Changing Places
I reread David Lodge's Changing Places yesterday. I suspect the last time I read it was at least twenty years ago, long before I'd visited Plotinus, stayed with friends in Ashland, met a Morris Zapp protegée and shacked up with a girl from Miranda County. Mercifully, even another twenty years hasn't resulted in any greater acquaintance with Rummidge. In those twenty years I've read most of Lodge's other works, with enjoyment, but had forgotten how different Changing Places is from his other work. CP, on rereading, proves to be far more experimental and self conscious than I remembered; partly written as conventional narrative, partly epistolary (complete with self referential obvious joke), partly screenplay. By and large though it works, though perhaps no better than his more conventionally structured work. Best of all, it still makes me laugh out loud and few authors do that (Off hand I can only think of Tom Sharpe). I'd say it's a 'must read' for anyone who either has had much experience of academia or of experience of living and working on both sides of the pond or, of course, both. I reckon that takes care of 90% of the f-list one way or another!