engaging, 2) it is smaller and more manageable.

---------------Theorists who are listed-------------------

Ferdinand de Saussure's "Nature of the Linguistic Sign"
Victor Shlovsky
Roman Jacobson
Gerard Genette
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Derrida
Mikhail Bakhtin
Tzvetan Todorov
Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author," "Textual Analysis: Poe's 'Valdemar'"
Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?"
Wolfgang Iser's "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach"
Julia Kristeva
Harold Bloom
E D Hirsch Jr
M H Abrams
J Hillis Miller
Helene Cixous
Edward Said
Stanley Fish
Elaine Showalter
Paul De Man
Fredric Jameson
Terry Eagleton's "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism"
Catherine Belsey
Geoffrey Hartman
Juliet Mitchell
Colin MacCabe
Umberto Eco

A Graduate School Must.......1998-10-27

This book contains an excellent sampling of critical essays. It covers everything from psychoanalysis to feminism. If you need a good general overview of literary criticism, this is the book for you!

Average customer rating:

disappointing
Hilarious sendup of academia
A companion to Small World
A middle aged daydream
Dual personalities

Changing Places
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140170987

Amazon.com

Anyone intrigued by differences between American and British academic institutions will find this an amusing and accurate send-up. David Lodge, portraying two American and British professors who replace one another at their respective institutions, gives greed, pettiness, and pretense full rein.

Customer Reviews:

disappointing.......2006-11-14

Having participated in an academic exchange with a school in England, I purchased this book on the recommendation of a friend who also had a similar experience. I was anticipating something quite different from what I read. Although I found the general story line familiar and amusing, I did not care for the overall work. The book will have little meaning to a reader unless (a) you were either a student or teaching during the 60's or (b) you actually participated in a teaching exchange preferably in the UK.

Hilarious sendup of academia.......2006-04-18

Changing Places is a hilarious send up of academia. Although set in the later 1960's and somewhat dated, the humor relating to the ineffable foibles of the academic class in both Britain and America is timeless.

The story surrounds the yearly professorial exchange between two schools, Rummidge University in England and Ephoric State in America (a thinly disguised Berkely). The circumstances of the exchange provide for two very different characters making the move for entirely different-yet similar-reasons. They find themselves in circumstances beyond their ken in both cases and this leads to a certain amount of situational comedy, funny enough in its way but second rate compared to the forthright academic skewering that Lodge puts forth throughout this novel.

There is lot of implied sex in the novel, nothing graphic but the reader is forewarned. Most of it is between the wives of the absent professors and the new arrival, but the general "free love" of the 60's is depicted as well.

On the whole one of the best academic comedies I have read in a long time. Not quite up to Russo's standards, but very well done nevertheless. Even better, this is but the 1st book of a trilogy involving the same set of characters. The second installment is next in line on my reading list and it's a testament to "Changing Places" that I can hardly wait to get to it.

Very enjoyable light reading for any occasion.

A companion to Small World.......2006-01-19

I found "Small World" to be a better book, but it is difficult to understand all the ins and outs of "Small World" without first reading "Changing Places." The reader should also know that David Lodge spent time at the University of California, Berkeley, and this is the result. If I were to recommend only one of his books, it would have to be "Small World," which EVERY academic on the planet will be able to identify with. I've read "Small World" twice, once before and once after "Changing Places." Buy one to read on the plane going to a conference and one for the trip back. You'll never notice that air travel is far less romantic than when David Lodge was starting his career.

A middle aged daydream.......2005-10-23

A middle aged daydream - where adultery is harmless fun. Maybe Lodge is giving himself more leeway than usual (although felicitous adultery is pretty much his modus operandi) in evoking something of the legendary wild sexually free spirit of the late 60s Californian US campus - but it smacks a lot more of fantasy than insight. Still, he's enormously readable - and the opening extended comparative descriptions of Morris and Phillip had me in from the first few pages. There is insight in his Citizens of the World describing familiar settings through fresh eyes - not a bad trick for the one author. His analysis of the differing educational systems of the States and the UK is at once engaging and perceptive: I particularly liked the way he highlighted the way the British system climaxes before your career even starts:
"Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut - at eleven plus, sixteen plus, eighteen plus and twenty plus - and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it."
While it's not quite as extreme in Australia, there are definite shades of the build up and aftermath of the behemoth HSC (in NSW anyway) with the feeling that now everything is set in an unchangeable course.

