Changing Places

Here's another book I reread in order to help my writing, so it was fitting that at one point David Lodge quoted from an imaginary (well, I assume imaginary) 1927 book called "Let's Write a Novel" by an A.J. Bemish. The excerpt contained some remarkably simplistic yet wonderful advice, which I feel compelled to quote in its entirety:

Every novel must tell a story. And there are three types of story, the story that ends happily, the story that ends unhappily, and the story that ends neither happily nor unhappily, or, in other words, doesn't really end at all.

The best kind of story is the one with a happy ending; the next best is the one with an unhappy ending, and the worst kind is the story that has no ending at all. The novice is advised to begin with the first kind of story. Indeed, unless you have Genius, you should never attempt any other kind.

Well, make of that, what you will.

I've always liked David Lodge. His novels are mesmerizing, and they suck me in, even when the material doesn't seem overly exciting. This one, however, does get exciting. It's a comedy about two Professors of English, one from England and one from the West Coast of America, who trade jobs for a semester and end up trading just about everything else, including their wives. It takes place in 1969, a time of upheaval on the campuses of both universities. What seems mundane at first gradually becomes anything but mundane.

As a college administrator, I may have a weakness for books about academia. There was one point where it looked like someone was about to fill out some paperwork, and I was quite excited. I do have to say, however, that the administrative details of appointing a visiting professor were sorely lacking in this book, an opportunity clearly missed by the otherwise dependable David Lodge.

Having said that, I do have a serious piece of criticism. This book often gets far too clever for its own good. One chapter is told as a series of letters, another is made up of clippings from the newspaper, and it ends with chapter done as a film script. Lodge is a great writer, but this book feels rather gimmicky at times, and for me the stylistic flourish often detracts from the story itself.

I'm guessing that A.J. Beamish would not have approved. Actually, considering the book "doesn't really end at all," Beamish would have likely hated this one.