CHANGING PLACES

David Lodge
Changing Places is David Lodges hilarious account of an academic exchange program
which takes Philip Swallow, an obscure professor of English literature at an obscure red-
brick universit in England, to Lodges comic version of the !erkele campus, which he
renames Euphoric State" #t also takes $orris %app, his &merican counterpart, from
!erkele to Swallows campus of 'ummidge (read !irmingham) *niversit in the drear
industrial midlands of England" &long the wa we are treated to Lodges wild send-up of
academia, sex and marriage, the literar scene and the differences between &merican and
English attitudes and lifestles" +ardl a single inanit of campus life in the late ,-./s
escapes Lodges deftl-wielded scalpel" 0et he handles all of this with an affectionate
and indulgent tone1 although he ma find his characters foolish and misguided, he
nevertheless leaves us with the impression that he genuinel likes them, despite their
faults and all-too-human foibles"
Lodges two protagonists are cleverl drawn to personif what we have come to assume,
rightl or wrongl, are national characteristics of the stereotpical Englishman and
&merican" Philip Swallow is a polite, mild-mannered, diffident fellow, who is introduced
to us as a paradigm of the solid famil man, devoted to his wife +ilar and their two
oung children" &s a professor of literature he is colorless and unexciting2 he has been
marking time at 'ummidge in a dead-end teaching 3ob, with little hope of a promotion,
and is feeling bored and unfulfilled as he leaves for his new adventures in &merica"
$orris %app, b contrast, is a brash, swaggering, funn, lecherous academic, who has
gained a world-wide reputation for being the premier expert on, of all things, the genteel
writings of 4ane &usten" #n a neat little 3ab at the hpocris of the literar world, Lodge
lets us in on the fact that %app has written five scholarl books on &usten, despite the fact
that he personall finds her writing something of a bore" $orris reeks of academic hubris
and has been such a relentless womani5er that his tough-talking feminist wife, Desiree, is
about to give him the gate"
Lodge takes great fun in contrasting the direct, in-our-face &merican stle of the
brilliant and abrasive %app with the polite, rather obli6ue English stle of the timid and
self-effacing Swallow" +is message to the reader seems to be that English academia
could use a few more free-wheeling $orris %app tpes, #ndeed, in commenting on the
character of %app in a ,-78 interview, Lodge said that 9there is a little bit of $orris %app
in me, # think, and # respond to that witt, abrasive, thrusting 4ewish tpe of &merican
academic" # alwas feel that life starts to move twice as fast when oure in their
compan":
Lodge also draws amusing parallels between his two facult wives1 +ilar Swallow, as
we first meet her, is, like her husband, a model of English rectitude and probit, if a bit
dull and humorless ; along the lines of the <ueen herself" +ers is a ver !ritish stiff
upper lip, and she seems a shade too practical to be a wholl smpathetic character"
&fter she learns of her husbands sexual flings in &merica, she vents her ire b letting
him know that she has 3ust spent a bundle on installing central heating in their perpetuall
damp and cold 'ummidge home" &s she writes to her husband1
9" " " # thought to mself, here # am, slaving awa, running a house and
famil single-handed for the sake of m husbands career and m childrens
education, and #m not even warm while #m doing it" #f he cant wait for sex til
he gets home, wh should # wait for central heating= # suppose a more sensual
woman would have taken a lover in revenge":
! these few amusing lines, Lodge suggests to us that whereas spoiled &mericans ma
take their creature comforts for granted, for the more deprived English middle class the
are something devoutl to be wished for ; and in the end perhaps even better than sex>
#n contrast to the ver repressed and correct +ilar Swallow, Desiree %app, like her
husband, is a tough, no-nonsense &merican tpe who seems to have seen it all and done it
all" & disillusioned, wise-cracking feminist, she is not about to be taken in b anbod or
anthing, least of all b her cheating husband" &s we first meet her, she is embarked on a
3ourne of self-discover and self-awareness through the womens liberation movement
and her various encounter and consciousness-raising groups on the Euphoric State
campus" ?f course, Lodge takes great fun in lampooning all of these &merican social
phenomena of the ,-./s and ,-@/s and the absurd 3argon which the engendered2 et at
the same time he hints rather broadl that stodg old 'ummidge (not to mention mother
England) might have benefited from a little of the same"
#n telling his tale of the two academics, Lodge masterfull invokes all of the time-
honored devices of humor and farce" Ahere are wild exaggerations, cra5 coincidences,
absurd 3uxtapositions of person and place, skewed logic, and puns and wordpla ; to
name 3ust a few" Lodge has a marvelous sense of the comic and the absurd, and he pulls
out all of the stops in s6uee5ing the last laughs and drops of humor from his stor"
Ahe fun begins with Swallows metamorphosis from timid soul to swinging hedonist"
&lmost as soon as he sets foot on the earth6uake-prone soil of Euphoric State, before he
can even catch his breath and gain his bearings, he finds himself in bed and besotted with
a pot-headed oung hippie student ; who, it later turns out, is none other than $orris
%apps daughter b his first marriage" &t first Swallow is racked with guilt that he is
betraing his marriage vows, but soon he sheds these 6ualms and forgets all about home,
hearth and +ilar" ?vertaken b lust, he pants after this woman like an adolescent with
raging hormones" $orriss daughter, on the other hand, cant figure out what all the fuss
is about2 in a clever aside on the sexual mores of the oung, Lodge lets us know that for
her ; as for so man oung people ; casual sex is about as eventful as a walk around the
block"
Soon after his arrival at the Euphoric State campus, Swallow finds himself homeless"