He runs with the whole `Changing Places' daydream, finding it delicious fun. I can see what he's doing with Phillip Swallow - there is something magical in suddenly seeming to regain your youth when for whatever reason you find you've shrugged off the responsibility of being `Dad', even just for a weekend. And England, as symbolised by the utterly sensible and penurious Hillary, is a wonderful thing to escape (through no personal fault). Still, it's wonderful to spend lots of money, eat out, and sleep in instead of go to work - in some ways the hallmarks of youth - but Lodge despite his age keeps charging on: the freedom of fiction. Even to the point of steadily converging the pairs of spouses - consequence free! It's all a marvellous game. There's no reaping: it's all just sewing.

I do enjoy Lodge's character descriptions - the observations and the way he relates them. And, sure, this daydream races along entertainingly with all manner of unlikely comic events. But I do get put off when in his otherwise (while exaggerated) pretty authentic world the stuff of light humour is adultery. Another age enjoyed, for example, the antics of the black and white minstrels - but isn't it fortunate that now we're more aware of the fact that it wasn't all just singin' an' dancin' with those funny looking monkey people down on the plantation? The minstrel daydream celebrated white self-deception that slavery was just fine for all concerned, and I feel like Lodge is doing the same about adultery.

"C'mon, get off your high horse, it's just some harmless fun." Which was that - the minstrels or the adultery?

Following Lodge's lead of setting up a mirror in this book, for a foil why not have look at Penelope Lively's Heat Wave for, perhaps, a wife's perspective on the harmless hijinks of Changing Places. Lively's habit of having downright baddies makes her in some ways less pleasant company than the ebullient Lodge (who from his secure position rarely seems to have it in for anyone) but I think Heat Wave would make a very worthwhile sequel.

Dual personalities.......2005-10-20

Academia has always been a familiar target for Davis Lodge's humorous barbs. In this novel, Philip Swallow of England swaps academic positions with Morris Zapp of California, and the comedy begins. The two characters are somewhat stereotypical: Swallow is reserved, unambitious, stodgy; Zapp is extroverted, pushy, vain.(But that just gives Lodge something easily recognizable - and quite different, personality wise - to hang his comedic hat on). Swallow ends up having a ball in California, even sleeping with Zapp's wife; Zapp goes through a few changes in personality in England, too.

It's a typical Lodge tour de force, and pretty funny. A most enjoyable novel.

Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays (The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature)

Average customer rating:

A treat for literature lovers

Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays (The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature)
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Human consciousness, long the province of literature, has lately come in for a remapping--even rediscovery--by the natural sciences, driven by developments in Artificial Intelligence, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. As the richest record we have of human consciousness, literature, David Lodge suggests, may offer a kind of understanding that is complementary, not opposed, to scientific knowledge. Writing with characteristic wit and brio, and employing the insight and acumen of a skilled novelist and critic, Lodge here explores the representation of human consciousness in fiction (mainly English and American) in light of recent investigations in the sciences. </p>

How does the novel represent consciousness? And how has this changed over time? In a series of interconnected essays, Lodge pursues these questions down various paths: How does the novel's method compare with that of other creative media such as film? How does the consciousness (and unconscious) of the creative writer do its work? And how can criticism infer the nature of this process through formal analysis? In essays on Charles Dickens, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Henry James, John Updike, and Philip Roth, and in reflections on his own practice as a novelist, Lodge is able to bring to light--and to engaging life--the technical, intellectual, and sometimes simply mysterious working of the creative mind. </p>

Customer Reviews:

A treat for literature lovers.......2005-01-11

I had several teachers throughout life that had an unparalleled ability to make knowledge seem arcane, obscure and utterly boring. Every two or three years, however, I had the privilege of being taught by a passionate teacher that had a real knack at making any subject sound enthralling.

I am sure David Lodge would be one of the latter. His essays are clear, witty, funny and knowledgeable. There wasn't a single essay that did not make me want to jump to the computer, connect to Amazon.com and buy a book from the author he was writing about. And all that with plain style devoid of the ubiquitous self conscious or ranting style of most contemporary critics.

A great read for literature lovers!

