Luck plays an important part in the careers of writers. In this book David Lodge explores how his work was inspired and affected by unpredictable events in his life. In 1976 Lodge was pursuing a 'twin-track career' as novelist and academic. As a literary critic, he made serious contributions to the subject, before carnivalising it in his comic-satiric novel Small World. The balancing act between his two professions was increasingly difficult to maintain, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his bestselling novel Nice Work. Both books were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in which he was later involved as Chairman of the judges.
In a rickety, 17th century converted farmhouse in Dorset, England, a group of authors teaches a creative writing seminar. One of them-a brash American novelist-finds he's got more to learn about writing and romance than he ever dreamed possible.
An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring: Ian Abercrombie as Jeremy Dean, Michael Brandon as Leo Rapkin, Christine Estabrook as Maude Locket, Jeremy Geidt as Henry Locket, David Hunt as Simon St. Clair, and Melanie van Betten as Penny Seawell.
Original music by Raymond Guarna. Directed by Michael Bloom and recorded before a live audience.
In this memoir of his life, David Lodge looks back over his childhood and youth, including his undergraduate years at University College London. After National Service and two years' postgraduate research, married at last and soon a father, he struggles to make a start as both novelist and academic. Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to be Born gives a fascinating picture of the evolution of a writer who has become a classic in his own lifetime.
In David Lodge's last novel, Thinks... the novelist Henry James was invisibly present in quotation and allusion. In Author, Author he is centre stage, sometimes literally.
The story begins in December 1915, with the dying author surrounded by his relatives and servants, most of whom have private anxieties of their own, then loops back to the 1880s, to chart the course of Henry's 'middle years', focusing particularly on his friendship with the genial Punch artist and illustrator, George Du Maurier.
By the end of the decade Henry is seriously worried by the failure of his books to 'sell', and decides to try and achieve fame and fortune as a playwright, at the same time that George Du Maurier, whose sight is failing, diversifies into writing novels. The consequences, for both men, are surprising, ironic, comic and tragic...
When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. But his daily discontent is nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke. It is through his deafness that Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a young woman whose wayward and unpredictable behavior threatens to destabilize his life completely...
Celebrated British novelist David Lodge is a two-time finalist for the Booker Prize and winner of the Whitbread Award. Deaf Sentence finds linguistics professor Desmond Bates forced into an early retirement by hearing loss. While at a noisy party, Bates politely says yes to a question he can't quite hear. Soon, he learns he's agreed to supervise a dangerously sexy undergrad on her suicide note research.
'Another wise, witty look at the human condition from Lodge.'
'Kirkus Reviews
