The Campus Trilogy: Changing Places / Small World / Nice Work

The Campus Trilogy #1-3

by David Lodge

"A trio of dazzling novels in a comic mode that the author has now made completely his own...a cause for celebration." - The New York Times Book Review David Lodge's three delightfully sophisticated campus novels, now gathered together in one volume, expose the world of academia at its best-and its worst. In Changing Places , we meet Philip Swallow, British lecturer in English at the University of Rummidge, and the flamboyant American Morris Zapp of Euphoric State University, who participate in a professorial exchange program at the close of the tumultuous sixties. Ten years later in Small World , older but not noticeably wiser, they are let loose on the international conference circuit-along with a memorable and somewhat oversexed cast of dozens. And in Nice Work , the leftist feminist Dr. Robyn Penrose at Rummidge University is assigned to shadow the director of a local engineering firm, sparking a collision of ideologies and lifestyles that seems unlikely to foster anything other than mutual antipathy.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Literature, Academia, British Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction

832 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.

Reviews

[Mary Papastavrou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything and I mean everything, that Professor Lodge ever published. His academic comedy novels are very hard to beat and the early ones have more than a hint of Robertson Davis in them which is a fantastic bonus!

[Neilepiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changing Places started off a bit slow but got better and better whilst picking up the speed of succession of events. The characters Swallow and Zapp made me laugh constantly and towards the end I found myself rooting for certain characters.
Small World was by far the best novel in the trilogy, it was a perfect sequel to Changing Places that didn't just dote on the Swallow vs. Zapp duo but introduced Persse who tried his best to win the heart of the young lady, the side stories of the academics spiced it up as well.... the end was a bit cliché though, everyone finding out that they were long last family and so on. Nevertheless it was great.
Nice Work is relatable because I have two friends just like Penrose and Wilcox, and when I'm listening to them argue it feels just like it does in the novel, the ever ongoing war between the vicious utilitarian and the hopeless idealist.

These novels made me laugh out loud at regular intervals, I'm looking forward to reading Lodge's other work...

[MVV · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't enjoyed a book as much as I did this in a while. I refuse to sully the experience by saying too much on the matter except that I love this book, I adore it, and that it is a worthy successor to Lucky Jim, another awfully brilliant book.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Campus Trilogy by David Lodge – Changing Places, The Booker Prize Nominee Small World http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/e... and the less enticing Nice Work

10 out of 10





Starting with the exuberant, exhilarating, outstanding Changing Places http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/a... the rating was a fourteen out of ten, climbing down to a more terrestrial twelve out of the same ten on the Small World, only to fall below the maximum with the final Nice Work, but on the whole, the Campus Trilogy is still a magnanimous, elating, enchanting Piece of Art Work, that justifies the Umberto Eco quote ‘The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards.”



What is more the lives of Philip Swalow, Morris Zapp and company lead you to say like Malcolm Bradbury ‘Fiction’s people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its (fiction’s) actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

I only wish I have been as excited and exuberant about Nice Work as about the other two, especially Changing Places, and there is the thought is that it had happened before with the JG Farrell Trilogy, where Troubles http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/02/t... had been imperial, just as majestic as The Siege of Krishnapur, only to be closed with the clearly disappointing Singapore Grip, which makes one wonder if the Troubles are with the works or the reader, albeit there are arguments for both sides, two roman fleuves must be cited, first A La Recherche du Temps Perdu



The Divine A Dance to The Music of Time by glorious Anthony Powell has no fewer than twelve volumes http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/a... and there was a febrile wait for the next installment, postponed because there was the anxiety of having to go through the last pages, soothed by the determination to take the narrative up again, and enjoy Eudaimonia, bliss and nirvana…more recently, there is the vague unease provoked by the second reading of what had initially been absolute victories, triumphal magnum opera like The Loved One http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/t... which has exalted first, only to feel somewhat lukewarm the second time

Doctor Robyn Penrose is a compelling character, but Vic Wilcox does not convince so much, in Nice Work, which is good, but pales when compared with the previous stories, however much it does provide on the industrial policies of Britain in the Thatcher years – we are talking about 1986 – indeed, part of the problem might be that we get too much about a factory, the strikes and workers – not my taste anyway…