Average customer rating:

A handbook for middle age crisis
Standard Lodge
Dry, dark humor-- well written
Choosing oneself
Satire and sensitivity in a happy marriage

Therapy
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

A handbook for middle age crisis.......2007-03-23

This book gives a humorous view to the middle life crisis. No issue of it is forgotten, lack of self esteem, adultery, physical decay, depression, compassion and so on. Michelines Passmore lives through all these experiences starting with a knee pain that heralds a process of realizing that the golden age was over. His relationship with women is wonderfully depicted. Abandoned by his wife, he suspected that her lover was her tenis trainer only to realize in an embarrassing situation that he was not her lover at all. The trip to Tenerife with Amy, his platonic love, is hillariously described from both sides. Michelines sadly becomes aware that the power he once had in his work was the only way he could get a woman to his room. However, he manages to redeem himself by finding his first love. This encounter is also delightful.
Lodge also deals with artistic creation and fame and prestige, as he does in other books like Author, Author.
In summary, a great, delicious, hilarious, intelligent book. One of Lodge's best.

Standard Lodge.......2004-05-17

Standard Lodge: insight, humour, alternative forms, incorporated lecture (Keirkegaard), and an adulterous resolution.

Lodge is consistent. His style reminds me a bit of Hornby (maybe I've got that backwards), the honesty I suppose. I relate particularly to his persona's reminiscences about his first girlfriend - how blithely horrible you can be. I don't think he needed to tie things up with a common technique of his (sex: cf. Out of the Shelter; Nice Work, Paradise News): it seems to be important to him to show how he's overcome his teenage Catholic morals, and he falls back on restoration bedroom farce perhaps cheaply.

Again he's wise to stick to areas he knows about - scenes from Television, Publishing - and from a Catholic Youth Group. He also ties in all this stuff about Keirkegaard - someone who hardly lends himself to a popular novel. He has to work hard to make it fit, but does so. I like his line about Keirkegaard being like flying through clouds: occasionally they clear and you have a moment of intense and profound clarity ... and then suddenly you're plunged back into utter obscurity.

Dry, dark humor-- well written.......2003-08-25

David Lodge is an extremely good writer, and his book is a joy to read. The British colloquialism make this story diffrent from the usualAmerican viewpoint. His jabs at the British medical system, rail system, etc are priceless. One note: the use of a "private consultant" physician led to unnecessary surgery, which perhaps is a backhanded compliment to the socialist "tincture of time" approach after-all.

A good read by a good author.

Choosing oneself.......2003-06-28

This is an excellent novel by a master of the comic serious, David Lodge. The story is covered in the back cover and other reviews, but I would add that the meaning of this novel and its structure are among the most innovative and genuinely engaging I have seen. Many postmodern novels, a term at which no doubt David Lodge would wince, are structured to allow the reader to impose his own understanding of the facts through intricate structures; but rarely are they deeply engaging. The average comic novel, though entertaining, has little to say. This work has both an elusive structure and engaging comic touches. It also has something important to say. It has the potential to become a work read 50 to 100 years from now despite the topical references to mid 1990's Britain. I won't spoil it for you because all will be revealed. Suffice it to say that our protagonist chooses to live in the present rejecting the despair of the unrecoverable past and the hopeless future.

Satire and sensitivity in a happy marriage.......2003-05-21

But the only happy marriage in this novel is the one between satire and sensitivity. I had expected comedy and satire throughout, but, though Lodge gives us a good dose of it, the book turns poignant and touching. I think I was in love with Maureen by the conclusion. I read the book initially with reluctance because it had been, as I viewed it, foisted off on me by a book club. I ended thoroughly caught up and engrossed, even shaken at times. I am in that book. He did he know me?

The Slaves of Solitude (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

Tempest in a Tearoom
It likely seemed more startling then
Not his best.
Brilliant, intelligent, witty and humane. A lost master.

The Slaves of Solitude (New York Review Books Classics)
Patrick Hamilton
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590172205
Release Date: 2007-02-20

Book Description

England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the terrors and rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach has retreated to the relative safety and stupefying boredom of the suburban town of Thames Lockdon, where she rents a room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Payne. There the savvy, sensible, decent, but all-too-meek Miss Roach endures the dinner-table interrogations of Mr. Thwaites and seeks to relieve her solitude by going out drinking and necking with a wayward American lieutenant. Life is almost bearable until Vicki Kugelmann, a seeming friend, moves into the adjacent room. That’s when Miss Roach’s troubles really begin.
Recounting an epic battle of wills in the claustrophobic confines of the boarding house, Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, with a delightfully improbable heroine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.

