Customer Reviews

Nice Work (King Penguin)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

OK, we all know David Lodge is a very witty man, and his hilarious creations in "Changing Places" and "Small World" are some of his most famous. Well, here they are, back again, in another Rummidge Campus novel--this time the main characters are Dr. Robyn Penrose and local plant manager Vic Wilcox (with special cameos by Philip Swallow, Hilary Swallow, Morris Zapp and even a mention of Desiree, of course). They meet up when Robyn is chosen to 'shadow' Vic on an Industry Matters type scheme. Their opposing view points grate off each other for the first hundred or so pages--but halfway through the novel we get hints of something very special beginning to flower.

It's not as funny or as well-plotted as "Changing Places" or "Therapy", his two greats, but then again that's hardly much of a condemnation. The man's only mortal, after all---and this novel, while not his best, is still a brilliant read and an essential conclusion to the Rummidge Campus trilogy. Read it!

After I finished grad school, a fellow student bought me this book as a going away gift. She had written on the frontispiece, "This book helps me keep perspective on how the rest of the world sees us academics." It was the first David Lodge book I read, but certainly not the last. Robyn Penrose, Ph.D. in English, has been assigned to shadow Vic Wilcox, factory manager in industrial Rummidge (a fictional version of the English city of Birmingham) for a semester. Of course Mr. Wilcox is going to learn something about feminist criticism; what you might not realize is how much Dr. Penrose will learn about English industry. David Lodge's familiar characters from his other novels, _Changing_Places_ and _Small_World_, are back here in supporting roles. But the real stars here are Robyn and Vic, two people who are very adversarial at first, only to become quite understanding of the other's point of view. Lodge's resolution of his plot seems a bit forced, but the writing is extremely intelligent: Lodge effortlessly provides humorous examples of the seemingly difficult literary theories that Robyn espouses. This book did more for my appreciation of critical theory than anything other text--and without the pain of reading Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, or Julia Kristeva. Anyone who's worked in academia will not only recognize the truth that is contained in this novel; (s)he will also recognize several of the people. Others might wish to start with _Small_World_, but _Nice_Work_ will let you know what you think of David Lodge in short order.

Nice Work is the third in Lodge's trilogy send-up of academia and stands as a significant departure from the previous two novels. The cast of characters from the first two entries is all but gone and the book takes a satirical look at academia from the corporate point of view.

The story revolves around on of those truly bureaucratic inventions that in the end never seem to serve any real purpose. In this case, it Industry Year, a celebration of industry in Britain at the height of the Thatcher ear when English business is in full retreat from the opening of markets and fierce foreign competition.

As part of this nonsense, Robyn Primrose, fierce socialist intellectual and lecturer on 19th century English literature is assigned to "shadow" Vic Wilcox, the managing director of a local foundry and manufacturing concern, to "foster greater understanding between the collegiate and business communities".

Wilcox is doing his best to remake his company into a competitive concern that can make a go of it for the long term. Primrose is a sheltered child of privilege whose left wing theories aren't tinged with any experience of the real world.

Naturally, this situation provides full fodder for Lodge's wonderfully wacky satirical vision, and he does his utmost to make the best of the situation, to wonderful effect.

This book isn't nearly as outright funny as the previous entries ion this trilogy, falling more along the lines of amusing rather than comical. Yet, I liked it best of the three. The books isn't as cluttered by the huge--and often confusing--cast of characters that populated the first two books. The pace is more subdued than the frenetic pace of the earlier books, and the characters much more fully drawn. If this effort produced far fewer "laugh out loud" moments, it was nevertheless the most satisfying of the three books.

Many complain these books are outdated--I don't find them so. They wonderfully chronicle a past time. That's like saying Dickens or Twain shouldn't be read because they are outdated. It doesn't make sense.


Lodge has a witty, effervescent writing style and a wonderfully sardonic world view that make for very enjoyable reading. This trilogy is well worth your time.

Mike Stone was evidently missing something when he said Nice Work had a horrible ending. On page 52, Robyn Penrose offers a solution to the problems of industrial capatalism (how conflict in industrial novels is solved)"a legacy, a marriage, emigration, or death." Now look at the ending, Robyn inherits the money, Charles asks her to marry him and she does not except, Robyn does not emigrate to America,and the death of Robyn's uncle. This explains why the ending of the novel was so simple. Lodge seems to be neatly tying up all loose ends. It is a happy ending after an idealogical battle, just like in Dicken's Hard Times. Now do you get it?

It's the mid-eighties. It's England. Robyn Penrose, a young teacher of literature and kneejerk leftist, and Vic Wilcox, a rather conventional manager of an engineering firm and a proudly self-made man, are both gong along happily enough until town is forced to meet gown in a government-sponsored "shadowing" program. Robyn and Vic grate against each other, gradually forcing changes in both their ways of life. It's a wonderful portrayal, not just of academia and of floundering industry, but of how people can get so caught up in their own insular worlds they have no notion of what is going on just across town. Robyn writes about Victorian industrial novels and always supports labor over business but knows nothing about contemporary industry and doesn't actually know any working class people or any businessmen. Vic supports continued business growth but has himself stopped growing. Their contact forces both to reexamine their comfortable assumptions about business, politics, literature, and the role of the university. Inevitably, their personal relationships are changed--not just their relationships with each other, but that of Robyn with her significant other and of Vic with his family. Hard economic times may be affecting both their worlds, but by the end of the book, Vic and Robyn may just be better equipped to deal with these changes than they were before.

