As a younger me, I dug out his e-mail address for a high school project and sent him a message with questions about Changing Places.
I still have the message I sent him in 2000 but can't find his reply, unfortunately, but I got to send two additional messages with questions. I was thrilled at the time to be able to contact a famous writer and tell my class afterwards about it.
His Campus trilogy is and probably will be forever in the list of books that I recommend reading [1]. I really enjoyed reading those a lot during my PhD.
I first encountered his novel "Small World" in graduate school, and immediately became a fan. (It was on the reading list for one of my girlfriend's courses.) Along with other novels like "Lucky Jim" and "Straight Man" (and the other two novels in Lodge's campus trilogy), it was a hilarious look at campus life. He will be missed.
Wonderful book. I'm not sure that 'enjoy' is quite the term I'd use. For sure some of the tribulations experienced by Stoner would not be news to some sufferers in academia right now.
Glad you liked it. The scene with the Jennifer Rush song is living free in my mind, when Warren Clark's infatuation breaks surface.
The Beeb did a version of "the history man" by Malcolm Bradbury which I think was OK, but a bit less successful. They're somewhat contemporary novels about academia. They also did several of the Tom Sharpe novels but they're generally more boisterous, picaresque stories.
Apart from his fiction, I can recommend his "The Practice of Writing" from 1996. Not so much for practical writing advice, but because it is an entertaining and interesting read. Even decades after reading it I particularly remember the anecdotes about Graham Greene and how he likely was as much a spy as he was a writer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lodge_(author)
I still have the message I sent him in 2000 but can't find his reply, unfortunately, but I got to send two additional messages with questions. I was thrilled at the time to be able to contact a famous writer and tell my class afterwards about it.
RIP.
[1] https://pablo.rauzy.name/miscellaneous.html#books
The Beeb did a version of "the history man" by Malcolm Bradbury which I think was OK, but a bit less successful. They're somewhat contemporary novels about academia. They also did several of the Tom Sharpe novels but they're generally more boisterous, picaresque stories.
To combine this news with the AI zeitgeist, consider reading his 2001 novel, Thinks….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_Man
Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin (1964)
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992)