Customer Rating:  
Summary: Friendly Skies
Comment: On the back of the book it says that Lodge combines John Updike's precise social observation with Philip Roth's uproarious humor." That should have been enough to send me running the opposite way my face frozen into the mask of Edvard Munch's SCREAM. What the blurb didn't say was that Lodge is less a combination of Updike and Roth than of Kaufman and Hart, and that his carefully precise social people are always the slaves of heartless farce plots which, in real life, they would never get themselves into, but maybe that's why Lodge has more fans than any other writer save David Sedaris and Amy Tan, for who was it said that humankind cannot bear very much reality?
In any case it allows satirist Lodge to laugh at his characters, who hold various social and philosophical/political positions, sticking to them fervently until they've had a few drinks and their squalid minds start looking for the action, which is usually located within someone who holds the opposite theoretical point of view. Lodge's characters inevitably meet cute and before long unlikes are coupling like mad, it's a constant bacchanal between Walter Matthau and Kate Moss types. In SMALL WORLD Lodge actually forgot to include any plot, but multiplied the social types of CHANGING PLACES by a dozenfold, so you have to keep track of hundreds of characters. However, he is skillful at setting up the polarities so all you have to do is figure out who is most unlike whom, and then sit back, these characters will inevitably come together like magnets. The holdovers from CHANGING PLACES, Morris Zapp and Philip Swallow (and their wives) go through their paces but, as the title indicates, are now mere ciphers in a burgeoning world of scholars travelling internationally which Lodge takes as a hilarious donnee.
People say narrative is corrupt, but you don't really feel it viscerally until you're in the middle of one of Lodge's satanic machines. He's sort of like Wodehouse, but with teeth and a Carry On sense of some mothers do have `em.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not terrible but a bit foolish and silly
Comment: I am familiar with the academic world through my family. This is not a glimpse into that world. This is a caricature of the academic life. Maybe in Europe or in literary circles, they race to every conference out there for a chance to visit more interesting locales or vacation. From my experience going to conferences, this is a simplistic view. It is great that it makes fun of people who sometimes take themselves too seriously though and some of the humor is funny. It gets old though, in my opinion and really does not get more interesting or enlightening as it goes along. This is the first time that I got within 30 pages of the end of the book and just couldn't read it any further. I hope it is the last time too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Small World, Indeed
Comment: I have been a David Lodge fan for some time, having read this and his better "Changing Places" some time ago. On the second go, "Small World" seems awfully small, indeed, and in some ways is a disappointment. One element missing from Lodge is satiric venom, of the sort one finds in Waugh or Amis. Lodge is not an angry man, not a hater; this is commendable and would, no doubt, make him pleasanter company than the aforementioned, but it also means that his writing lacks bite. Lodge, in fact, is a lover of life. He's a kind of British equivalent of America's Neil Simon. He is bright enough, entertaining, even learned, which one couldn't say for Simon, but this adds up finally to a slackness, a softness that makes Lodge, upon second-reading, a bit of a bore. This is not to dismiss him, of course. He remains a good read, fun, even perhaps informative, but he is never insightful, profound, deep, or moving. This is cotton candy. Like Updike, though, he has certain middle-age frustrations down cold, and he understands the estranged nobody very well, the abandoned male, the frustrated second-rater. All of this is lovingly treated rather like, I suppose, the writings of English's very own Alan Ayckbourne who, like Lodge, has a genius for lovingly depicting mediocrities. This leaves one liking the author and his work, as I do, but perhaps not ever feeling that one couldn't live without him.
Customer Rating:
Summary: David Lodge rocks my world.
Comment: Okay, here's the history and this is my first ever amazon review. I have read Small World and Changing Places many, many times. I read it first in 1992 because the post-modern boy I was in love with was reading it for his brit. fiction seminar. So I had to read it, and I got a good chunk of it, but not nearly as much as I do now. But some of the parts I love, like Frobisher who gets the computer print-out of his novels and is distracted by his word choicage, the prof hiding behind the Klaeber version of Beowulf, which I only got in a re-reading. And so many other parts. I've re-read it at least twice and the last time I was struck by how "dated" and somewhat old white boys network it is. Like if it was written now, there would be way more women in it. LIke more women in power, I mean. One of my students read it and really liked it. He's 20 and is very, very not normal for my students. I went back and did Changing Places which I also like. One of the things I tend to do is try and figure out which academic is which academic, which is abit like trying to figure out who the people in Tales of the City are based on. Like what's the point of me trying to figure out which theorist Sy Goodblatt is based on out of Penn from the 80s as he's likely not there still.
And okay, I love Morris, probably as a character and if I met him in reality, he'd probably drive my crazy. I feel cheated that we don't get his and Thelma's relationship in Jerusalem, but we get everybody else's. It's interesting my sense of Phillip changes throughout the two books. I liked him abit in CP, but towards the end of SM, he becomes seriously schmucky. With Joy and so forth. Oh come on.
So, where do you go after those? The problem is that Morris and co are so fabulous that they're hard to top. I was trying to find info. on imdb. about the miniseries and apparently Cliff from Cheers plays Morris. No disrespect for the man at all, but that totally doesn't work for me. I see him as a Harold Ramis character or the guy who played Daphne's fiancee on Frasier. I would like to see it, but I think the odds of me finding it aren't great.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Funny but seriously contrived.
Comment: Small World is the second installment of a trilogy. Basically a satirical send up of academia, the trilogy by and large (well, for the first two installments, anyway) follow a wild cast of characters as the seek sex, fame and fortune along with academic recognition. The First effort, Changing Places, chronicles the adventures of two professors--one English and one American--as the swap assignments for a year.
This installment follows the two, along with a cast of what often feels like thousands, on the convention, conference and lecture circuit.
Lodge is blessed with a wonderfully sardonic and sharp sense of humor and a deep appreciation for farce. These skills are in admirable display in this book. The comedy level matches--possibly even exceeds--that of the first book--which is saying something.
On the whole, though, this is a somewhat less satisfying read. The cast of characters, as previously mentioned, is huge. It's so big it's often difficult to remember who's who. Moreover, the plot is singularly complex. And contrived. That everything is tied up neat as a pin by the end only adds to the level of contrivance.
This is a very clever book--perhaps too clever by half, as the Brits would say.
However, it is hysterically funny. If you are in need of a good laugh--actually, dozens and dozens of good laughs, this should be your cup of tea.
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