Customer Reviews:

Tempest in a Tearoom.......2007-02-24

The most atypical of Patrick Hamilton's novels (and perhaps the most beloved), THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE takes place in a suburban boarding house in 1943 where the heroine Miss Roach--intelligent, lonely, and on the cusp of middle age--has moved to escape the dangers of the Blitz. Commuting from the publishing house where she reads manucsripts in London, she spends her nights wandering the deserted unlighted streets, necking in parks with American soldiers, and being bullied at dinner by the sly and pompous autocrat of the dining room, Mr. Thwaites, another lodger at the Rosamund Tearoom where most of the action is set. This beautifully constructed little novel perfectly captures the mood of its time. It also anticipates the fascination with the alienation common among shabby-genteel boarding houses and pension-hotels that emblematizes the dilapidated middle-class culture of the UK in the twenty-five years after the war (as in Terrence Rattigan's SEPARATE TABLES or Elizabeth Taylor's MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT). The novel is in many ways exploring the nature of war itself on a figurative level, but it also first and foremost a comedy. Miss Roach's boarding-house nemeses, the sinister and German-born Vicki Kugelmann and the splenetic Mr. Thwaites, are so memorably awful and unpleasant they win the reader's heart immediately; Mr. Thwaites, in particular, is so beautifully drawn as to equal the best comic secondary creations of Dickens or Austen. The novel touches upon all kinds of tricky ideas about paranoia and consciousness that a clever reader might be interested in teasing out further, but simply as a comedy of manners this novel is a pure tonic.

It likely seemed more startling then.......2003-09-10

Patrick Hamilton was a highly successful commercial playwright whose work went big in Hollywood: "Gaslight" and "Rope" were both filmed by Hitchcock;"Hangover Square", a novel, was turned into a Fox production of 1945.

Yet Hamilton -- a hopeless alcoholic married to the sister of the Earl of Shrewsbury -- took on this most unfilmable project: drab characters and no action to speak of.

Imagine a book written right after WW2 -- a book that sneered at the strictures of wartime and the pettiness of life in a provincial boardinghouse. (The thin paper and close print of my 1947 first edition illustrates wartime privations)

Only a sentimental ending, the redemption of the pathetic heroine, lifts it out of Hamilton's usual purely macabre genre.

But I found I liked it, if only because the intervening years have gilded and prettified our vision of the war years. It's good to be reminded that human venality was not suspended when democracy was fighting for its life.....

Not his best........2002-12-15

I read Hangover Square and thoughht is was one of the best books I've read. SOS lacks the eye for detail and conversation that made Hangover Square. However, it's worth a read - but try Hangover Square first.

Brilliant, intelligent, witty and humane. A lost master........2000-11-14

Along with Hangover Square and One Thousand Streets Under the Sky, this is a tremendous novel. Hamilton writes beautifully about a cast of dreadfuls- the parochial bores, the bitchy backstabbing friends, and above all the boozers.

It is rare to read a book set in the 1940s which still seems so contemporary. The humour is biting and the depths and subtletys of character equal to Greene, Waugh and their ilk. Hamilton's writing brings to mind the Martin Amis school of tales from the London gutter, but his characters are achingly alive and never seem cartoonish.

Customer Reviews:

Delightful.......2003-12-21

I purchased "The Art of Fiction" as a companion to other reading materials required for a class on Modern American Fiction. This is, as others have described, fairly lightweight in its language and/or depth of treatment. However, this is the book I use most often as a guide when writing short papers & essays. David Lodge is a master at clear and concise commentary. His purpose in this collection is to convey specific literary principles in a precise format (many appeared as newspaper columns). The preface states that this book is for people who like literary criticism in "small doses," and this is meant to be "a book to browse in, and dip into." The format is very convenient, as you can read an entire piece on-the-go, during lunch or in a waiting room. (Some examples of "chapters" are The Unreliable Narrator, The Non-Fiction Novel, Time-Shift, Magic Realism, and Metafiction.) I recommend this book for anyone who loves literature and wants to add more depth to their reading experience.

