David Lodge

Encerrado en su casa de Regent’s Park, en pleno blitz, el escritor Herbert George Wells, «H. G.» para los amigos, intuye que se está muriendo. Una vez fue el novelista más famoso del mundo, «el hombr

Década de los sesenta: un grupo de jóvenes católicos ingleses educados en la fe, la castidad y la «inocencia espiritual» ven flaquear sus creencias en plena revolución sexual: Michael, atormentado po

A collection of essays on writers and writing by the Booker-shortlisted novelist and critic.Writing about real lives takes various forms, which overlap and may be combined with each other: biography, autobiography, biographical criticism, biographical fiction, memoir, confession, diary.In these thoughtful and enlightening essays David Lodge considers some particularly interesting examples of life-writing, and contributes several of his own. The subjects include celebrated modern British writers such as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Muriel Spark and Alan Bennett, and two major figures from the past, Anthony Trollope and H.G.Wells. Lodge examines connections between the style and the man in the diaries of the playwright Simon Gray and the cultural criticism of Terry Eagleton, and recalls how his own literary career was entwined with that of his friend Malcolm Bradbury.All except one of the subjects (Princess Diana) are or were themselves professionally "in writing", making this collection a kind of casebook of the splendours and miseries of authorship. In a final essay Lodge describes the genesis and compositional method of his recent novel about H.G.Wells, A Man of Parts, and engages with the critical controversies that have been provoked by the increasing popularity of narrative and dramatic writing that combines fact and fiction.Drawing on David Lodge's long experience as a novelist and critic, Lives in Writing is a fascinating study of the interface between life and literature.

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle, the lovely Angelica - the jet-propelled academics are on the move, in the air, on the make, in Small World ...

Euphoric State University with its whitestone, sun-drenched campus and England's damp red-brick University of Rummidge have an annual professorial exchange scheme, and as the first day of the last year of the tumultuous sixties dawns, Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp are the designated exchangees. They know they'll be swapping class rosters, but what they don't know is that in a wildly spiraling transatlantic involvement they'll soon be swapping students, colleagues, and even wives. Changing Places is a hilarious send-up of academic life, intellectual fashion, sex, and marriage by a writer Anthony Burgess has called "one of the best novelists of his generation."

In 2004, Henry James featured as a character in no less than three novels - David Lodge's Author, Author was one of them.With insightful and amusing candour, here he traces the history of his book from conception to publication, pondering the mystery - and indeed the anguish - of so many novels about James appearing at the same time.Lodge's reflections on his own creative practice are accompanied by studies of the genesis, composition and reception of key works by James himself, as well as other novelists from George Eliot to Vladimir Nabokov, and J.M. Coetzee to Graham Greene.

"Desmond Bates e un professore in pensione. Vedovo, si e risposato con Winifred Holt, una sua ex allieva, molto piu giovane, che mentre lui si e ritirato a vita privata a causa della sua sordita (diventava impossibile o imbarazzante partecipare a conferenze, lezioni, seminari ecc.), ha messo in piedi, con successo, insieme a un'amica, una galleria d'arte e design. La cosa provoca in Desmond qualche risentimento, perche la moglie guadagna piu di lui. Ma soprattutto Desmond a causa della sua sordita accumula figure ridicole e imbarazzanti in societa, come quando, a una vernissage nella galleria della moglie, conosce Alex, una giovane studentessa, e, senza sentire esattamente cosa lei gli chiede, le promette aiuto, ritrovandosi poi in situazioni sempre piu intricate. Ma nonostante fatiche e figuracce il professore non si da per vinto e combatte senza segni di cedimento. "

"Sono sei brevi racconti: ""Dove arde il solleone"", un'altalena sentimentale un po retro tra due giovani coppie in vacanza, circa quarant'anni fa, a Ibiza; ""Il mio primo lavoro"", l'apprendistato ad una stazione ferroviaria di un giovane venditore di giornali, che scopre le regole del mondo dei ""grandi"" e perde la sua innocenza; ""Camera con vista sulla piscina"", nella piscina di un hotel della Costa Azzurra, le schermaglie amorose fra un uomo e la moglie gelosa; ""L'uomo che non voleva alzarsi"", un uomo rifiuta di alzarsi dal letto; ""L'avaro"" i sogni a occhi aperti di tre bambini del dopoguerra; ""Pastorale"", la cronaca di una recita parrocchiale organizzata da un ragazzo per poter star vicino alla ragazza che ama. "

Funny and moving by turns, Deaf Sentence is a witty, original and absorbing account of one man's effort to come to terms with deafness, ageing and mortality, and the comedy and tragedy of human lives. When the university merged his Department of English with Linguistics, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. He misses the routine of the academic year and has lost his appetite for research. His wife Winifred's late-flowering career goes from strength to strength, reducing his role to that of escort, while the rejuvenation of her appearance makes him uneasily conscious of the age gap between them. The monotony of his days is relieved only by wearisome journeys to London to check on his aged father who stubbornly refuses to leave the house he is patently unable to live in with safety. But these discontents are nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss -- a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment, leading Desmond into mistakes, misunderstandings and follies. It might be comic for others, but for the deaf person himself, it is no joke. It is his deafness which inadvertently involves Desmond with a young woman whose wayward behaviour threatens to destabilize his life completely.