Lacan and deconstruction are not subjects I adore – there is the irony that Robyn and Charles talk about it and admit to the peripheral nature the insignificance of their preoccupations, and there is a satire in there…Charles ends up becoming a merchant banker, at least he is at some point, I have not yet finished the whole thing, albeit I am clear on what I think about it already – and the connection between the two main personages does not look right from here, in part because I do not approve of ‘opposites attract’

It could be psychoanalyzed, maybe it has to do with nearly twenty seven years’ experience of ‘living with an opposite’, but the way it works (or does not) has had the effect of rejecting even the ‘Nice Work’ of good portions of the last narrative in the trilogy, Robyn and Vic start as antagonists, he is for ‘capitalism’ if you will, and she has rather Marxist (or vehement) views that send them clashing, fighting over what must be done with universities, workers…she interferes at the factory and a walkout ensues…



He may ‘fall in love’ with her, only she denies that love is extant – ‘it is just a literary trick’ – and that brings her in the camp of Thomas Mann http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/t... who wrote in a short story that love exists only in art, there is a character that is appalled at the way humans keep saying ‘I love you so much, there are no words to express it’ when that is hogwash (he does not use this expression) if we take what love means, we see that in ordinary life, when the feeling is tested, it fails and it is just attraction, sexual urge, infatuation…furthermore, the use of ‘loving this picture, color, car, drink, etc.’ has in fact made the word almost redundant, empty of significance.

When she comes to (spoiler alert) felatio, it seemed as a fracture, breakdown in the structure, not that it is impossible (what is impossible…the once greatest democracy in the world, United States of Erica, has elected the ultimate crook, scoundrel, liar, idiot to be its leader and incredibly, may do so again, maybe thirty million are devoted cult members) but it does not feel right, to me it was as abrupt, emphatic as in one on those films we see, where the plot has to reach a climax not matter how improbable it might be.



It was not a question of buildup, preparing the stage, indeed, Aristotle comes to mind and his analysis of the drama – it needs a reversal and revelation, sometimes they can come at the same time, as in Oedipus King, when the messenger reveals the news that make the king realize that he has killed his father and married his mother – but I did not take to the coupling, which was to be anticipated, only unrolling on some different scenario, not with her ‘licking his penis from root to tip’, at the start of the sexual intimacy, or too near it…

There is evidently that adagio, the work of art tells more (or is it just as much) about the viewer/reader and it may make sense to turn around and see what is happening not in the text, but in the mind of the frustrated reader – is this an envy, a terrible indication of getting older, enough to take a retrograde, medieval perspective…no, it is not that, the act in itself is not in question, the timing, the fault in the story line that led to a disengagement…it makes you do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...



Note by Revolutionary Realini – here is the link to the Newsweek article in which Realini is quoted, on the rebellion that took down Ceausescu, in 1989 http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Changing Places (1978). Beautiful 60s farce, mocking the zany side while accepting the force of the hippy challenge to all sorts of things, lastingly sexism. The jokes rely heavily on the difference in vitality and affluence between 60s Britain and California – one grey and without central heating, the other soaked in optimism, sex and cute subversions.
4/5.



Small World (1984). Even better, more romantic and full of risky narrative moves – regular cinematic cuts, 40 characters in two dozen Richard-Curtis conjunctions, a character commenting on his narrative role, a cod-Japanese passage without articles... Generous and barbed and fun. 4*/5.




Nice Work (1988). I suppose what I like most about Lodge is his marriage of (and subversion of) highfalutin Theory with daft romcom conventions. This last one’s grimmer – based more on the mutual misunderstanding and vices of literary theory and industry. Thatcher’s jaws lurk in the background. Also race. Robyn, his feminist protagonist is good and 3D, principled and struggling with the contradictions of the radical academic (their privileged position in a system they abhor, ‘revolutionary’ abstractions, the attack on logocentric realism leading to detachment from lived life where things happen). Robyn’s attitude to love inspired this great satire.