Good Reference Book.......2003-04-03

David Lodge states in his introduction, "This is a book for people who prefer to take their Lit. Crit. in small doses," and this, indeed, is an accurate categorization for Lodge's, The Art of Fiction. This is a collection of articles on various topics of writing that he wrote during a stint with the Washington Post. While more experienced writers may find his fifty topics of writing, ranging from quite literally "Beginning[s]" to "Ending[s]" and some "Metafiction" or "Sense of Place" in between, somewhat elementary in their discussion, a beginning writer may find his book more useful.

Lodge is a fan of the classics. This is apparent in his choice to begin each chapter with an excerpt from authors such as Henry James, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, though more contemporary authors like Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess are slipped in every so often. And arguably, it was a wise choice of Lodge's to use classics as his examples if the beginning writer is his target audience so as to transmit a sense of what is conventional before launching off into magic realism. But be forewarned-Lodge terms his topics "doses" in the introduction as though implying his discussion will provide some sort of cure to the ailing writer-when, in fact, we all know the writing process does not have solutions or cures that suddenly make it easy to sit down and type away for two hours. Roughly three to four pages are devoted to each topic which give the book, as a whole, the feel of "Learning to Write in Twenty-Four Hours." In Lodge's defense, however, he does provide a quick, concise discussion that will serve as both a quick introduction to the beginner and a quick refresher to the more advanced writer.

"Skaz is a rather appealing Russian word used to designate a type of first person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word. In this kind of novel or story, the narrator is a character who refers to himself (or herself) as "I," and addresses the reader as "you." This is the first paragraph after an excerpt from J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and quintessential of Lodge's process throughout the book. He defines the topic to his reader straight and immediately which gives the collection its quick feel. As long as the reader keeps in mind that his definitions are not the be all and end all of the writing topic at hand, this collection of definitions (with a human voice infiltrating the definition) can be useful.

This book is a delight........1999-11-25

I discovered this book 3 or 4 years ago and have read it at least three times -- parts of it more often than that. I use it as one of several texts in creative writing workshops. Lodge's essays are witty, engaging and smart, and the brief excerpts at the beginning of each chapter are wonderful for "mirroring" exercises. My students enjoy the book as much as I do, and all seem to learn quite a bit from it.

lovely but superficial introduction to some great books.......1999-07-12

This book offers a highly digestible introduction to how fiction works and tempts the reader with some great exerpts from (modern) classics. It's also a nice opportunity to look at literature through the eyes of a professional, both at studying and practicing writing.

Average customer rating:

Deconstructionist Masterpiece
Lodge get's it right with this one.
NICE is a word you use when you have nothing else to say
outdated
This side of genius

Nice Work (King Penguin)
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140133968

Customer Reviews:

Deconstructionist Masterpiece.......2007-06-07

This is the only book I have ever read, fiction or non-fiction, which makes the issues of postmodernist literary and social criticism really clear without oversimplification, doing so partially by embodying them in the characters and actions of a living, breathing novel. For this alone Lodge gets 5 stars. I regard Nice Work as head and shoulders above Lodge's other novels, although Trading Places is pretty good. Highly recommended.

Lodge get's it right with this one........2006-05-22

Nice Work is the third in Lodge's trilogy send-up of academia and stands as a significant departure from the previous two novels. The cast of characters from the first two entries is all but gone and the book takes a satirical look at academia from the corporate point of view.

The story revolves around on of those truly bureaucratic inventions that in the end never seem to serve any real purpose. In this case, it Industry Year, a celebration of industry in Britain at the height of the Thatcher ear when English business is in full retreat from the opening of markets and fierce foreign competition.

As part of this nonsense, Robyn Primrose, fierce socialist intellectual and lecturer on 19th century English literature is assigned to "shadow" Vic Wilcox, the managing director of a local foundry and manufacturing concern, to "foster greater understanding between the collegiate and business communities".

Wilcox is doing his best to remake his company into a competitive concern that can make a go of it for the long term. Primrose is a sheltered child of privilege whose left wing theories aren't tinged with any experience of the real world.

Naturally, this situation provides full fodder for Lodge's wonderfully wacky satirical vision, and he does his utmost to make the best of the situation, to wonderful effect.

