If we are to believe David Lodge, the academics were more busy flirting with each other than advancing their research and the Catholics more tormented by their hypothetical salvation than fulfilled in their faith… But all saved by this very British distance that it is essential to pose between oneself… and oneself.
The writer, born on January 28, 1935 in south London and died on January 1, handles humor and derision with the mastery of a Renaissance goldsmith. How can we imagine that this sparkling and fertile author – novels, memoirs, literary essays, plays –, with such a lively pen, confided in 2019 to The Cross : «I never relax. In some ways, the more success we have, the more anxious we are about the next book. » ? Especially since he noted, not without a touch of nostalgia, the decline in the influence of writers, «series writers now have more impact».
The academic world as fertile ground
He might well have felt reassured by the relish with which his readers, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, eagerly pounced on “the new Lodge” as soon as it hit the bookstores. They were happy to find a unique universe, teeming with concrete details and profound reflections on existence and literature, with characters who are willingly burlesque but deeply endearing, most often plunged into funny situations.
David Lodge was not yet 30 when he was hired as an English teacher by the British Council in London. In 1960, the University of Birmingham offered him a position as a lecturer, while he prepared his thesis in English literature. Higher education would become the fertile ground for many of his fictions, which he placed within the fiction faculty of Rummidge, a town in the Midlands loosely inspired by industrial Birmingham. The city appears from 1975 in several of his novels: Change of scenery, A very small world, Board game, News from paradise et Therapy.
Consciences in difficulty
He who loves well punishes well. The writer enjoys ridiculing the boasting and laziness of his colleagues, their desire to shine sometimes to the detriment of the seriousness of their academic commitment. Conferences and other international symposia are pretexts for trips at the princess's expense and, sometimes, for meetings with pretty sisters. Guilt and desire then engage in Homeric battles in the consciousness of these disoriented academics.
However, despite the immense reading pleasure it provides, the satirical vein does not sum up David Lodge's talent. Born shortly before the Second World War, the writer was also a sensitive, precise and poetic witness to the history of his country. The bombings of London marked his childhood before, in 1951, he discovered the situation in defeated Germany, during a vacation in Heidelberg with his aunt, who worked at the headquarters of the American army. So many memories that nourish Outside the shelterone of his most beautiful stories, largely autobiographical.
A life without art?
From his first foray into literature, in the form of a short story in his high school newspaper in 1950, to the last volumes of his Memoirs – Succeed, more or less (2021) –, David Lodge navigates between reality and fiction, real memories and the colorful embroideries that adorn them, the authors he loves and will have devoured throughout his life and his own creativity. He liked to quote the much admired Graham Greene, whose religious questions, darkest doubts and, at the same time, his delicious humor he shared. Like him, David Lodge, son of a musician and a dancer, was surprised that men who practice no art managed to tolerate the melancholy of the human condition.
Because this is what it is about, when age diminishes physical faculties – David Lodge suffered from serious deafness – when friends disappear, when the world escapes you and when imagination itself seems numb: “The idea of having to invent characters, find a story for them, choose a hair color for them… I don’t think I have the energy for that anymore,” he admitted The Cross in the same interview in 2019.
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The life of a writer
1960-1987. Teaches English literature at the University of Birmingham.
1965. His third novel, The fall of the British Museumfirst real success.
1975. Begins his academic trilogy with Change of sceneryfollowed byA very small world and of Board game.
2004. The author! The author!fictional biography of Henry James.
2011. A man of temperamentsur HG Wells.
2012. Your game Secret thoughts is performed at the Théâtre Montparnasse in Paris.
2015. Born at the right time.
2021.Succeed, more or less.
January 1, 2025. Death.
The works of David Lodge are translated in France by Payot&Rivages.
