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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A tale of humiliation...and hilarity, June 8, 2003
I read this on the train to New Jersey and back in January, and I'm sure my fellow passengers were looking at me strangely, because I was snorting and saying, "ha!" Maybe it's just being around academics again, but I found this novel extremely funny, and I probably will search out more Lodge based on it. The idea is simple: two professors, one at a small college in England, the other at a huge conglomerate in California, switch places for an academic year. The English professor, who is barely scraping by, longs for the materialism of American society; the American professor, on the verge of divorce, is trying to get his wife to see past his infidelities and acknowledge his worth as a husband. But people are people all over, and while both professors undergo quite a bit of culture shock, and cause some culture shock in the academic societies that they become a part of, the real story here is that it is a small world after all (hmm, funny that, but Small World is the name of the sequel to this novel. One of the best sections of this novel is the depiction of a game called Humiliation, wherein you must name a novel that you have not read, but that you expect everyone else at the table/party to have read. The idea is that by admitting not having read a canonical text (especially among Literature scholars) you will be humiliated. It's the kind of intellectual party game that Seinfeld watchers just can't join in on, because it assumes a sophistication. Either that, or it's just snobbery. The other thing that raises this story about similar counterparts (including Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, which I liked, but not as much as this novel) is the clever way in which it shifts form within the story. For example, section three is done entirely epistolary, while the ending is written in screenplay format. The novel is also self-reflecting, in a wry sort of metafictional way. You know that you're reading a story, and the story knows that you are reading it, but instead of pressing the point as in some of the more aggressive post-modern works, it does some sly winks and nods in the general direction of the reader.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty, accurate, compelling ("dated" misses the point), January 7, 2001
As a British graduate student at UC Berkeley, the campus upon which "Euphoric State" is closely modelled, and as a graduate of an English university similar to "Rummidge," which doubles for Birmingham, I can vouch for the accuracy of Lodge's beautifully-wrought satire. I zipped through "Changing Places" in less than a day and can't remember the last time I enjoyed a novel so much. Lodge was a visiting professor from Birmingham who taught at Berkeley in the late 60s (Philip Swallow is thus a kind of alter ego), and thirty-two years after the action takes place, there's much that's still recognizable here. The satire of academic life in England and America hits the bullseye, the characterizations are broad but retain a sympathetic humanity, the drama is compelling and amusingly risqué. There's also a nicely constructed vein of self-referential literariness that emerges on occasion, without being obtrusive. Accusations by some readers that the novel is "dated" miss the point - one might as well say Jane Austen is dated. Yes, the era of campus radicalism and sit-ins has receded into history, but the comparisons Lodge draws between English and U.S. campus life, academic politics and professors are still mostly valid. (Perhaps the biggest difference is that British academics have since come closer to their U.S. counterparts in having to worry about "publish or perish.") It's fascinating to note that many of the minutiae have not changed: British lecturers still give grades like Swallow's ultra-precise B+/B+?+; Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue ("Cable Avenue" in the book) is still a living monument to hippiedom (albeit somewhat commercialized now) and its People's Park ("People's Garden") survives unfenced and enjoyed by the community. Two caveats: readers addicted to neat-and-tidy Hollywood endings may be disappointed; everyone else should take care to read "Changing Places" first, proceed to "Small World," and then go on to "Nice Work."
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very funny novel and a wonderful read, September 5, 1999
By A Customer
David Lodge's "Changing Places" had me in stitches. It's such a funny book. The prose is highly readable, crisply written and races along so charmingly that it's hard to put it down once you've started. Although Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp are drawn from the two contrasting cultures they symbolise, they are never allowed to degenerate into caricatures. Both are highly real and believable characters, sharing much the same human frailties. While Zapp is unashamedly direct, hollow and crass, Swallow is rather more reserved, diffident, but with the same potential though not the guts for dishonesty. It is only by "changing places" that they become themselves, albeit in a different environment. Even the behaviour of their wives change when subjected to the opposite cultural influences. Admittedly, the setting of the "exchange" in the late 60s (with all the references to student protests and pot smoking in university campuses) has tended to date the book a bit. But who cares, when you derive such enormous pleasure, laughter and fun from reading what must seem like a novel for the ages. I can see thousands reading it 50 years into the new millenium.
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