changing-places-david-lodge

by Unknown

  so was the cost of running the house and supporting Desirde

  'Why the sudden yearning for Europe, Morris? Students in the style to which she was accustomed, not to mention getting you down ?'

  alimony payments to Martha. He couldn't apply for paid

  'You must be joking, Bill. No, I think I need a change. A study-leave because he had just had two quarters off. It was new perspective. The challenge of a different culture.'

  too late to apply for a Guggie or a Fulbright and he had an Bill Moser roared with laughter.

  idea that European universities didn't hire visitors as Morris Zapp wasn't surprised that Bill Moser was in-casually as they did in the States.

  credulous. But there was a kind of truth in his answer that The next morning he called the Dean of Faculty.

  he wouldn't have dreamed of admitting except in the guise

  'Bill ? Look, I want to go to Europe for six months, as soon of a palpable lie.

  after Christmas as possible. I need some kind of a deal. What For years Morris Zapp had, like a man exceptionally have you got ?'

  blessed with good health, taken his self-confidence for

  'Where in Europe, Morris ?'

  granted, and regarded the recurrent identity crises of his

  •Anywhere, Bill.'

  colleagues as symptoms of psychic hypochondria. But re-

  •England?'

  cently he had caught himself brooding about the meaning of

  * Even England.'

  his life, no less. This was partly the consequence of his own

  'Gee, Morris, I wish you'd asked me earlier. There was a success. He was full professor at one of the most prestigious swell opening in Paris, with UNESCO, I fixed lip Ed Waring and desirably located universities in America, and had al-in Sociology just a week ago.'

  ready served as the Chairman of his Department for three

  ' Spare me the narrow misses, Bill, what have you got ?'

  years under Euphoric State's rotating system; he was a There was a rustling of papers. 'Well, there is the highly respected scholar with a long and impressive list of 42

  43

  publications to his name. He could only significantly in-after fixing Jane Austen, to do the same job on the other crease his salary either by moving to some god-awful place in major English novelists, then the poets and dramatists, per-Texas or the Mid-West where no one in his right mind haps using computers and teams of trained graduate stu-would go for a thousand dollars a day, or by switching to dents, inexorably reducing the area of English literature administration, looking for a college President's job some-available for free comment, spreading dismay through the where, which in the present state of the nation's campuses whole industry, rendering scores of his colleagues redundant: was a through ticket to an early grave. At the age of forty, in periodicals would fall silent, famous English Departments be short, Morris Zapp could think of nothing he wanted to left deserted like ghost towns...

  achieve that he hadn't achieved already, and this depressed As is perhaps obvious, Morris Zapp had no great esteem him.

  for his fellow-labourers in the vineyards of literature. They There was always his research, of course, but some of the seemed to him vague, fickle, irresponsible creatures, who zest had gone out of that since it ceased to be a means to an wallowed in relativism like hippopotami in mud, with their end. He couldn't enhance his reputation, he could only nostrils barely protruding into the air of common-sense.

  damage it, by adding further items to his bibliography, and They happily tolerated the existence of opinions contrary to the realization slowed him down, made him cautious.

  their own - they even, for God's sake, sometimes changed Some years ago he had embarked with great enthusiasm on their minds. Their pathetic attempts at profundity were an ambitious critical project: a series of commentaries on qualified out of existence and largely interrogative in mode.

