The British writer, who died on January 1, 2025 at the age of 89, left novels of great humor and delightful intelligence.
The three novels that form the Campus Trilogy made David Lodge’s humor and satirical acuity famous: Change of scenery (published in England in 1975), A very small world (1984) et Board game (1988) were only published in French by Rivages at the beginning of the 1990s. Drawing on his own experience as a professor of English literature, and a long study trip on American campuses, David Lodge ironically describes academic environments, “minority with exacerbated puritanism”through many characters, notably the Englishman Phillip Swallow and the American Morris Zapp. About these novels, it was said of him that he was a great moralist.
Therapy (Payot and Rivages, 1998), his bestseller, tells the story of a man who consults all possible therapists to try to treat his knee pain. But the evil, it seems, is deeper… The more his evils obsess him, the more unhappy he is, and the more misfortunes accumulate, in his married and professional life. Sexual diversions obviously do not bring the sought-after consolation… The author describes the narrator’s drift with tremendous humour, and in the process paints a caustic portrait of the media elites and therapists.
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David Lodge, great figure in British literature, dies at 89
In 2015, David Lodge began publishing his Memoirs, three volumes of which were published: Born at the right time (1935-1975), Writer’s luck (1976-1991), Succeed, more or less (1992-2020). In the first volume, the English author evokes his youth and his beginnings in literature, in the second he recounts the peak of his career as a writer and academic, and finally, the setbacks of an aging writer who has broken down. ‘inspiration. Always with incomparable humor, and with tenderness and modesty.
