- Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (2 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140046569
- ISBN-13: 978-0140046564
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 230,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
The first of the hilarious novels in the campus trilogy, Changing Places is a funny and wise tale of academic ill-manners - David Lodge at his comic best
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
When Phillip Swallow and Professor Morris Zapp participate in their universities’ Anglo-American exchange scheme, the Fates play a hand, and each academic finds himself enmeshed in the life of his counterpart on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Nobody is immune to the exchange: students, colleagues, even wives are swapped as events spiral out of control. And soon both sun-drenched Euphoric State University and rain-kissed University of Rummidge are a hotbed of intrigue, lawlessness and broken vows…
‘Not since Lucky Jim has such a funny book about academic life come my way’ Sunday Times
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First Sentence
High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I didn't exactly miss 1969 - I was born at the beginning of the year. But I wasn't terribly conscious of what was going on in the world around me. There are two big events of that year I feel cheated of experiencing - the Moon landing and the student revolution. Lodge's book is a satire on the latter event.
It describes the progress of innocent British academic Philip Swallow through the campus uprising at Eurphoric State (really Berkeley, not Stanford as another reviewer mistakenly claimed). Meanwhile, his exchange partner, cynical American academic Morris Zapp, cuts a swathe through the campus at Rummidge (Birmingham).
For those of us who never experienced 1969, the novel can be read as a marvellous evocation of those times. It is also very, very funny.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Changing Places was Lodge's first campus novel and arguably the best. When the Californian Morris Zapp the English Philip Swallow swap jobs for a semester thay swap everything about each other's lives, which obviously has hilarious consequences, but their very diifferent takes on the situation provide a thoughtful aspect to the book. This is not only about a situation but also about an era and is based on Lodge's real life experiences on an academic exchange. This lends an interesting edge to the book, however this is such a work of genius, you forget the critical aspect and just smile your way through. I would recommend this book, but beware of the academic aspect. If it is new to you this book will either be a confusion or a delightful insight!
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The story takes place in 1969 as two professors, American Morris Zapp and Englishman Philip Swallow swap places at each other's universities. Swallow goes to Zapp's Euphoric State University (California, probably Berkeley) and Zapp goes to Swallow's University of Rummidge in England's Midlands, (probably Birmingham). In Changing Places David Lodge is an academic writing about academics.
In the background students are revolting, feminism is beginning, US consumerism is rampaging and the prominent English welfare state is becoming more and more worn out. In the foreground the comparison of the two worlds of academe, English and American, becomes a microcosm for the two nations as a whole. The novel explores how the two professors (and their respective wives), become reciprocally aware of how much their life-style and their set of values, inside and outside the Academe, owe to what they progressively recognize as one's own and the other's national identity and character. Literary criticism too is a distinct feature of national identity: Zapp is a champion of specialization, while Swallow despises theory as something un-English.
Swallow sees the Americans as being better off but not having a better life than the English. They are more cynical and he is uncomfortable with the way they place the pursuit of their own ends above nearly everything. Zapp sees England as gloomy, poor, shabby and boring, linked to welfare solidarity and unaware of the power of free enterprise, but he is impressed by family bonds, the warmth of human relationships and the survival of moral scruples.
Neither side wins and no sterotypes are allowed since the narrator invites the reader to sit beside him and at his detached height judge by his own common sense. Common sense of course being a characteristic that the English value very highly.
In Changing Places literature claims a social conscience, an ability to go beyond the surface of things, an ability even to be self-critical. Literature emerges as a form of discourse which wants to increase the reader's critical and literary competence. To emphasise this point Lodge uses a narrative technique that incorporates other forms of communication and exposes their weaknesses. Newspaper articles are shown to have a bogus claim to transparency. Film's claim to represent reality is shown to be limited.
The use of the campus novel is in itself an intriguing facet of Englishness. It offers social analysis but confined to a small arena and can be located between high-brow and low-brow. The style is usually in the form of popular satire but because it often involves writers teaching writing at university it raises itself to a level of seriousness. Satire shows only the weak sides of a society to enhance a critical laughter but the novel's literary status is very high thanks to its sophisticated narrative technique and because an understanding of society's weak sides has been shown to us by the 'wise author' who keeps claiming the privileged social and moral role devised for him by F.R. Leavis. Ultimately the reader is only mildly challenged by the novel and is invited to share the view of the narrator. Overall the novel re-inforces the privileged position of literature, while it updates the traditional narrative techniques of the novel.
In a foreword to the French translation of Changing places, Umberto Eco described it as the funniest novel of the 20th Century. I can only agree.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Changing Places by David lodge
This book is very funny indeed, with accurate observations and comments on University hierarchies and Departmental politics. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Mrs Ann Hayes
Delightfully entertaining and poignant observations of the...
This book is not without its failings but like Boyle's "The Tortilla Curtain" I gave it five stars for its excellent entertainment value coupled with wonderful writing. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Kiwifunlad
Funny, but a little outdated
While this book is certainly funny (in a very British and understated sort of way) the themes and settings seem a little outdated. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Skonne
Good fun
A great throwback to the 1960s for those who lived them. A nice plot that makes an unlikely idea develop quite naturally. And lots of good fun.
Published on 8 Dec 2009 by Quixoticus
Funny, but a little dated now
I've not read any David Lodge before and picked this up on holiday. Within a few pages I was hooked and pulled into a tight and funny story. Read more
Published on 6 Dec 2009 by JamieJ
Delightful
This is a truly great book! David Lodge at he's best! The story is fluid and easy to read. The characters are believable, likeable and easy to imagine. Read more
Published on 21 April 2009 by Amelia
Changing places in changing times
'Changing Places' forms part of a trilogy of campus novels (along with 'Small World' and 'Nice Work') by the popular British author that are now available to purchase as an... Read more
Published on 2 Jan 2008 by Demob Happy
Rumbustious... and rambunctious...
Published in 1975, 'Changing Places' was the novel which allowed David Lodge to break through as one of the major novelists of the late twentieth century who are both serious and... Read more
Published on 24 July 2005 by jfp2006
So funny I laughed out aloud
While I must admit I read this several years ago, It was one of only less than half a dozen than made me laugh out aloud. Read more
Published on 1 Oct 2000
1969 according to Lodge
"Changing Places", though written in the mid seventies, looks back to the close of the previous decade for its inspiration - thus providing Lodge's take on the cultural and social... Read more
Published on 5 May 1999
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