  Jane Austen which would work through the whole canon, They liked to begin a paper with some formula like,' I want one novel at a time, saying absolutely everything that could to raise some questions about so-and-so', and seemed to possibly be said about them. The idea was to be utterly ex-think they had done their intellectual duty by merely raising haustive, to examine the novels from every conceivable them. This manoeuvre drove Morris Zapp insane. Any angle, historical, biographical, rhetorical, mythical, Freu-damn fool, he maintained, could think of questions; it was dian, Jungian, existentialist, Marxist, structuralist, Chris-answers that separated the men from the boys. If you tian-allegorical, ethical, exponential, linguistic, pheno-couldn't answer your own questions it was either because znenological, archetypal, you name it; so that when each you hadn't worked on them hard enough or because they commentary was written there would be simply nothing weren't real questions. In either case you should keep your further to say about the novel in question. The object of the mouth shut. One couldn't move in English studies these days exercise, as he had often to explain with as much patience as without falling over unanswered questions which some damn he could muster, was not to enhance others' enjoyment and fool had carelessly left lying about - it was like trying to understanding of Jane Austen, still less to honour the novel-mend a leak in an attic full of dusty, broken furniture. Well, ist herself, but to put a definitive stop to the production of his commentary would put a stop to that, at least as far as any further garbage on the subject. The commentaries Jane Austen was concerned.

  would not be designed for the general reader but for the But the work proceeded slowly; he was not yet halfway specialist, who, looking up Zapp, would find that the book, through Sense and Sensibility and already it was obvious that article or thesis he had been planning had already been each commentary would run to several volumes. Apart from anticipated and, more likely than not, invalidated. After the occasional article, he hadn't published anything for Zapp, the rest would be silence. The thought gave him deep several years now. Sometimes he would start work on a satisfaction. In Faustian moments he dreamed of going on, problem only to remember, after some hours' cogitation, 44

  45

  that he had solved it very satisfactorily himself years before.

  cision forced upon him by De'sire'e's ultimatum. But, sitting Over the same period - whether as cause or effect he wasn't in the airplane beside pregnant Mary Makepeace, all these sure — he had begun to feel ill-at-ease in his own body. He reasons seemed unconvincing. If he needed a change, he was prone to indigestion after rich restaurant meals, he was fairly sure it wasn't the kind that England would afford.

  usually needed a sleeping-pill before retiring, he was He had neither affection nor respect for the British. The ones developing a pot-belly, and he found it increasingly difficult he had met — expatriates and visiting professors - mostly to achieve more than one orgasm in a single session - or acted like fags and then turned out not to be, which he found so he would complain to his buddies over a beer. The truth unsettling. At parties they wolfed your canape's and gulped was that these days he couldn't count on making it even your gin as if they had just been released from prison, and once, and Desire"e had less cause for resentment than she talked all the time in high, twittering voices about the knew over the baby-sitter last summer. Things weren't differences between the English and American university what they used to be in the Zapp loins, though it was a systems, making it clear that they regarded the latter as a dark truth that he would scarcely admit to himself, let huge, rather amusing racket from which they were personal-alone to anyone else. He would not publicly acknowledge, ly determined to take the biggest possible cut in the shortest either, that he was finding it a strain to hold his students'

  possible time. Their publications were vapid and amateur-attention as the climate on campus became increasingly ish, inadequately researched, slackly argued, and riddled hostile to traditional academic values. His style of teaching with so many errors, misquotations, misattributions and was designed to shock conventionally ed
ucated students out incorrect dates that it was amazing they managed to get of a sloppily reverent attitude to literature and into an ice-their own names right on the title page. They nevertheless cool, intellectually rigorous one. It could do little with had the nerve to treat American scholars, including even students openly contemptuous of both the subject and his himself, with sneering condescension in their lousy journals.

  own qualifications. His barbed wisecracks sank harmlessly He felt in his bones that he wasn't going to enjoy England: into the protective padding of the new gentle inarticulacy, he would be lonely and bored, all the more so because he which had become so fashionable that even his brightest had taken a small provisional vow not to be unfaithful to graduate students, ruthless professionals at heart, felt ob-D6sir6e, just to annoy her; and it was the worst possible liged to conform to it, mumbling in seminars, 'Well, it's place to carry on his research. Once he sank into the bottom-like James, ah, well the guy wants to be a modern, I mean he less morass of English manners, he would never be able to has the symbolism bit and God is dead and all, but it's like keep the mythic archetypes, the patterns of iterative ima-he's still committed to intelligence, like he thinks it all means gery, the psychological motifs, clear and radiant in his mind.