?ne of the recurrent hillside landslides at the Euphoric State campus has taken Swallows
rental house down the hill with it" Bho should come to his rescue but Desiree %app, who
invites him to sta with her and her two oung children at her luxurious hilltop aerie"
Ahe ever-practical Desiree sees him as a convenient bab-sitter who can look after her
children while she goes off to her various encounter groups"
Bell, of course, Desiree and Philip are soon bedmates and lovers, and Philip ; the eternal
naCf ; begins to talk of marriage and commitment, much to Desirees disma" She is
about to rid herself of $orris %app and isnt looking for another male albatross to be
hung around her newl-liberated neck" !ut Swallow pleads with her ; he confesses that
his marriage to +ilar has gone stale and that he would rather sta in the *"S", taking a
new 3ob at Euphoric State and starting a new domestic life with Desiree" +ere Lodge,
who has often been described as a ver Datholic writer, seems to be telling us that
however much we would like to reinvent ourselves our moral values continue to cling to
us" Ahough Swallow fancies himself a newl-minted swinger, he remains at the core a
thoroughl domesticated creature"
&s Swallow frets about the direction of his life in &merica, $orris %app is tring to
understand the murk academic goings-on at 'ummidge" +e is finding all of this ver
difficult, since for one thing he does not think much of his teaching colleagues and is put
off b their distant and chill !ritish manner" *sing %apps ver funn reflections on the
sub3ect, Lodge conves to the reader his own misgivings on the fust was of his fellow
Englishmen and fellow academics"
Eotwithstanding %apps feelings, his ineffectual colleagues in the 'ummidge English
Department fasten on %app, whom the had once viewed as brash and overbearing, to be
their administrative savior2 the have come to admire his take-charge, no-nonsense
approach and want him to take over as head of the English Department, to replace
another colleague who has gone into a pschotic nosedive after an &merican-stle protest
movement has riled the 'ummidge campus"
$eanwhile, on the romantic front, $orris and +ilar Swallow have, inevitabl, found
their wa into one anothers arms, thereb evening out the now-established romance
between Philip and Desiree" $orris kindles a new fire in +ilars loins, and she goes
from prim and decorous housewife to lust and newl-charged bed partner" &nd in the
process she seems to have tamed the libidinous $orris, who now talks of settling down
with +ilar in England and taking the department head post at 'ummidge" Bhereas
Philip has gone from lamb to lion, $orris has gone from lion to lamb>
&s the stor closes the two couples arrange for a final summit meeting in $anhattan to
tr to sort out what the should do with their lives" Briting the final chapter of his book
in the form of a screenpla, with carefull scripted notes to an imaginar director, Lodge
has great fun showing the two couples as the speculate on the various permutations
which their relationships might take in the future1 one possibilit would be mutual
divorces and mutual remarriages2 another possibilit--and here Lodge takes aim at the
barnard 6ualit of sex life in the Swinging Sixties--would be habitation as a foursome,
with an member being free to re6uest sex from an other member2 still another would be
mutual divorces, with all four of them going their separate was"
Dleverl, Lodge uses the device of a movie-stle ending to relieve himself of the
novelists burden of telling how the couples will resolve these 6uestions" Philip
comments that a novelist has no choice but to state or at least hint to his readers what the
outcome of his stor will be, whereas a movie director can choose to end his stor
whenever he likes, with an scene he pleases, leaving the viewer to guess what will
happen to his characters" Bith that the camera pans in on Philip as he shrugs his
shoulders, and the stor ends"
Bhen 9Dhanging Places: was published in England in ,-@8 it became an immediate
popular and critical success, winning for Lodge the prestigious +awthornden Pri5e as
well as the Yorkshire Post Fiction Pri5e" #t also won for Lodge a place as Fellow of the
'oal Societ of Literature" Ahe book had a similar success in &merica and introduced
&merican readers for the first time to Lodges writing" ?ne &merican reviewer aptl
pointed out that the book combined 94ohn *pdikes precise social observation with Philip
'oths uproarious humor": Ahere was almost universal praise on both sides of the
&tlantic for Lodges witt and graceful writing stle and for his inventive techni6ue in
telling the stor of the two academics and their spouses"
#n a clever 3ab at literar critics who have preconceived notions and formulas on how a
novel should be constructed, Lodge has his characters make periodic reference to a must
old book from Swallows collection entitled 9Lets Brite a Eovel": From time to time he
or +ilar read excerpts from this tome which en3oin the would-be novel writer to avoid
such devices as confusing flashbacks or an outdated epistolar stle of stor-telling"
Ahen, of course, Lodge deliberatel ignores these 9rules: and proceeds to use flashbacks
and exchanges of letters to tell his stor ; often to hilarious effect"
#n m view, the exchanges of letters are especiall effective and amusing, giving Lodge
an opportunit to give an authenticall uni6ue and personal voice to each of his four
principal characters" Ahe letters which Desiree writes to $orris, for example, are
priceless accounts of the liberated lifestle she is now reveling in with $orris finall off
her back" Lodge reveals a real genius for the &merican idiom in these wonderfull funn
letters" +e captures perfectl the cnical and worldl tone of the liberated woman who
has discovered that she can live 6uite happil without benefit of a philandering spouse"
&ll in all, # regard Changing Places as a resounding comic and literar success" #t is not
surprising to me that it has remained an enduring favorite on both sides of the &tlantic"
&lthough its tone is light and entertaining, its satire is deft and perceptive" Lodge is a
remarkabl acute observer of both the English and &merican scene"