4/5

[Mady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Geschenk meines Professors und Mentors und eine Empfehlung dessen Doktorvaters.
Eine Lektüre die nicht allein ein romantisches auf und ab darstellt, sondern einem die Augen über die Arbeit an der Universität öffnet.
Um meinen Prof. zu zitieren: „Lies dieses Buch und du weißt alles über die Wissenschaft, was du wissen musst.“
Eine Empfehlung für alle angehenden Akademiker*innen. (besonders jene die mit dem Gedanken spielen ihren Doktor zu machen)

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a stunningly cute trio of stories exploring a topic long overdue; the bad behavior of academics. Lodge has a real gift for seamlessly integrating the ideas and theories that the characters live and breathe into the stories themselves, in such a way as to provide good summaries of literary theory in the post-war era and also at providing a microcosmic snapshot of postwar history itself.

[Cliff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This omnibus volume comprises of three books the author wrote based around the University of Rummidge. In the first, Changing Places, we meet a number of characters who will paly a greater of lesser part in following books. It concerns two dons, Phillip Swallow from Rummidge and Morris Zapp from The University of Euphoria in the USA. Rummidge is clearly based on Birmingham (and the author as much as admits that's the case by the time we reach third book). Swallow and Zapp exchange placesand, for a short while, wives. Part of the novel is conducted in an epistolatary form, which is not used in the other two. The second book, which is the longest of the three, deals with the academic round of conferences in places around the world. Swallow and Zapp play a part in this, even to the extent of Zapp getting kidnapped and a ransom sought from his wife, from whom he is now divorced and a best selling author. The main character is new, Persse McGarrigle from the fictitious University of Limerick. He meets a young and very attractive attendee at one conference, then spend a great deal of time (not to say money) on chasing her around the world from conference to conference and always missing her. The last novel is set in Rummidge and the main character is Robyn Penrose, a Reader in English Literature and Women's Studies who is employed on a limited term contract. She gets sent of to spend one day a week shadowing a Managing Director of a local company, part of a larger conglomerate. The novel concerns itself with the clash of the two cultures in the one city and how Vic Wilcox, the MD in question slowly has his eyes opened to a world beyond his factory. Lodge is described as one of the best English comic novelists of the post war era. It should be noted that these books were written in the 1970s and 1980s and very much reflect the concerns of the times. No mention, for example, of tuition fees. Do not expect a laugh out loud, easy read,type of comic novels. The books are far more than that.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This trilogy constitutes Lodge's three campus novels, Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work.. In the first, the irrepressible Morris Zapp, master, or close enough, of all things English from Jane Austen to poststructuralism, exchanges his position at Euphoric State (read Berkeley) with the much more mild-mannered Philip Swallow at Rummidge University in England (read Birmingham). Hilarity, involving cultural (mal)adjustment, neglected wives, and cutthroat campus ambition, ensues.

Zapp and Swallow reappear in Small World, which takes place against a background of constantly shifting, yet reassuringly similar, conferences around the world. The young academic Persse McGarrigle seeks the mysterious Angelica in lecture halls and, well, strip clubs, if he has to, trying to convince her of his love.

In the last of the trilogy, Nice Work, Robyn, a young literary theorist at Rummidge, finds her ideals and beliefs tested when she is assigned to shadow Vic, a manager of a large local manufacturer. as part of an attempt to make connections between the university and the town.

Lodge affectionately and effectively skewers the academics and their world, without robbing the characters of their humanity. They're fun to be around, and yes, even root for.

[Anne Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lodge is a master of the satirical campus novel, a world he knows plenty about having been a Professor of English Literature as well as a renowned literary critic. He skewers many recognisable academic types with devilish wit but manages at the same time to interweave some subtle and pertinent commentary on the English domestic, economic, social and industrial worlds of the eras he writes about. The best of the three novels in my view is "Small World," a classic of the satirical novel.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 novels in one volume of which I read Changing Places. Two very different English professors, one in the Bay Area and the other at a red brick university in England, switch places for one year. (Rummidge U in England and Euphoria U in CA. You can see where this is headed.) Wives are left behind but they become involved in it too. Set in the mid-1960’s with all the craziness of that era. Very amusing as they not only switch jobs but also to some extent switch personae.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really identify with the characters and the situations because I'm in STEM and our world is a bit different from the "social" scholars'. I enjoyed the first book the most, it was fun, interesting, the rest just spiraled out of control in a weird way. I don't know if I'd recommend reading the whole trilogy, but the first book at least was quite nice.

