Lodge, David. Changing Places: a Tale of Two Campuses. Penguin Books, 1975.
Reason read: to “continue” the series started with Small World. I put continue in quotes because I should have read Changing Places before Small World.
Imagine an academic swapping of places. Instead of a poor man switching lives with a rich man in a strange social experiment or two students exchanging countries for a term, Changing Places is two Literature professors swapping teaching jobs at small liberal arts colleges. Morris Zapp and Philip Swallow could not be any more different. Zapp is very used to flying; considers himself a distinguished gentleman; has published widely; is savvy about getting ahead and has a killer instinct about the people around him. Meanwhile Swallow has a fear of flying; he is frumpy and without ambition to the point where he leads a life of professional barrenness. Morris Zapp finds himself traveling for the first time across the pond to Rummidge in England while his counterpart, Philip Swallow, heads to Euphoria in California. As usual, Lodge puts his characters in outlandish situations. For instance, Morris happened to be the only male on his flight. Every female on board was headed to England for an abortion. Once on the Euphoria campus, Philip finds himself hanging out with a group of students, smoking pot and giving massages.
As characters, Zapp and Swallow could not be any different. Lodge uses an epistolary technique to allow his characters to show their true colors while lying to their spouses back home. Mrs. Zapp was my favorite character. She was outspoken, truthful and funny: “You can’t rush nausea, you know” she says on page 80.
No doubt Changing Places shows its age. The lapel button was the hottest literary medium where you could wear your convictions on your chest. Students with late night radio programs could avoid the draft. As an aside, it is interesting to see Lodge’s perception of the United States. Bomb threats and loud protests are common.
Favorite quotes, “This plane, for instance, belonged to a company called Orbis; the phony Latin name inspired no confidence and he wouldn’t mind betting than an ultra-violet photograph would reveal a palimpsest of fourteen different airline insignia under its fresh paint flown by pilots long gone over the hill, alcoholics and schizoids, shaky-fingered victims of emergency landings, ice-storms and hijackings by crazy Arabs and homesick Cubans wielding sticks of dynamite and dime-store pistols” p 11), “Morris, already basking in the radiator’s warmth, lurched with clumsy haste to prevent her, and she shrank back, quivering as if he had put a hand up her skirt – which given its dimensions, wouldn’t have been difficult, it could easily happen accidentally just by shaking hands with her” (p 62).
Author fact: Lodge was born and died in the month of January.
Book trivia: I should have read Changing Places before Small World. Meh.
Music: Joan Baez, Aretha Franklin, Bartok, “These Foolish Things,” Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, The Jackson Five, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” by Judy Collins, “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul & Mary, Bee Gees, “O Happy Day,” and the Beatles’ “Let’s Do It In the Road.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Academia: the Joke” (p 3). I wish Pearl has a chapter called “Academia: the Wicked” because every Lodge book would fit in that category!
