Nice work

A little judicious work with the blogger search function shows that I have mentioned David Lodge in four different blog entries over the years but have never tagged him. That has now been corrected.

The first novel of Lodge's that I read was 'Changing places', which was recommended by some book club of which I was a member maybe twenty five years ago. The book was amusing but not overly so, and I don't think that I've read it for many a year. The second was the sequel to CP, "Small world", which I liked somewhat less than CP. Despite this, I found both books interesting enough to keep David Lodge on my search list, and this paid in spades when I found his next novel, "Nice work".

I know that CP was actually Lodge's fifth or sixth book to be published, but his first three novels were out of print in the eighties and nineties (I bought all three in new editions in 2002). But for me, it was his first book, and as far as I am concerned, there was a leap made in quality from the books which preceded it to those which came after. A similar thing happened with Peter Robinson (the first book of his which I read was his tenth to be published) and this makes me wonder whether it's the same thing as in music: the first song one hears by someone is always better than anything which they had made beforehand.

'Nice work' was a very suitable novel for me, because it brought together the disparate worlds of industry and academy. I straddle those worlds myself. Whilst the book itself can be read as a complete - and very interesting story - there is also an amusing subtext (or maybe supertext). One of the protagonists of the book, Robyn Penrose, is a University lecturer specialising in the 'industrial novel'; Lodge 'quotes' a lecture which she delivers to a class, and the ideas presented in the lecture form the background structure to the novel.

Indeed, there is a very important sentence uttered in the lecture whose significance I missed for several years. I had always thought that the ending of the book was rather weak; not quite deux ex machina, but very close (and incidentally, other books of Lodge also suffer from this same malady). But during one pass through the book, I noticed that the situation which suddenly arises at the end of the book - in which Robin is offered marriage, a job in America and receives a legacy following her uncle's death - is exactly what was expounded in her lecture.

I quote from page 83 of my edition of the book:

In short, all the Victorian novelist could offer as a solution to the problems of industrial capitalism were: a legacy, a marriage, emigration or death.

Once I noticed this, all sorts of other bits and pieces started to fall into place. In my opinion, 'Nice work' should have received better reviews that it does at Amazon.

My edition (Penguin 1989, bearing the number '10' alone) has on its cover a picture of Vic Wilcox and Robyn Penrose as portrayed in "a riveting BBC television series from the bestselling book". I wouldn't say that I've lusted after this BBC series, but I have always been interesting in finding it. It would seem that it has yet to be transferred to DVD.

Imagine my surprise and pleasure, then, a few weeks ago when I found a torrent of the series at a BBC torrent site. I eagerly downloaded the torrent and waited for it to complete. Over the past week, I have watched all four episodes of the series as well as rereading the book.

I have to give the series a very high mark. The screenplay was written by David Lodge himself and so is naturally very close to the original. Of course, not all of the book has been transferred to the screen (the daughter of Vic Wilcox has been excised, for example) but it is a very faithful translation. What is missing is the literary subtext; one is much less aware of the parallels to the Victorian industrial novel (even though most of Robyn's lecture is preserved), and the entire 'Silk Cut' deconstruction has disappeared. The telling of Robyn and Vic's stay in Dusseldorf is shown as it happened (well, most of it) as opposed to having it described by Robyn to Penny Black (is Lodge a stamp collector? Only now do I realise the significance of this name) in a sauna.

The casting is superb as well; most of the characters (save Robyn herself) look almost exactly as I imagined them. The actress playing Robyn doesn't quite look the part but is very good (and manages to put on an instant Birmingham accent when in Dusseldorf).

I definitely recommend looking out for this book - and if one is exceptionally lucky, the torrent.