[Tarun Chakraborty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read book. The gap between 'Booker Prize Won' and 'Booker Prize Shortlisted' is indeed paper thin.

[Susan Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it. About life as an academic in America and uk

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny and witty. The perfect reading for university students. Love the way different lives can meet, mix and interchange in this book.

[Milda Alisauskiene]

Wonderful, funny and so much recognisable in the nowadays academic world.

[Spirit Era · Rating 5 out of 5]

I return to these stories every now and again and still find them enjoyable.

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed an extended work so much- pure pleasure!

[Riverlily]

DNF

[J B Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different

Takes a bit if getting used to with the different location changes but certainly a different subject matter from anything I have previously read

[Martin Lauricella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable and funny.

[Anindita Satpathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a book like this that should be bigger (figuratively) than they are, be pored over on afternoons, tucked into a bag for a long bus ride and on the must-read list of any one who likes a good laugh. I'm thrilled with this find and will definitely be buying more Lodge.
Small World takes off convincingly from where Changing places left off. Nice Work, by contrast, is an almost-unrelated story with recurring characters. Dealing with the portentous pretensions of academics back in the 60s through to the 80s, the stories weave in the nicest bits of socio-political theory into dialogue. It brought back memories of all those theory classes that I dozed through (that wasn't the case here). The two main characters - Phillip Swallow and Morris Zapp seem to be swapping personality traits through the book. Swallow's more likeable in Changing Places while you're inclined to side with Zapp in Small World. A very clever trick of Lodge's, indeed. Out of the three, Small World can get a little grating because of McGarrigle but the other two more than make up for it. There's oodles of humour, a judicious mix of likeable and odious characters and an almost-flawless narrative to boot.

[David Sinck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember seeing the TV version of "Small World" made by Granada Television (remember them?) and having fully enjoyed it twenty years ago turned to the trilogy from the pile of "Campus novels" on Blackwell's table to kick start the new uni term.

It takes a really funny book to make me laugh out load, but this series did so. Lodge's grasp of plot and character are such that one is (briefly) a student again. Smoking pot, sex between students and students, students and lecturers,lecturers and lecturers wives, engaging in internal uni politics - it's all here and more.

If like me you went not to Oxbridge, but to a provincial red brick, then these novels will ring especially true. But just like you didn't have to go to Oxford to enjoy "Brideshead Revisited" don't let not having a degree from "Rummidge" put you off these books - you'll love them.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read all three of these novels separately and found them very pleasurable. The trick to each is that people of very different persuasions and personalities are thrown together-- and each one winds up learning from and being influenced by the other. The characters are basically likeable (even as you're bound to find one of them more congenial to your own world view) and the changes they undergo seem plausible.
Does the pleasure in reading come from this sense that we all might become wiser as we experience life? Hmm, could be.

A nice addition to the trilogy would be Lodge's more recent "Thinks," which has-- in addition to the interesting character arc-- some delightful literary parodies.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun to read all of these novels back-to-back (although I haven't technically gotten to Nice Work yet.) Lodge does a wonderful job of capturing the time he is living in. Reading Changing Places right after Alison Lurie's "War Between the Tates" was a treat. Both are campus novels featuring academics in their 40's and set in the rapidly changing world of 1969. Superficially, Lodge focuses on the difference between the UK and US, where Lurie focuses on the difference between men and women. But both capture the thrill and dread of middle-age people watching the world changing around them. And both are really funny!

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and clever. I really liked it. I could read Lodge all day.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8 stars. I enjoyed these books. Though, this is partly due to my romantic ideas about educational establishments and 60s and 70s architecture. Yeah.

[Livies · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd really give it more like 2.5 stars. This one hurt. I loved "Therapy" by David Lodge SO MUCH and this trilogy was just frustrating. I had high hopes and it just was not what I expected.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to read, especially if you've spent any time around university English departments.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very funny, wry British humour. Pokes fun at academics, always a fun past time!