British author and critic David Lodge, best known for his Campus trilogy of novels, has died aged 89.
Lodge has written more than two dozen novels and works of nonfiction, as well as screenplays and plays for television. He was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, first for his 1984 novel Small World, and then in 1988 for the novel Nice Work, which are the second and third parts of his famous Campus trilogy.
He died peacefully with his immediate family by his side, said his publisher Vintage, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“Lodge’s contribution to literary culture has been immense, both in his criticism and through his masterful and iconic novels, which have already become classics,” said his editor Liz Foley.
Lodge was born on 28 January 1935 in Dulwich, south London, and grew up in Brockley, which he described as “a somewhat seedy and neglected area of London”. He attended Blackheath Catholic School, where the headmaster encouraged him to go to university.
He gained a first degree from University College London before entering national service for two years. “After about three weeks of basic training…I was pretty sure I wanted to go back to college life,” he said. Her experience in the army formed the basis of her second novel, Ginger, You're Barmy, published in 1962.
In 1959, at age 24, he married Mary Jacob, whom he met at age 18. For a year, he worked for the British Council in London, teaching English to foreign students.
In 1960, he published his first novel, The Picturegoers, which he began writing while in the army. The book is set in and around a cinema in 'Brickley', based on Brockley, and explores Catholicism, which would continue to be a major theme in Lodge's work.
The same year, he began teaching in the English department at the University of Birmingham, where he worked until his retirement to concentrate on writing in 1987. He became professor of English literature in 1976.
Birmingham became the model for Rummidge's fictional Midlands University, where his trilogy of campus novels is set.
The first, Changing Places, was published in 1975. Subtitled “A Tale of Two Campuses,” the novel follows two academics participating in an academic exchange between Rummidge and Euphoric State University, based in Berkeley, California.
Changing Places is “the most formally experimental trilogy” with parts written as a theater text and a section composed of newspaper clippings, Natasha Tripney wrote in the Guardian in 2011. “But all three share a postmodern playfulness, a generous sprinkling of literary reference. »
Ses autres romans incluent The British Museum Is Falling Down, Out of the Shelter, How Far Can You Go?, Paradise News et Therapy.
In Birmingham, Lodge met the English author Malcolm Bradbury. When Bradbury died, Lodge wrote in the Guardian that Bradbury was his “oldest and closest friend in the literary world” and that he had encouraged Lodge “to work in the vein of comedy which was his own point strong “.
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In 1963, Lodge and Bradbury collaborated with undergraduate student Jim Duckett on a revue for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. “I have fond memories of hilarious screenwriting sessions, with Jim and I pacing back and forth, while Malcolm hammered out and improved our lines on a vertical typewriter,” Lodge wrote. “I’m not sure writing will be that fun again.”
Lodge's critical works include The Art of Fiction, Consciousness and the Novel and The Practice of Writing. He also wrote a trilogy of memoirs: Quite a Good Time to Be Born, Writer's Luck and Varying Degrees of Success, published between 2015 and 2020.
Lodge was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1997 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1998. In 1976 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Small World and Nice Work have been adapted for television; while the screenplay for Small World was written by Howard Schuman, Lodge wrote the screenplay for Nice Work himself.
In 1994, Lodge adapted Dickens's 1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit for a BBC series. He wrote three plays: Home Truths, Secret Thoughts and The Writing Game, which were also adapted for television.
Lodge “was a true gentleman,” said his literary agent Jonny Geller. “Warm, generous and kind, a lunch with David would involve laughter and serious conversation about contemporary writing. His social commentary, meditations on mortality, and vivid observations make him a worthy addition to the pantheon of great English comic writers that links him to Wodehouse, Waugh, Amis, and others.
