23. Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses

by David Lodge (251 pgs)

Rating: 4

Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp are English professors who exchange places for a term. Zapp goes to England and Swallow comes to America. The story is set in 1969 and amid the beginnings of feminism and anti war activism, Swallow discovers a life more pleasant. Zapp finds his training as a ruthless American academic puts him in the perfect place to help the poor little English university expand and grow. Both of them find they like the other's life...better.

I want to go on the record as saying this is a strange book and my rating may change after I have more time to think about it. Whether it goes up or down is something I have no answer for.

Changing Places is meant to be a satire. It is poking at the lifestyle of the academic communities in both Britain and the U.S. making out neither to be particularly better than the other. It pokes at U.S. history surrounding Viet Nam, the sexual revolution, and woman's liberation movements. Also, it pokes at the British post-colonialism attitudes. I know just enough about all of these to identify that they are being satirized but not quite enough to really appreciate them. All except the lifestyle of the literature academic in the U.S. and that's debatable. I do know plot wise, this is a fascinating book. Something like watching a train wreck.

Structurally, there is some interesting things going on and a disturbing awareness in the text of it. The book is broken unevenly into 6 sections. The voice in the first section is third person omniscient distanced narrator. In the second and fifth section it's a more conventional third person non-distanced voice. The third section is epistolary, the forth is news clippings, and the sixth section is a teleplay. An example of what I mean about disturbing awareness can be found on page 130 deep in the epistolary section a character writes, 'There's a whole chapter on how to write an epistolary novel, but surely nobody's done that since the eighteenth century?' It's clever in a gentle sort of way but it happens through out.

In any case, I'd recommend this to anyone in academia and those who consider themselves 'serious readers.'