David Lodge (January 28, 1935, London, England) is an English
novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor renowned for his satiric
novels about academic life.Lodge was educated at University College, London, where he got his degree in Literature and where he is an Honorary Fellow.
He travelled to the United States, where he taught, and received his doctorate at the University of Birmingham, where he was professor of Modern English Literature from 1960 to 1987.
He left this university to dedicate entirely to writing.
Lodge is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received numerous honours, including Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France.
His early novels and fiction works go back to 1960, continuing with novels in which the writer satirizes academic life.
Lodge co-authored different plays and moreover produced works dealing in literary theory, essays written for The Washington Post and The Independent, and other books containing essays, lectures, reviews, and a diary.
Mentioning some of
David Lodge literary works:
The
Picturegoers (1960)
Ginger,
You’re Barmy (1962)
The British
Museum Is Falling Down (1965)
Out of the
Shelter (1970)
How Far Can
You Go? (1980)
Changing
Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975)
Small
World: An Academic Romance (1984)
Nice Work (1988)
Paradise
News (1991)
Therapy (1995)
Thinks… (2001)
Deaf
Sentence (2008)
Author,
Author (2004) and A Man of Parts (2011) are based on
the lives of writers Henry James and H.G. Wells, respectively.
The prolific writer David Lodge lives in Birmingham.
SUMMARY
This story takes place in some French Riviera hotel;
Hotel des Pins seems to be its real name.
But some habits there make Harry, one of the guests,
propose a different name: Hotel des Boobs.
Harry and Brenda are a British couple on holidays.
They have always gone to spend the summer at Brenda’s parents, in Guernsey, with
their children.
This year, the children have already grown
independent, and the couple is well off; thus they consider new options, and finally
they end up going to a little hotel with swimming pool near St Raphael.
As Harry’s friends have mentioned, and Harry knows somehow,
in some areas of the Mediterranean, at that time, women had started to practice
topless. But what Harry finds and experiences there is beyond his previous
suppositions.
First of all, there is Harry’s strong personal
attraction for women’s breasts, since he’s always spending time and thoughts
about this part of the female figure.
Already at the hotel, Harry can observe and enjoy
more or less discreetly all the women by the swimming pool.
For instance, Harry remains peeping through the
window in the couple room, getting Brenda so angry that she sends him down to
the pool “to have an inspection” directly there.
Harry begins to characterize all the women at the hotel
swimming pool, according to their nationalities, companions and activities
while they sunbathe, but manly according to the shape, size, movement or aspect
of their breasts.
Harry carries a book, that in fact he doesn’t read, and
a pair of dark sunglasses, the elements he considers useful to disguise his
curiosity over topless women, who only avoid using the upper part of their bikinis by
the swimming pool, and immediately cover themselves when moving to other
areas of the hotel.
Harry entertains various ideas centred in nakedness,
for example, what the other men there could feel, that the women would imagine their topless could arouse those other men... At the end, he gets enthusiastic and excited with the idea that Brenda, who has good boobs, should
go topless before the holidays ended. The other men could look, but only he would be allowed to touch. Following this strong desire, Harry offers to buy Brenda
some beautiful and expensive dress they saw in St Raphael, if she agrees to
take her top off.
At this point of the story, there is a sudden change:
in fact, there is a writer by the swimming pool, under an umbrella, and he is
writing about the created couple Harry and Brenda, and about all the others
there, the women in topless, the other guests, the waiter, all of them
reflected in a pile of written pages.
But suddenly and unexpectedly, the local mistral wind
starts to blow causing the written pages to fly all over, fall onto the water,
disappear beyond the tall trees…, a true disaster for the writer, who feels violated.
Some of the presents manages to bring back a few pages to the author, and a lady sends her children to run and try and collect more papers.
The author (unknown name) doesn’t want the papers back
and goes to his room to wait the return of his wife (unknown name) from St Raphael, where she has bought a nice, although not so expensive, dress.
The husband explains to his wife about the flying parts
of the book, and wants to leave the hotel immediately, just in case someone
could read what he has told in the lost pages.
His wife doesn’t consider it is a problem, but wants
to know what the end of the story would be.
“Brenda accepts the bribe to go topless”, the author
says. The wife doesn’t believe it would happen.
The writer then continues telling the end of the story: Brenda doesn’t go to bed with Harry, she disappears for two hours, gets from Antoine the bouquet-prize for the best breasts, goes to his room where they make love, and Brenda considers Antoine much better lover and much better equipped than Harry.
The author's wife says that is the worst ending.
But then the author goes on saying that Brenda has invented
that story, that nothing has happened. But Harry remains disturbed thinking
Brenda doesn’t appreciate his male attributes and, shaking his head, he gazes at
the blue breastless margins of the pool.
Harry’s obsession about women breasts has changed to anxiety about his own body.
Finally, the writer’s wife asks him if he would like
her to go topless, and he answers of course not, but he doesn’t sound really
sure, or true.
*
In this story, there are two couples and one story
inside another.
Perhaps in some aspects, the writer uses Harry to
express his own feelings or preferences.
Perhaps similarities or differences can be found
between the four of them.
The story gives the chance to think about what women
breasts signify in different cultures or societies. From naturally exhibited,
to denied or hidden. Female breasts as tender and essential for a baby, or
charged with sexual attraction.
At the beginning of topless time, many people considered it totally indecent and didn’t approve or follow the new style.
For some people, to go naked to the beach is an act of
freedom and naturalism.
For others, it means discomfort and shame.
As the psychoanalysts explain, sexuality is a big and unknown mystery for human beings.
QUESTIONS
-What ideas do you have to stop the “binge tourism”?
-Do you consider disrespectful / offensive / sexist /
anachronistic the beginning of the story?
-Do you think nakedness is sexy only according to the situation?
-“May a cat look at a king?” I mean, can a gaze / stare
be bothering? Do you have to ask permission to look at someone / something?
-The writer is telling his wife the story he’s going
to write, so what is the difference between a story casually told and a work of
art?
VOCABULARY
Peeping Tom, squint, Geddit, Knockers, were... off, pricey,
extravagant, filched, weaned, pore, snooty, tubby, lathe, belied, matey, foolscap,
wont, Schadenfreude, longhand, mistral, Paperchase, hard-on