Incidentally something I didn’t mention in this piece is that the switching between narrative modes in Changing Places owes a specific debt, I think, to BS Johnson’s Travelling People. (DL had certainly read BSJ. He reviewed Albert Angelo, calling it ‘a timid experiment’.)
As for which of my own books was most directly influenced by David, it has to be the one I was banging on about here the other day - my very own ‘campus novel’, A Touch of Love.
Thank you for this. What a loss he is. Possibly the best British comic novelist of the last half a century. In addition to the books you mentioned, I’d also give a shout out to the marvellous How Far Can You Go? - and also the hilarious Paradise News
David Lodge remains my favourite author. I discovered him originally from the TV adaptations of campus trilogy books, but then discovered his whole canon, always waiting for his next book with bated breath. So sad to see him go.
Lovely stuff. He was just a very good writer. A great pleasure to read. A wonderful sense of time and place. I think my wife may have been in one of the last groups of students he taught at Birmingham. It was linguistics in 1984-85.
I read all the Lodge books when I was a student in an effort to understand the strange environment I found myself in. I will now dig them back out again and re-read them. RIP David Lodge.
A lovely appreciation, thank you for posting. I read Changing Places as a postgrad student in Birmingham, 1979. A great time and place to read it (purchased from the campus bookshop).
Written quickly or not, it's a very good piece and I see you as a worthy successor to Lodge. Lodge's writing was a key discovery for me in the late 80s and served as a bridge to the likes of Barnes, McEwan, Amis pere et fils, Boyd, etc.
I was lucky enough to be a grad student in English when Small World came into my hands. I was stuck in bed with a bad flu but I still don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much!
Now I probably reread Paradise News and Therapy every year. RIP #Brilliant
Loved Lodge. Used to teach "Nice Work". You, of course, are also in the fine tradition of the postwar British comic novel. From What a Carve Up to Proof of Innocence.
I just saw it. A very fitting tribute. I've always felt there was some sort of thread connecting your work and his. Both of you make me smile and laugh about British (and indeed university) life and politics. It's not just nice work, it's important too.
Thank you for writing this, Lodge was one of my favorite authors ever since I was introduced to him via How far can you go, while studying English at Sussex University.
I read it in the summer of 1986 just before going to university after stumbling across it in Ingol library and was bowled over. Lower-middle Catholic Lancashire in the mid-1980s wasn't so different from Catholic student London in the early 1950s in its religious and sexual mores
Thank you for this. How Far Can You Go? was my gateway drug to Lodge, and I then read everything I could get my hands on. Such a funny, humane writer. I'm well overdue a reread.
I’ve never read anything by David Lodge, but wanting to put that right purchased this today at the local charity bookshop.
I had no idea of his passing when I bought it and I’m not sure what it was that made be pick up that particular book today. But having read your tribute I’m very glad I did.
Merci pour ce bel hommage... Lodge était l un de mes deux auteurs britanniques préférés. Le second est Jonathan Coe...il vous faut donc maintenant écrire deux fois plus
Comments
Now I probably reread Paradise News and Therapy every year. RIP #Brilliant
I had no idea of his passing when I bought it and I’m not sure what it was that made be pick up that particular book today. But having read your tribute I’m very glad I did.