  something for Chrissake - you dig?' Jane Austen was Jane Austen might turn realist on him, as she had on so many certainly not the writer to win the hearts of the new other readers, with consequences all too evident in the litera-generation. Sometimes Morris woke sweating from night-ture about her.

  mares in which students paraded round the campus In Morris Zapp's view, the root of all critical error was a carrying placards that declared KNIGHTLEY SUCKS and naive confusion of literature with life. Life was transparent, FANNY P R I C E is A FINK. Perhaps he was getting a little literature opaque. Life was an open, literature a closed stale; perhaps, after all, he would profit from a change of system. Life was composed of things, literature of words.

  scene.

  Life was what it appeared to be about: if you were afraid In this fashion had Morris Zapp rationalized the de-your plane would crash it was about death, if you were 46

  47

  trying to get a girl into bed it was about sex. Literature was in general and on the Euphoric State campus in particular.

  never about what it appeared to be about, though in the The factions, the issues, the confrontations; Governor Duck, case of the novel considerable ingenuity and perception Chancellor Binde, Mayor Holmes, Sheriff O'Keene; the were needed to crack the code of realistic illusion, which Third World, the Hippies, the Black Panthers, the Faculty was why he had been professionally attracted to the genre Liberals; pot, Black Studies, sexual freedom, ecology, free (even the dumbest critic understood that Hamlet wasn't speech, police violence, ghettoes, fair housing, school about how the guy could kill his uncle, or the Ancient busing, Viet Nam; strikes, arson, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, Mariner about cruelty to animals, but it was surprising how love-ins, happenings. Philip has long since given up trying many people thought that Jane Austen's novels were about to follow the details of Boon's argument, but the general finding Mr Right). The failure to keep the categories of drift seems to be concisely summed up by his lapel buttons: life and literature distinct led to all kinds of heresy and LEGALIZE POT

  nonsense: to 'liking* and 'not liking' books for instance, NORMAN O. BROWN FOR PRESIDENT

  preferring some authors to others and suchlike whimsicalities SAVE THE BAY: MAKE WATER NOT WAR

  which, he had constantly to remind his students, were of no KEEP THE DRAFT CARDS BURNING

  conceivable interest to anyone except themselves (some-THERE IS A FAULT IN REALITY - NORMAL

  times he shocked them by declaring that, speaking personal-SERVICE WILL RETURN SHORTLY

  ly on this low, subjective level, he found Jane Austen a pain HAPPINESS IS (just IS)

  in the ass). He felt a particularly pressing need to castigate KEEP GOD OUT OF AMERICA

  naive theories of realism because they threatened his master-BOYCOTT GRAPES

  work: obviously, if you applied an open-ended system (life) KEEP KROOP

  to a closed one (literature) the possible permutations were SWINGING SAVES

  endless and the definitive commentary became an impossi-BOYCOTT TRUFFLES

  bility. Everything he knew about England warned him that FUCK D*CK!

  the heresy flourished there with peculiar virulence, no doubt encouraged by the many concrete reminders of the In spite of himself, Philip is amused by some of the slogans.

  actual historic existence of great authors that littered the Obviously it is a new literary medium, the lapel button, country - baptismal registers, houses with plaques, second-something between the classical epigram and the imagist best beds, reconstructed studies, engraved tombstones and lyric. Doubtless it will not be long before some post-graduate suchlike trash. Well, one thing he was not going to do while is writing a thesis on the genre. Doubtless Charles Boon is he was in England was to visit Jane Austen's grave. But he already doing so.

  must have spoken the thought aloud, because Mary Make-

  'What's your research topic, Boon ?' he asks, firmly inter-peace asks him if Jane Austen was the name of his great-rupting an involved legal disquisition on some persecuted grandmother. He says he thinks it unlikely.

  group called the Euphoria Ninety-Nine.

  ' Uh ?' Boon looks startled.

