Books like Changing Places

Changing Places is the first of David Lodge's "Campus" series, this one being set in 1969 and published in 1975. The sexual revolution, Vietnam, student sit-ins and smoking "pot" are all highly topical themes; the novel is pure "psychedelic '60's." The style is redolent of Lodge's dry, sardonic humour, so it is very entertaining to read. The setting he has created affords plenty of his waspish observations, so perhaps this is why he is doffing his cap to the Inimitable with his subtitle, "A Tale of Two Campuses".David Lodge has invented two academic campuses; one located in "Rummidge", which is clearly intended to be city of Birmingham in the Midlands, and the other is Plotinus, in the state of "Euphoria" (apparently modelled on Berkeley in California.) The story deals with a six-month academic exchange programme between these fictional universities. The participants are Philip Swallow, a very dull, conventional British academic, and an American, Morris Zapp, a dynamic and talented American professor. Whereas Philip Swallow cannot believe his luck with the comparative luxury of the US University, Zapp is at best amused, and at worst appalled by what appears to him to be a slipshod system of academia in Britain, peopled by amateurs, and with extremely backward living conditions. Hence these two academics, both aged 40, have little in common, either in their personalities, or the differing academic systems of their native countries. Most of the humour comes from the observations and contrasts resulting from this.It has to be said though, that many of the discrepancies are no longer so pertinent, as in the intervening period British Universities have become more similar to their American counterparts, so this novel has inevitably lost a little of its edge. Or possibly each succeeding generation of academics worldwide have felt that their,"barbed wisecracks sank harmlessly into the protective padding of the new gentle inarticulacy, which had become so fashionable that even [the] brightest graduate students, ruthless professionals at heart, felt obliged to conform to it."Maybe it is not, after all, a clash of cultures which speaks to us now from this novel, but the vague feelings of dissatisfaction each successive generation has that educational standards are somehow dropping.Although it is an entertaining read, and gives the reader a slice of life at the tail end of the sixties, it is not a classic of the period. The author gets a little bogged down in the sexual revolution aspect, which feels rather dated. There are no great insights here, and when Lodge could get down to the nitty gritty and make observations pointing up the differences between perceptions and cultures, he seems to veer off from doing so. Disappointingly, there is no analysis of the differences between the two educational systems, which was the initial starting point of the novel. Neither is it consistently witty; it seems to lose impetus in the middle, and descend into farcical bed-hopping between the academics, their ex-academic wives, (here would have been a ripe topic for more satire!) a daughter Melanie, an ex-student DJ Charles Boon and so on. There are a few memorable laugh-out-loud scenes though. One is an hilarious description of local radio from the American professor Morris Zapp's point of view. At the time these regional radio stations were brand new in the UK, but have proliferated since, so that Lodge's witty detailed descriptions are still very astute and funny. Another highlight is a very humorous description of the new prefabricated structure of part of Rummidge university. The subtitle of the novel is "A Tale of Two Campuses." In this way, both the title and subtitle are literary allusions to "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. Apart from some of the characters' names, further similarities to Dickens would be hard to find in the content of the novel, however. Ultimately, the reader is left with a sense that, fun read though it is, this novel is a lost opportunity.