This book isn't nearly as outright funny as the previous entries ion this trilogy, falling more along the lines of amusing rather than comical. Yet, I liked it best of the three. The books isn't as cluttered by the huge--and often confusing--cast of characters that populated the first two books. The pace is more subdued than the frenetic pace of the earlier books, and the characters much more fully drawn. If this effort produced far fewer "laugh out loud" moments, it was nevertheless the most satisfying of the three books.

Many complain these books are outdated--I don't find them so. They wonderfully chronicle a past time. That's like saying Dickens or Twain shouldn't be read because they are outdated. It doesn't make sense.

Lodge has a witty, effervescent writing style and a wonderfully sardonic world view that make for very enjoyable reading. This trilogy is well worth your time.

NICE is a word you use when you have nothing else to say.......2004-06-07

I was reluctant to read this book, but I let the reviews on the jacket and the prizes it won/nominated for influence my decision. Nice Work isn't a bad book, but it isn't a good book either. It is the story of a businessman and a Literature and Women's Studies professor who are thrown together due to a project that is part of Industry Year in Great Britain. It is the very cliche tale of two people who are different in just about every way who discover that they have things in common and can learn from each other. No offense, Mr. Lodge but how many times has this tired formula been used in books, films, etc.

The problem with this book is that there is nothing distinguishing about it. It is rather generic. It isn't comical enough or enough of a true social commentary to have any sort of an impact on you. However, the saving grace of this book is that it is well paced. Despite the fact, that I found the writing and story banal, the author kept it moving along and kept me reading until the conclusion. The conclusion is the most unfortunate part of the book. Without divulging it, beware that the conclusion is contrived and from the school of happy endings. I believe that with a more original story Mr. Lodge has the talent to produce a good novel and will probably try another one of his books. I recommend that you don't read this one.

outdated.......2003-10-17

Unfortunately, David Lodge's novel Nice Work is so dated it became incredibly irritating. References to Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Jennifer Rush (?), etc. overshadow any possibility of this novel being in any way relevant in this day and age.

This side of genius.......2002-12-02

I stayed up late reading this novel and thought it was a terrific read.

You may feel a bit taxed at first. As other reviewers have mentioned, the book starts slow, but then really picks up as the plot gets impossibly complicated. The ending is clearly a parody of the endings of deux-ex-machina Victorian novels.

Perhaps this factoid will shed some light on Lodge's inspiration for the novel ... One of Lodge's favorite writers is Henry Green, who wrote one of the great factory novels of the 20th Century, Living. Green and Lodge both worked in Birmingham, and Lodge himself says the fictional town of Rummidge is located on the map exactly where Birmingham is. With the parodies of 19th Century novels, and this inspirational aspect of Living, there's a lot of referencing going on and I'm probably not the only reader who couldn't keep up.

Where the book stumbles, that is, falls just this short of being an all-time classic, is Lodge's handling of the factory half of the novel. Part of the problem is Lodge handles the academic scenes with ease and authority, knowing exactly what's important and exactly what's not. Not so with the factory. Lodge's narrator comes across as a reporter, that is, not from lived experience (his filtering the factory through Robyn Penrose was perhaps necessary but tipped the balance of the book in favor of academia) and perhaps that's why the novel moves so slowly in the early going. Lodge didn't quite have the same level of confidence as he does with his rendering of academic life (or Green does with factory life), it seems to me.

A second quibble seems the affair between the two main characters. The plot seems forced at times and the closure twenty times as forced ... but this criticism runs into the intertextuality issue I mentioned above.

Perhaps I'm showing my own biases in this review ... I would've preferred to see the values of the business world set in equal play with the values of the academic world and seem where things ended up ... but Lodge may have had nothing of the sort in mind when he wrote the novel.

A David Lodge Trilogy
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Great send -up of academia!

A David Lodge Trilogy
David Lodge
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140172971

Customer Reviews:

Great send -up of academia!.......2005-12-07

David Lodge's campus novel trilogy are three very clever novels. The first (Changing Places)is a comic analysis of British and American university systems, as well as a parody of narrative structures (with each chapter written in a different style). The second (Small World) is a comic take on academic conferences, as well as a parody of Arthurian legend. The third (Nice Work) mocks both the 19th-century British industrial novel and literary theory. These are funny books for any literate reader, but are hilarious for anyone who has experience in academia!

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