David Lodge, RIP

I was saddened, although not too surprised, to learn that one of my favourite novelists, David Lodge, had died, aged 90 (less a few days). The linked obituary provides a good background to both his life and his books, so I'll try not to repeat anything written there.

Until now, DL has been mentioned in 11 blogs, most of which mention him in passing, but they show how deep his books have entered my thoughts. In 2010, I wrote¹ "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.... I know that CP was actually Lodge's fifth or sixth book to be published, 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." 

In 1998, we (my wife, children and I) went to Britain for a few weeks. The first few nights we stayed at a hotel in London (The Avalon) where I had stayed again for a few nights the previous year when I made a solo flight to Britain in order to attend Cropredy 1997 and also visit Sandy Denny's grave. That first evening, I went out for a short walk and found myself in a book store in Euston station which I where I saw Lodge's novel "Therapy". I absolutely love this book.

As far as I am concerned, his last good book was "Deaf Sentence" about which I wrote², also in 2010. I bought the paperback of "A man of parts" which is a fictionalised account of Henry James; not being a student of that period of English literature, this book doesn't have any resonance for me. This is despite the adulation accorded to Henry James in the Commissario Brunetti novels - "it occurred to him that she had left Henry James to go and check on him in the bathroom. He was immeasurably cheered by the thought". ("The waters of eternal youth", chapter 15). In David Lodge's work, Henry James is also mentioned in "Thinks...", another novel that I love.

Obviously, Lodge's writing days were over, so I don't feel the shock and disappointment that I did upon the death of Peter Robinson³, who was still an active writer at the time. The final living author in my pantheon is Robert Silverberg, who was born in 1935 (as was Lodge). He too has ceased writing.

Internal links
[1] 271
[2] 262
[3] 1537

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
155	04/01/2009	Another day, another RDBMS	Programming, Delphi
794	04/01/2015	Less pleasant memories from early 1975	Health, 1975
795	04/01/2015	Research questionnaire (5)	DBA
1103	04/01/2018	Business rules in Priority which do not apply to specific users	Priority tips

Listening to old Richard (and Linda) Thompson records

During the past few days, songs of R+LT have been playing in my headphones as I walk around the kibbutz or travel on the train. When I transferred the songs to the memory cards in the headphones several years ago, storage space was at a premium so I transferred only what I considered to be the better songs, maybe only 40-50% of them.

These days, memory cards are far larger and so there seems to be no reason why I can't listen to all of his old songs. Thus when I came home from my late afternoon walk, I dug out the first four cds ('Henry the human fly', 'I want to see the bright lights tonight', 'Hokey Pokey' and 'Pour down like silver') and ripped them to my computer's hard disk. Presumably at some time I'll transfer them to the various memory cards.

Whilst doing this, I remembered that Island Records issued some years ago a live record of R+LT from 1975 so I looked for this then ripped it too. I don't know whether I have listened to it since buying it - my records say 2 Oct 2007, so I could have blogged about it (but didn't). The recordings come from three different concerts, but not from the show in London which I attended.

Listening to these songs brings back many memories. One memory that I have never written about was that in 1977, I recorded a cassette of other people's songs. Maybe I should dig out that cassette just to see what was on it, although I doubt that I will enjoy the performances. As far as I recall, there was 'Autopsy' (Fairport), 'Something so right' (Paul Simon), 'Vision' (Peter Hammill), 'Fountain of sorrow' (Jackson Browne) and 'I'll regret it in the morning' (RT). There must have been a few other songs but I don't remember - possibly 'I don't know where I stand' (Joni Mitchell via the early Fairport).

Recalling this, it seems bizarre that the Richard Thompson song that I chose was 'I'll regret it' - it seems that I preferred this to 'Withered and died' and 'Has (s)he got a friend for me', both from 'Bright lights'. Incomprehensible to me now.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
63	01/01/2007	January 1	ERP
154	01/01/2009	The least we can do	King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator
439	01/01/2012	Spooks	TV series, MI5
791	01/01/2015	Green lighting the pilot study	DBA
1193	01/01/2019	An SQL trap and how to get out of it	SQL, Priority tips