David Lodge, great figure in British literature, dies at 89

He was the veteran of high quality contemporary English literature which included, after him, Julian Barnes (born 1946), Salman Rushdie (1947), Ian McEwan (1948), Martin Amis (1949), William Boyd (1952 ), Kazuo Ishiguro (1954), Jonathan Coe (1961), to name only the most famous.
In their press release, Penguin Random House publishers stated: “He inspired great affection in those who were fortunate enough to work on his books and his commitment to the world of writing was unwavering and deep. His death is a huge loss for all of us at Penguin Random House and for British letters. »

His long-time editor, Geoff Mulligan, for his part, testified: “It was my great fortune to work with David for many years and on several books. Our editorial sessions, which took place in his apartment near Cecil Court, were both enlightening and very entertaining. They provoked in-depth discussions about a character’s motivation, the particular Burgundy they might drink, sometimes just one word, which I still remember. (…) For someone with his enormous achievements as an academic, novelist, playwright and screenwriter, he was always modest, kind, generous and a pleasure to be around. »

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Born at the right time: so wise David Lodge!

Born on January 28, 1935 in Brockley, south London, David Lodge was strongly influenced by the bombings of the English capital during the Second World War. He will allude to it in several of his books. He studied at the University of London and then taught English literature until 1987 at the University of Birmingham. At the same time, he pursued a career as a novelist and television screenwriter.
Son premier roman, The Picuregoersunpublished in French, was released in 1960. During a meeting in 1996, he told us “Cumulate, for a time, the professions of teacher and writer”did not seem to weigh on him too much: “As a general rule, academics make poor writers. It seems to me that combining the two professions does not give very good results in continental Europe. At home, university careers are achieved after a very long, often rigid apprenticeship, which does not encourage literary creation. On the other hand, it works rather well in England and the United States. My generation entered the academic world with relative ease. At the time, there was a more tolerant, more libertarian atmosphere, so that many writers of the 50s and 60s like Kingsley Amis or Iris Murdoch were able to reconcile writing and teaching without difficulty.

Behind the comic and caustic novelist, appreciated throughout the world, who readily mocked the academic world (in the Campus Trilogypublished in England during the 1980s), commercial television or even the medical world, began to emerge a more serious and thoughtful writer. The publication of his tenth book, Therapyin 1995, marked an important turning point in his work. Catholic novelist, David Lodge, did not forget that he had grown up in the shadow of Evelyn Waugh, but also of Graham Greene. He had also placed this sentence from the author of Third Man as an epigraph to Therapy : “Writing is a form of therapy.” His point of view on the matter was not lacking in salt: “Writing can be a form of therapy in two circumstances. When we go through a period of anxiety, of depression. It may help to write down this experience for your own use. Not with a view to publication. This helps put things into perspective. You can also use an unpleasant experience for a work of literary fiction: it is also beneficial in the sense that you turn the negative into a positive. But this work no longer belongs to you; it also becomes therapy for readers. This is one of the reasons we read novels. When he wrote this sentence, Graham Greene was probably thinking of this last experience. He had to tell himself that if he was not able to get out of this state of melancholy through writing, to find some sort of fulfillment in it, he might as well commit suicide.”

As a Catholic writer, he therefore belonged to a minority in England. To the question “Do Catholic novelists find it easier to express themselves on difficult subjects than others?”David Lodge hesitated for a long time before answering, embarrassed: “It’s a very interesting subject. You know. I have written ten books and Therapy is only the second in which I use the first person for a romantic confession. I had already chosen it for News from paradise in which one of the main characters, a former priest, keeps a diary. This idea of ​​confession through writing seems very important to me. It takes me back to Graham Greene, an author I studied a lot in my youth and who really influenced me. Like Evelyn Waugh, another Catholic writer. He taught me how to write comedy. Greene is more serious. His latest books are often confessions written by slightly disturbed men. My book is, I hope, a slightly more comical, more carnivalesque version of the Greenian novel!”

His long-time French publisher, Rivages, has also published his fascinating autobiographical trilogy. The first volume, Born at the right time 1935-1975 (2016) offered a dive into his past, while the second, Writer’s Luckwhich covered the period 1976-1991 (2019) revealed the mysteries of his literary creation. Finally, in Succeed, more or lesswhich covers the period 1992-2020, Lodge shared his quest for new forms of writing.
The British writer had also written television scripts and plays. He was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1997 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1998.