'Write a paper, see the world'

David Lodge — his work, not the man — was  introduced to me by a late friend of mine, a publisher with some very close links to academia, who nevertheless believed that academic life wasn’t quite cracked up to be what its awe-inspiring image suggested. When this book came out, he joked: “He has stolen my ideas.”

Mr Lodges’ satire on modern-day campus life is far removed from the popular vision of academia as a world of cerebral heavy-weights locked in their ivory towers in a single-minded pursuit of knowledge. Himself a distinguished academic (formerly professor of English literature at Birmingham University), he mercilessly strips it of its mystique, revealing a world of entitlement, intrigue, cronyism, sexist banter, and ruthless self-promotion.

It’s all networking, publishing deals and conferences. We see the university conference circuit heaving with academics wanting to see the world at someone else’s expense. “Half the passengers on transatlantic flights to these universities are university teachers,” the narrator says. The mantra is: “Write a paper and see the world!”

A Small World  — the second of Mr Lodge’s “Campus Trilogy” (Changing Places, and  Nice Work were others) — was published in 1984 and shortlisted for that year’s Booker Prize. It was hailed as the “ultimate campus novel” with the  London Review of Books calling it Mr Lodge’s “most brilliant and funniest” work.

The genre of campus novel in Britain was popularised by Mr Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury, and it coincided with the expansion of the country’s university system in the 1960s when a number of new universities were established. They were often mocked for their soulless architecture and underwhelming academic standards. Bradbury remains best known for his novel, The History Man, a spoof on these so-called “glass and steel” universities looked down upon by the snobbish older “red brick” institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge. 

Tellingly, A Small World  is also set in one such provincial university. It opens with scenes from an academic conference amid recrimination over its failure to attract any of the A-list invitees because of the university’s low status.

“It depends on where it is held. At Oxford or Cambridge you would expect at least a hundred and fifty. I told Swallow [Philip Swallow, head of the English department] nobody would come to Rummidge, but he wouldn’t listen. He claimed it would put Rummidge on the map. Delusions of grandeur, I’m afraid,” says a member of the host team.

The only high-profile delegate is a gregarious American professor who has turned up as a personal favour to Professor Swallow, with whose wife he had had an affair once and for whom he still has a soft corner. 

But, academics being academics, even in this desultory setting (“stuck with each other for three days...[and] long hours of compulsory sociability”), there is seldom a dull moment with fights over a mysterious young female delegate; arcane literary arguments; bawdy jokes; drunken orgies; and hectic networking. Later, in the book, we catch up with many of these characters as they harvest the fruits of all this booze-fuelled socialising. 

Especially, for one young lecturer making his conference debut it proves to be a coming-of-age experience propelling him towards newer pastures with the contacts he makes there. We also follow the careers of other characters, including  Swallow, as they jet around the world hopping from one literary conference to another (Amsterdam, Vienna, Istanbul, Athens, Jerusalem) plotting career moves, philandering, and conspiring against rivals.  There’s no dearth of these jamborees; they are going on all the time —on subjects ranging from “Readability and Reliability in the Epistolary Novel of England, France and Germany” to “Comic Epic Romance  from Ariosto to Byron—Literature’s Utopian Dream of Itself”. 

Any pretext for a party will do. Such as this one in Switzerland: “Every three years, the T S Eliot Newsletter organises an international conference on the poet’s work in some place with which he was associated. St Louis, London, Cambridge Mass...This year it is the turn of Lausanne. Eliot composed the first draft of The Wasteland here while recovering from a nervous breakdown.”

A conference is a “market as well as a circus, it’s a place where young scholars ... look hopefully for their first jobs, and more seasoned academics sniff the air for better ones”. 

An exchange between two academics goes like this:

“Another conference?”

“Right.  Some conference on John.”

“John? John who?”

“Angie didn’t say. She just said she was going to a conference on John, University of Hawaii.”

A Small World  is arguably grossly exaggerated as spoofs always are. But, to be sure, there’s more than a grain of truth in Mr Lodge’s fictional portrayal of academic life. It’s not too far removed from reality as anyone with even a casual acquaintance with academia would vouchsafe. My friend wasn’t much off the mark.

Pandemic Perusing is an occasional column on books and reading