Enraptured in the Small World by David Lodge 12 out of 10

 Enraptured in the Small World by David Lodge

12 out of 10

 

 

The phenomenal Small World was shortlisted for The Booker Prize and it comes after the equally mesmerizing, Hideous Kinky Changing Places http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/about-magnum-opus-changing-places-by.html as the second part of The Campus Trilogy, where we meet the familiar Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp and their wives, Hilary and Desiree  respectively – though Morris and Desiree are divorced and there is even an episode where he needs her badly…he is kidnapped by some leftist guerrillas, led by Carlo, and Desiree is asked for half a million dollars as ransom, to which she replies with how much would you want to keep him…there is a jocular negotiation on her part, for she is only ready to put up ten thousand, thinking this is how much Morris might return and then now that she is famous and has gained two million in sales and adaptation rights for her bestseller, she does not want the public to see her as cruel and indifferent to the death of her ex-husband, but there is another intervention to save the kidnapped professor.

 

As he flies on to one of the many conferences in Europe and Jerusalem, Professor Zapp meets Fulvia Morgana, a ravishing Marxist, and the latter invites the American to her luxurious villa, where she has in mind a threesome, which is enticing for Morris Zapp, but not to the point where he would also have intercourse with the husband…the two Marxists will mention the professor to their leftist, rebellious friends and this is how the critic becomes hostage, a state that will in the end help him get to PTG, Post Traumatic Growth, for once he comes so close to death, he will see how glorious life is and even abandon the desperate quest for the Chair of Literary Criticism at UNESCO, a coveted position that comes with a salary of 100,000 dollars per year – probably three times that these days- a multitude of perks, assistants, budgets and no obligations…

Perhaps the most important new figure in Small World is Persse McGarrigle, a personage so likeable that at one point this reader was hoping that he gets that UNESCO chair, against all odds…part of the secret of the immense talent of David Lodge is that on the one hand, he creates characters that are obviously satirical, amusing and improbable, but on the other hand, we see very few of the preposterous superheroes that intoxicate us these days, appearing ad nauseam in movie franchises and in the sick minds of multitudes who search for the Chosen One and find him in vain, stupid, vile, crooked leaders – from Brazil to the US under Trump, from the Philippines to Mexico and India – and even one of the principal actors, Persse, gets some rough treatment, in that he is too naïve, even if also romantic.

 

Persse falls in love – or given his abstention, the life of a sexual hermit, his virginity and associated to that, an ostensible, prolonged frustration, repression of desire , this could well be just a sex drive – with Angelica Pabst, the erudite, outré, superb, ambitious, firm young woman, who seems to respond to the advances of the Irishman who teaches at Limerick and even invites him through the means of a poem to be present in her room, when she will get ready for bed in the night, so that they can make love…however, when Persse enters the room he finds there is nobody there and when somebody comes at the door, he enters a closet, from which he sees that the other person in the room is…a rival and then they discover that they had both been duped, made to face each other in this ludicrous state…

 

There follows an endless quest around the Small World, with Persee coming close to catching up with Angelica – there is an episode where he is confused, when he finds pictures and movies with the sister, Lilly, who is just as sexually active as her identical twin sister is intellectually aroused – in various locations, from Jerusalem to Tokyo, Honolulu…Philip Swallow has had his share of adventure – indeed, the novel is packed with thrills and literary delights, such as the Zapp lecture, which talks about striptease and recommends that readers get their pleasure from the act of teasing and forget about the ultimate comprehension of the novel…the meaning changes and escapes us anyway – when in Italy.

Philip Swallow is part of the conference circuit now and when in Italy, one of the engines of his plane is on fire, so that he returns and is invited to spend the night at the flat of a British council official, where, once the man left for Milan – was it Milan – the shaking man that had just returned from the dead tells the wife, Joy, that he would stop trembling if she holds him in her arms…what follows is a Joie de Vivre, Vivre a Fond episode of Flow, wherein the man finds the absolute Joy of life, which he had been just about to lose and the intensity, the immensity of the happiness will be within reach again…

 

The two will meet again in turkey, and they travel together from Ankara to Istanbul, the bliss of their reunion will apparently result in a divorce and then the two will marry – they have a daughter, furthermore, the result of their night of love in Italy – if only it will be so easy…it will have been so easy for adjectival David Lodge to get them to live forever happy, but we know it is not how things turn, so they enjoy Greece, and then Jerusalem for a good few days, up to the point where they meet Philip’s son…there are many coincidences, but also near misses and there is no familiar, cliché solution to the relationships, maybe we find that not even Persse will be blessed with a déjà vu solution to his Quest…

The novel is dazzling, challenging in the many encounters, sexual and romantic couplings, but it is also extraordinarily sophisticated in the literary thesis it promotes, Striptease and the reader, the critic, romance and the novel, the epic genre as symbolically male, while romance has more in common – or was it everything – with the female orgasm, eventually multiple orgasms…if we think about it, this may be the only novel that packs so much in such a compact format, where we have multiple characters – perhaps a few too many, if we are to find fault in perfection – and incredible dynamics between them – Angelica and Lily had been abandoned in a KLM flight from America to Europe and then they find their biological parents at one point, near the end, Morris Zapp will find a new partner, maybe even a new wife, there is also the very interesting Cheryl Summerbee, the frigid student that travels from Rummidge, where she has an affair with Philip Swallow, to…Australia, where we have a repeat of the events…

Persee is expected to find Angelica and convince her to marry him, in the tradition of the romance, and indeed, finally, they kiss and make love in New York – we can assume that some spoilers are fine here, since everybody has left the area long ago, seeing that it is contaminated, incomprehensible and without purpose, pother than offer the under signed the pleasure to still be in the Small world for a while longer – only for all of us, participants and public, to see that this is actually Lilly, then she says that she is Angelica…but if you say you love her, how come you are not sure anymore which of us you have here…good point