L'art de la fiction est traité à travers de nombreux thèmes comme les interventions d'auteur, le suspense, le roman épistolaire, le monologue intérieur, le réalisme magique, le symbolisme, et chacun illustré par des extraits d'un roman classique ou moderne. S'appuyant sur des écrivains aussi différents que Henry James et Martin Amis, Jane Austen et Fay Weldon, Henry Fielding et James Joyce, David Lodge rend accessibles à tous la richesse et la variété de la littérature anglaise et américaine. Apportant à la critique littéraire la verve et l'humour de ses propres romans, David Lodge fournit aux étudiants en littérature, aux écrivains aspirants et à quiconque souhaite comprendre le fonctionnement de la littérature sa méthode et son interprétation. Professeur honoraire de littérature à l'université de Birmingham, David Lodge a enseigné de 1960 à 1987. Auteur de romans, de pièces de théâtre, il a publié cinq livres de critique littéraire, un recueil d'essais et « édité » des anthologies de textes classiques. L'Art de la fiction est paru en 1991 sous forme d'articles dans The Independant on Sunday.

David Lodge est né à Londres en 1935. Après des études à l'University College, il a enseigné la littérature anglaise jusqu'en 1987 à l'université de Birmingham et donné des conférences dans le monde entier, notamment à Berkeley. Auteur d'une oeuvre importante qui comprend des essais critiques et de nombreux romans, David Lodge a reçu de nombreuses distinctions. Il est membre de la Société Royale de Littérature. Desmond, professeur de linguistique s'ennuie. Ce veuf marié à Winifred une divorcée qui vibrionne dans un magasin de déco très en vue dans la grande ville de province où ils habitent a pris une retraite anticipée. S'il a saisi l'occasion de se retirer lors d'une restructuration de départements c'est pour une raison bien simple : Desmond a des problèmes d'ouïe. Il n'est pas sourdingue mais, tout de même, dur de la feuille. Son ordinaire est donc rythmé par la lecture du Guardian, le shopping domestique, les visites londoniennes à son père de plus en plus seul au monde et les activités culturo-mondaines de son épouse. C'est d'ailleurs pendant un vernissage et alors qu'il ne comprend pas un traître mot et répond au petit bonheur la chance qu'une étudiante en thèse lance sur lui ce qui ressemble très vite à une OPA.

Escriptors tan diversos com Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen, Fay Weldon o James Joyce donen peu a un complet aclariment dels ressorts de l'obra a narrativa i de l'explicació de termes t

David Lodge's The British Museum is Falling Down was published in 1965 and is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. It tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted - not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.

Like Colm Tóibín's THE MASTER, David Lodge's novel is an exploration of the last years of Henry James. Beginning in the 1880s, when James has become an internationally famous and successful novelist, Lodge takes the reader deeply into the writer's life as he struggles with the disjunctions between his life and his work, and attempts to turn tragedy into art. At the end of the novel, Lodge, a longtime admirer of James's novels, writes a short and very personal appreciation.

Con la amenidad y el humor característicos de todas sus novelas, David Lodge nos brinda, del mismo modo que en El arte de la ficción, un libro agradable y altamente instructivo que está destinado a convertirse en una obra de referencia para estudiantes de literatura, escritores en ciernes y todo aquel que desee conocer el engranaje de las novelas. Tomando como pretexto a escritores tan diversos como Charles Dickens, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley y Martin Amis, Henry James, John Updike o Philip Roth, David Lodge nos ofrece una descripcion sistematica, comprensiva y cabal de los recursos estilisticos y los metodos narrativos a traves de los cuales las novelas transmiten sus significados y surten los efectos que surten en los lectores. Sobre todo, de como los conocimientos y descubrimientos mas recientes en Inteligencia Artificial, neurociencia y biologia evolucionista han renovado y revolucionado la manera de encarar, tanto por parte del escritor como del lector, el lenguaje de la novela. David Lodge (Londres, 1935) se licencio en Filosofia y Letras por el University College de Londres en 1959 y se doctoro por la Universidad de Birmingham, de la que fue profesor de lengua y literatura inglesas desde 1960 hasta 1987, año en que abandono la docencia para dedicarse excl

Framed by a dramatic and moving account of Henry James's last illness, Author! Author! begins in the early 1880s, describing James's friendship with the genial Punch artist, George Du Maurier, and his intimate but problematic relationship with fellow American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson. At the end of the decade Henry, worried by the failure of his books to sell, resolves to achieve fame and fortune as a playwright while Du Maurier diversifies into writing novels. The consequences that ensue mingle comedy, irony, pathos, and suspense. As Du Maurier's novel Trilby becomes the bestseller of the century, Henry anxiously awaits the opening night of his make-or-break play, Guy Domville. This event, on January 5, 1895, and its complex sequel form the climax to Lodge's absorbing novel. Thronged with vividly drawn characters, some of them with famous names, Author! Author! presents a fascinating panorama of literary and theatrical life in late Victorian England. But at its heart is a portrait, rendered with remarkable empathy, of a writer who never achieved popular success in his lifetime or resolved his sexual identity, yet wrote some of the greatest novels about love in the English language.

Dans son dernier roman, Pensées secrètes, l'écrivain Henry James apparaissait en filigrane. Dans celui-ci, il se tient au centre de la scène. L'histoire commence en décembre 1915, alors que Henry James meurt entouré de ses proches et de ses domestiques - puis recule pour lever le rideau sur les années 1880. Apparaissent alors George du Maurier, l'ami cher, artiste et illustrateur de métier et Constance Fenimore Woolson, écrivain américain avec qui James entretient des relations aussi étroites que platoniques. C'est à cette époque que Henry James décide, pour contrer le faible succès public de ses livres, de chercher la fortune et la renommée au théâtre. Il se lance dans l'écriture de pièces tandis que son ami George, dont la vue s'affaiblit, se met, lui, à écrire des romans. Les conséquences pour les deux hommes vont être tout à la fois comiques, tragiques, surprenantes et ironiques : tandis que Trilby , le roman de Georges, devient le best-seller du siècle au grand étonnement de l'auteur lui-même, Henry se voit hué le soir de la première de sa pièce Guy Domville.