David Lodge’s is a small
world; the Japanese call it a narrow world. It is a world of conferences -
literary conferences, conferees, professors, writers, critics, linguistic
enthusiasts and geniuses, universities, educationists and once through this
novel, one would wonder if there does exist a world beyond these universities
and conferences; where do WE live then or is our existence a myth? And these so
called guardians and critics of literature are not bound merely to their books
and epics and poems and poets; they are also travelers lovers, drinkers and
for all that, a crazy lot too!
Persse McGarrigle is a
conference virgin when we embark on this story, but by the end of it, he is
spread, laid, banged and turned into a conference slut, if we can call him one,
considering his rigorous globetrotting to attend and evade the miscellaneous
conferences in search of Ms. Angelica Pabst, the most beautiful girl he has
ever met, trying to finish her doctoral dissertation on Romance – how lovely!
This is his disastrous, frustrating and comic journey around the world in
search of the evasive girl who has played a prank on him and given him the
skip, his true love because he believes in her and it. Persse is a virgin
otherwise too, one of those who believe in keeping the sacred act reserved for
the necessary suffering called marriage. But then the poor guy discovers that
she isn’t so sacred for this sacred plunge as one fine day, rather night,
discovers her in the cheap bars of Soho, not only stripping but likely to do
much more and then again discovers otherwise; she wasn’t her, his Angelica
after all. So imagine his plight when he finally finds her and plunges into bed
and mounts and rides and rises to collapse, not once but thrice, and is
exhausted and drained but still in love, only to find that the soft hills were
not hers, the valleys were not hers and it was not she, Angelica; “Jassus”,
Percy must have shouted out loud at the discovery of this disaster!
Persse and Angelica are
of course not the only attendees at these conferences. There is Morris Zapp,
the suave and witty university professor who is thoroughly proud of and so much
in love with himself. I guffawed at one of the papers he presented on ‘The
Interpretation of Text’. He has had a short romance with his friend Phillip
Swallow’s wife, was deceivingly forced into a threesome by Fulvia Morgana,
another professor and her husband, and now aspires and will marry Thelma
Ringbaum, another professor’s wife. Is this book about infidelities, well this
is just the beginning. Phillip Swallow, in turn has had limited fun with Morris
Zapp’s wife, survived a plane crash, enticed Joy Simpson, wife of a fellow
colleague who has been kind enough to give him shelter after the accident and
is now ready to divorce his wife and family for the remembrance and life time
reliving of that one passionate night. And here is Morris Zapp’s divorced wife,
Desiree getting cosy in the sheets with Ronald Frobisher. Wow and there’s more!
Infidelity is just a
part, you will marvel at the kind of coincidences Mr. Lodge has packed into
this book. There are times, rather most of the times; you would scream “Oh,
pleaseeee, spare me, that’s too much of a coincidence!”, but Persse McGarrigle
will meet all the right people at the wrong places, bump into the wrong people
at the right places, and of course the right people at the right places; all
except Angelica of course! You will not complain though and love it nonetheless,
at least I did! And not only Persse, but others too are magically placed
together in flights and find each other rightfully in bars and restaurants,
children lost 27 years ago find their parents when their old hitherto unknown
father has just proposed to marry a girl his daughters’ age, messages left at
the weirdest of places are gloriously discovered, a lost or rather runaway
husband is found tragically when a boat is about to sink…and this…and that….
And embedded in this
comic confusions and coincidences is literature, well thought of, well
presented, giving a new dimension at the texts that we read, how we read them,
register, perceive and form opinions about. This book is an easy read and God I
have read it at leisure and enjoyed every bit of this witty novel. It came as a
cool breeze of fresh air after having read ‘The Gathering’ and ‘As I Lay
Dying’. Highly recommended if you desire a good laugh! Mr. David Lodge, I am
definitely reading the next one!
P.S.: At a paper on the
subject ‘The Function of Criticism’ presented by a few of our learned
educationists and highly acclaimed laureates, Persse asked a simple yet very
relevant question which silenced all the speakers. Look out for it.
This is a part of the
oration of Dr.Morris Zapp on the presentation of his paper on ‘The
Interpretation of Texts’ – Enjoy! (May seem offensive to some, but then that’s
not me, it’s Morris Zapp or rather David Lodge).
“The classical tradition of striptease, however, which goes
back to Salome’s dance of the seven veils and beyond, and which survives in a
debased form in the dives of your Soho, offers a valid metaphor for the
activity of reading. The dancer teases the audience, as the text teases its
readers, with the promise of an ultimate revelation that is infinitely
postponed. Veil after veil, garment after garment is removed, but it is the
delay in the stripping that makes it exciting, not the stripping itself;
because no sooner has one secret been revealed than we lose interest in it and
crave another. When we have seen the girl’s underwear, we want to see her body,
when we have seen her breasts, we want to see her buttocks, when we have seen
her buttocks, we want to see her pubis, and when we see her pubis, the dance
ends – but is our curiosity and desire satisfied? Of course not! The vagina
remains hidden within the girls body shaded by her pubic hair, and even if she
were to spread her legs before us [at this, several ladies in the audience
noisily departed], it would still not satisfy the curiosity and desire set in
motion by the stripping. Staring into that orifice, we find that we have
somehow overshot the goal of our quest, gone beyond pleasure in contemplated
beauty, gazing into the womb, we are returned to the mystery of our own
origins. Just so in reading. The attempt to peer into the very core of a text,
to possess once and for all its meaning is vain; it is only ourselves that we
find there, not the work itself. To read is to surrender oneself to an endless
displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one
action to another, from one level of the text to another. The text unveils
itself before us but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of
striving to possess it, we should take pleasure in its teasing.”
My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 9/10
 |
| David Lodge |
