most representative. There must, in the nature of the exercise, be some omissions;
and the findings must reflect the taste of the finder.
The realist novel of today no longer offers a panorama of society in the manner
of Mrs Gaskell, Thackeray, Trollope and George Eliot. It takes smaller worlds, hoping
to suggest things beyond. Nor are its practitioners as realist as most Victorians. Some
recent novelists have studied fiction at university, and take an interest in literary
theory, though less so than French novelists. Some of them have taken higher
degrees, some are attached to universities. Modern literature would be different if
there were no universities.Fiction and the university
The study of contemporary fiction as an art was inaugurated in English by Henry
James, who was followed by Percy Lubbock in The Craft of Fiction, 1922. A thorough
academic study was Wayne Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961. Criticism has more
recently been mediated by the writings on fiction of two authors who themselves
wrote campus novels, a genre pioneered by Larkin and Amis. Contemporary fiction
was taught, and also written, by Malcolm Bradbury(1932–2000) and David Lodge
(1935– ), provincial academics who had read Evelyn Waugh.Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Anthony Burgess
There had been many university novels before, the most recently notable of which
were Waugh’s. Campus novels are comic studies of university life beyond Oxbridge
in the carefree days before arts departments were required by government to value
their own research above the general well-being of the subject or of the student.
Lodge is cool and systematic, Bradbury more darkly farcical. Bradbury’s The History
Man,however, is an original and comic-horrific study of the sociologist Howard
Kirk, author ofThe Defeat of Privacy,for whom the self is a delusion abolished by
Marxism,and the secret of History is to co-operate with it by manipulating others.
Lodge’s most serious early novel,How Far Can You Go?, was a case study ofa
group of Catholics living through the changing morality of the decades before and
after the Second Vatican Council.Changing Places,the most enter taining ofLucky
Jim’s successors, is a well-crafted job-exchange between Philip Swallow of
Rummidge (Birmingham people are known as Brummies), who prides himself on
his setting of exam questions, and Maurice Zapp of Euphoria State (California?).
Zapp plans to be the best-paid English professor in the world.Nice Work is an inter-
nal Rummidge exchange, between Dr Robyn Penrose, feminist materialist semioti-
cian, and Vic Wilcox, managing director of an engineering firm. Professor Lodge
used also to explain continental literary theory while reserving his own position; he
enjoys binary structures. His Art of Fictionis an excellent critical book. His best and
most substantial later work is Author, Author, a credible fictional biography of Henry
James at the time of his stage play,Guy Domville (a disastrous flop). Lodge has since
written a similar bio-fiction about H. G. Wells.
A much older educationalist,Anthony Burgess(1917–1993), did not remain an
academic, turning from linguistics to novel-writing, supporting himself by review-
ing for the Sunday papers. His fiction began with a Malayan trilogy (1956), a comi-
cal Enderby trilogy (19634), and the strained Earthly Powers(1980).The violence of
A Clockwork Orange(1962) made Burgess famous, achieving a cult status after it was
filmed by Stanley Kubrick. Burgess’s verbal pyrotechnics were less evident in his410 15 · CONTEMPORARIES
Malcolm Bradbury
(1932–2000) Novelist.
Eating People is Wrong
(1959), Stepping Westward
(1965), The History Man
(1975), Rates of Exchange
(1983), The Modern British
Novel (1993).
David Lodge(1935– )
Novelist. The Picturegoers
(1960), Ginger, You’re Barmy
(1962), The British Museum
is Falling Down(1965), Out of
the Shelter(1970), Changing
Places(1975), How Far Can
You Go?(1980), Small World
(1984), Nice Work(1988),
Therapy(1995), Author,
Author(2004), Deaf Sentence
(2008), A Man of Parts(H. G.
Wells) (2011). Criticism: The
Art of Fiction(1992).