This book is a masterly exploration of how insular people become living their lives in one culture (in this case, industry or academia) . When Robyn, highly successful in academia, meets Vic, highly successful in industry, the suspicion, culture shock and new insights on both sides are glorious to watch. I was also impressed by his skill at characterisation - Vic and his family are very well-drawn, and Robyn is marvellous... I know Lodge is an English Lit. lecturer himself, but to portray an idealistic, brilliant, female lecturer so convincingly takes talent. Funny and perceptive. Nice work, David.

I stayed up late reading this novel and thought it was a terrific read.

You may feel a bit taxed at first. As other reviewers have mentioned, the book starts slow, but then really picks up as the plot gets impossibly complicated. The ending is clearly a parody of the endings of deux-ex-machina Victorian novels.

Perhaps this factoid will shed some light on Lodge's inspiration for the novel ... One of Lodge's favorite writers is Henry Green, who wrote one of the great factory novels of the 20th Century, Living. Green and Lodge both worked in Birmingham, and Lodge himself says the fictional town of Rummidge is located on the map exactly where Birmingham is. With the parodies of 19th Century novels, and this inspirational aspect of Living, there's a lot of referencing going on and I'm probably not the only reader who couldn't keep up.

Where the book stumbles, that is, falls just this short of being an all-time classic, is Lodge's handling of the factory half of the novel. Part of the problem is Lodge handles the academic scenes with ease and authority, knowing exactly what's important and exactly what's not. Not so with the factory. Lodge's narrator comes across as a reporter, that is, not from lived experience (his filtering the factory through Robyn Penrose was perhaps necessary but tipped the balance of the book in favor of academia) and perhaps that's why the novel moves so slowly in the early going. Lodge didn't quite have the same level of confidence as he does with his rendering of academic life (or Green does with factory life), it seems to me.

A second quibble seems the affair between the two main characters. The plot seems forced at times and the closure twenty times as forced ... but this criticism runs into the intertextuality issue I mentioned above.

Perhaps I'm showing my own biases in this review ... I would've preferred to see the values of the business world set in equal play with the values of the academic world and seem where things ended up ... but Lodge may have had nothing of the sort in mind when he wrote the novel.

It's rare to find a novel this pleasurable that at the same time is so very stimulating. David Lodge does more than tell a wonderful story (though he very clearly does that); he draws subtle parallels between fact and fiction, the novels his characters analyze and the world they live in. I read this at a gulp, then went back to sip slowly of the many delicious parts. As soon as I can put it down (and that may not be this year!) I will send it to my mother. David Lodge can tell her everything I've been trying for years to tell her about being an academic, and make her laugh as fully as I did.

A young woman called Robyn Penrose, working as an lecturer at the University of Rummidge, gets involved in a project called Industrial Year Shadow Scheme. She is supposed to shadow Victor Wilcox, a managing director at Pringle's engineering company. Robyn is not enthusiastic about shadowing Mr. Wilcox, especially since she knows that nobody else wanted to do it, but finally she gives in. At the beginning she causes a lot of trouble with her anti-capitalistic and feministic point of view. The characters appear to be very stereotypical, two completely different worlds are meeting personified by Victor Wilcox and Robyn Penrose. Victor Wilcox on the one side is an industrious, hard-working managing director with a big Jaguar and a decaying family. Robyn Penrose on the other side is a woman who is well-read, has a socialistic leaning and fights for a better position of women in the society. Robyn has never been in the business world and says openly if she does not agree with something. At one time she causes a lot of trouble by telling a worker the he is supposed to be layed off, which she has heard in a confidential meeting. As a result the workers go on strike. A lot of negotiations follows. Finally the management has to make confessions to the workers concerning the working hours. Tension rises between Robyn and Mr. Wilcox, their relationship is characterized by amibivalent feelings. On the one hand there is mutal dislike but on the other hand also a certain interest in the other person. Finally Mr. Wilcox discovers that he is in love with Robyn because she is so entirely different from all the women he knows and brings some fresh air into his life. All he has from life is a lot of work, a depressed wife in her menopause and children in their puberty. He is seeking for a change.
David Lodge has written a fantastic novel full of subtle humour and intelligent dialogs. At the beginning of the novel the introduction of the charcters drags on for quite a long time, which should later be more than forgiven by the reader, as soon as the story gains drive. Then the reader is enchanted and captivated by the story and its fascinating characters. David Lodge has written a fantastic book, giving the reader a critical insight into Britains` working world in the eighties. He never leaves out on cynical or critical innuendos. He has created a book that is fun to read for everybody who is, or has been, earning money by working. That of course means this book is suitable for almost everyone.
I personally liked the book very much but I have to admitt in the retrospect that the beginning of this novel was dreary and tenacious. Fortunately the last three quarters of the novel really compensate for the beginning. I consider this book with its witty content and awesome story line worth reading. It is really fun as soon as you pass the first quarter of the novel.

The conflict between Town and Gown has always been part of the core many of the satirical British novel of academia; here Lodge explores it from a slightly diffferent angle: Plant Manager Vic Wolcox has agreed to be followed around by academic Robyn Penrose as part of a program at the mythical Rummidge University. The two of course immediately failt to hit it off, as Wolcox sees Penrose as embodying the worst sort of intellectual, left wing nonsense, and Penrose sees Wolcox as embodying evil Thatcherism.

But then one of those chance, almost synchronistic occurances that pepper Lodge novels redefines their view of one another, and from that point on things take a decidedly different turn. There's still that essential conflict- but suddenly the protagonists see each other as human beings, and not as stereotypes.

As always, Lodge delivers a story that can be wickedly satirical while never descending to cruelty; even his most presposterous and obnoxious characters seem more objects of tolerent amusement than of derision. And as with most Lodge novels, the closer you are to academia, the more hilarious you'll find his characters.