Until the age of 52, David Lodge maintained his academic career alongside his burgeoning success as a comic novelist. He was an enthusiastic participant in the international conference circuit, not least because it provided him with material for books such as Changing Places: A聽Tale of Two Campuses (1975) and Small World: An聽Academic Romance (1984). But, despite the globetrotting, he remained prolific in both spheres.
I聽interviewed Lodge when the first volume of his memoirs, Quite a聽Good Time to Be Born, was published in 2015. Now Writer鈥檚 Luck: A聽Memoir 1976-1991 (Harvill Secker) offers some equally striking and amusing stories. When his satirical novel about Catholicism, How Far Can You聽Go? (1980), was adopted as 鈥渁聽set text in a course on contemporary British fiction鈥 at a聽Catholic college of education, one outraged parent complained about his daughter being 鈥渞equired to read such a聽heterodox and sexually explicit book鈥 and even took his case to the country鈥檚 leading Catholic, Cardinal Hume.
There is a remarkable episode 鈥 surely unimaginable now 鈥 about a 1986 conference on The Linguistics of Writing becoming the subject of a Channel聽4 television documentary. Lodge provided a voice-over narrative, which the organiser, Colin MacCabe, objected to, so聽鈥渢hey staged a聽scene in which Colin鈥urst into the studio, interrupted my commentary and argued鈥hat we needed to聽interpolate other points of view. The scene was incorporated in the finished film and proved only that neither of us was a very good actor.鈥
Equally entertaining is the account of a meeting with a writers鈥 group in Fiji, where the聽first person to arrive was 鈥渁聽gigantic Tongan鈥ho said that he was writing [an apparently autobiographical] comic novel about a man who has a聽pain in the arse鈥. He was followed by someone who announced: 鈥淚聽come early because I聽am interested in words, and in the beginning was the聽word.鈥
色盒直播
Yet Lodge makes clear that it聽became increasingly difficult to maintain his double role as prominent international academic and satirical novelist biting the hand that fed him. One publisher rejected Small World because his father was 鈥渁聽professor of English who always attended the MLA [Modern Language Association] convention鈥 鈥 and 鈥渕y carnivalesque satirical novel had somehow dishonoured the memory of his father鈥.
Another conference described in Small World takes place in Jerusalem. After the delivery of a聽single paper, the rest of the day is devoted to 鈥渦nstructured discussion鈥, ie, 鈥渟wimming and sunbathing at the Hilton pool, sightseeing in the Old City, shopping in the bazaar鈥︹ Despite a comic need for exaggeration, Lodge admits to 鈥渁聽twinge of remorse鈥 when rereading his version of what had in reality been 鈥渁聽hard-working, serious and rewarding intellectual event鈥.
色盒直播
By the time Small World was published in 1984, some of聽Lodge鈥檚 colleagues at the University of Birmingham and beyond felt that it was 鈥渋rresponsible to publish a satirical novel about academics swanning around the world to聽exotic locations at public expense鈥hen British universities were reeling from drastic cuts in their funding under Margaret Thatcher鈥檚 government鈥. Like his fiction, his new memoir offers a vivid picture of a lost world.
POSTSCRIPT:
Print headline:聽Lodge鈥檚 double life highlights a lost world
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