Product Description

Veteran rivals for an exclusive academic chair (recently endowed with $100,000 a year) do scholarly battle with each other in what the Washington Post Book World called a "delectable comedy of bad manners . . . infused with a rare creative exuberance". From the author of the award-winning Changing Places.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59377 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com
The unbridled greed, pettiness, buffoonery and intellectual gobbledygook in the world of higher scholarship are the topics of this thorough and thoroughly funny roman a' English department. It's interesting for a couple of reasons, aside from its humor and spoofiness: it's an insider's view of things -- always the best kind -- and it takes its old-fashioned time telling a story, complete with reasonable digressions about the state of literary criticism and what may or may not be a realistic view of the academic life.

Customer Reviews

Small World, Indeed
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.

David Lodge rocks my world.
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.

Funny but seriously contrived.
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.