  Meanwhile, Philip Swallow is wondering more desperate-

  ' Y o u r P h D - o r i s i t a n M A ? '

  ly than ever when this flight is going to end. Charles Boon

  'Oh. Yeah, I'm still getting a Master's. Thafs mostly has been talking at him for hours, it seems, permitting few course work. Just a little baby dissertation.'

  'On what?'

  interruptions. All about the political situation in Euphoria 48

  49

  'Well, uh, I haven't decided yet. To tell you the truth, programme - Vmatter of fact, I'm flying at their expense, Phil, I don't have too much time for work, academic work.'

  they sent me over to look at some European programmes.

  At some point in their conversation Boon has begun Then there's Euphoric Times.. .'

  calling Philip by his first name, using moreover the con-

  'What's that?'

  traction he has always detested. Philip resents the familiarity,

  'The underground newspaper. I do a weekly column for but can think of no way of stopping him, though he has them, and now they want me to take over the editorship.*

  declined the invitation to address Boon as' Charles'.

  'The editorship.'

  'What other kind of work are you doing?' he asks ironi-

  'But I'm thinking of starting a rival paper instead.'

  cally.

  Philip looks searchingly at Boon, whose left eye jumpi

  'Well, you see, I have this radio show...'

  abruptly to port. Philip relaxes: it is all a pack of lies after all.

  'The Charles Boon Show?' Philip inquires, laughing There is no radio programme, no TV show, no expense heartily.

  account, no newspaper column. It is all wish-fulfilment

  ' That's right, you know about it ?'

  fantasy, like the Rummidge Research Assistantship and the Boon is not laughing. The same old Boon, barefaced liar, career in the diplomatic service. Boon has certainly changed weaver of fantasies.' No,' says Philip.' Do tell me.'

  - not only in appearance and dress: his manner is more con-

  'Oh, it's just a late-night phone-in programme. You fident, more relaxed, his speech has lost some of its Cockney know, people call up and talk about what's on their mind vowels and glottal stops, he sounds not unlike David Frost.

  and ask questions. Sometimes I have a guest. Hey, you Philip has always supposed he despised David Frost but must come on the programme one night!'

  now realizes that in a grudging kind of way he must respect

  'Wi
ll I get paid?'

  David Frost quite a lot, so sickening has it been to enter-

  ' 'Fraid not. You get a free tape-recording of the pro-tain, even for a moment, the idea that Charles Boon is gramme and a coloured photograph of the two of us at the successfully launched upon a similar career. An extra-mike.'

  ordinarily plausible fibber, Boon, even after years of close

  'Well . . .' Philip is unsettled by the particularity of the acquaintance he could take you in, it was only the vagrant account. Could it conceivably be true? Some campus radio eye that gave him away. Well, it would make a good story system perhaps? 'How often have you done this pro-for his first letter home. Who should I meet on the plane but the gramme ?' he asks.

  incorrigible Charles Boon -you remember him, of course, the Parolles

  'Every night, that is morning, for the past year. Mid-of the English Department, graduated a couple of years ago. He night till two.'

  was all dolled up in the latest 'gear', with hair down to his

  ' Every night! I'm not surprised your studies are suffering.'

  shoulders, but as full of tall stories as ever. Patronized me like

  'To tell you the truth, Phil, I'm not too bothered about mad, of course! But he's so transparent, you can't take offence.

  my studies. It suits me to be registered at Euphoric State -

  His train of thought, and Boon's continuing monologue, it allows me to stay in the country without getting drafted.

  are interrupted by an announcement from the captain that But I don't really need any more degrees. I've decided my they will be landing in approximately twenty minutes, and future's in the media.'

  he hopes they have enjoyed the flight. The instruction to

  ' The Charles Boon Show ?'

  fasten safety belts is illuminated at the front of the cabin.

  'That's just a beginning. I'm having discussions with a

  'Well, Phil, I'd better get back to my seat,' says Boon.

  TV network right now about starting an experimental arts

  'Yes, well, nice to have met you again.'