David Lodge strana 2 z 2

Language of Fiction was the first book of criticism by the renowned novelist and critic David Lodge. His uniquely informed perspective - he was already the author of three successful novels at the time of its first publication in 1966 - and lucid exposition meant that the work proved a landmark of literary criticism, not least because it succeeded in communicating a radically new vision of English literature to a readership that reached well beyond the bounds of the academy. Now reissued with a new foreword, this major work from the pen of one of England's finest living writers is essential reading for all those who care about the creation and appreciation of literature.

Retired Professor of Linguistics Desmond Bates is going deaf. It's a bother for his wife who has an enviably successful new career and is too busy to be endlessly repeating herself. Roles are reversed with his aging father, who resents his son's attempts to help him. And then there's Alex, a student whom Desmond has agreed to help after a typical misunderstanding at a party. But her increasingly bizarre requests cannot all be blamed on his defective hearing. So much for growing old gracefully...

Helen Reed, a novelist in her early forties, still grieving for her husband who died suddenly a year before, is a visiting teacher of creative writing at a university where Ralph Messenger, a cognitive scientist with a special interest in Artificial Intelligence and an incorrigible womaniser, is director of a prestigious research institute. He is an atheist and a materialist; she is a Catholic who has lost her faith but still yearns for the consolations of religion. Ralph is attracted to Helen a nd she, in spite of her principles, to him. They argue about the nature of human consciousness, and the different ways it is examined in science and literature, as she resists with weakening resolution Ralph's efforts to seduce her. David Lodge has d istilled the story of his acclaimed novel Thinks...to create a witty and absorbing drama about a moral, emotional and intellectual struggle between two exceptional people.

When Philip Swallow and Professor Morris Zapp participate in their universities' Anglo-American exchange scheme, the Fates play a hand, and each academic finds himself enmeshed in the life of his counterpart on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Nobody is immune to the exchange: students, colleagues, even wives are swapped as events spiral out of control. And soon both sundrenched Euphoric State university and rain-kissed university of Rummidge are a hotbed of intrigue, lawlessness and broken vows...

The mind is a time machine that travels backwards in memory and forwards in prophecy, but he has done with prophecy now...' Sequestered in his blitz-battered Regent's Park house in 1944, the ailing Herbert George Wells, 'H.G.' to his family and friends, looks back on a life crowded with incident, books, and women. Has it been a success or a failure? Once he was the most famous writer in the world, 'the man who invented tomorrow'; now he feels like yesterday's man, deserted by readers and depressed by the collapse of his utopian dreams. He recalls his unpromising start, and early struggles to acquire an education and make a living as a teacher; his rapid rise to fame as a writer with a prophetic imagination and a comic common touch which brought him into contact with most of the important literary, intellectual, and political figures of his time; his plunge into socialist politics; and, his belief in free love, and energetic practice of it. Arguing with himself about his conduct, he relives his relationships with two wives and many mistresses, especially the brilliant student Amber Reeves and the gifted writer Rebecca West, both of whom bore him children, with dramatic and long-lasting consequences. Unfolding this astonishing story, David Lodge depicts a man as contradictory as he was talented: a socialist who enjoyed his affluence, an acclaimed novelist who turned against the literary novel; a feminist womaniser, sensual yet incurably romantic, irresistible and exasperating by turns, but always vitally human.

The British Museum is Falling Down is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. First published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted - not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.

Welcome to the Palladium, Brickley. Once the grandest music-hall south of the river, now its peeling foyer is home to stale popcorn, a depressed manager, and a cast of disparate picture goers who touch and shape each other's destinies. Amongst them is Mark, the cynical intellectual who seeks sensuality and finds spirituality; Clare, his girlfriend, who loses faith and discovers passion; Father Kipling, the scandalized priest; and Harry, the sexually frustrated Teddy boy. In his astutely observed first novel, David Lodge ushers in a congregation of characters whose hopes, confusions and foibles play out alongside the celluloid fantasies of the silver screen.

The first collection of short stories from one of Britain's finest novelists and critics. A nameless man, who has fallen out of love with life, refuses to get out of bed, with unexpected consequences. A sociologist recalls how he learned his first and formative lesson about the oppressive power of capitalism selling newspapers and magazines up and down the platforms of Waterloo station. Some years before the era of the Pill and the Permissive Society, four university friends travel to the Mediterranean for their first holiday together, where the climate is sultry and sex is on everyone's mind. And a strong-willed young woman defies adverse circumstances to pursue the perfect wedding at all costs. These are some of the characters that populate David Lodge's shrewd, funny and delightfully entertaining short stories, collected here for the very first time. What prompted their publication in this form is a short story in itself, told by the author in his Foreword.

The professor, the critic and the novelist work in harmony to provide a valuable tutorial on modern fiction' Observer How does the novel represent human consciousness on the page? In eleven sparkling essays on some of the great novelists of the last 200 years - from Charles Dickens to Martin Amis, Henry James to Philip Roth - David Lodge pursues this question with characteristic verve and wit. One of the best novelists and critics of his generation, Lodge is the perfect guide to look afresh at the mysterious workings of the creative mind.

Profesor Desmond Bates odchádza do predčasného dôchodku. Vôbec si ho však nevie užívať. Chýba mu zmysluplná rutina akademického života, no vedecká práca ho už nenapĺňa. Kým on sa lúči s profesionálnym životom, manželkina kariéra začína prekvitať. Jeho úloha sa zredukuje na muža v domácnosti. Monotónne dni mu narúšajú len únavné návštevy Londýna, kde chodí kontrolovať svojho tvrdohlavého 89-ročného otca. To všetko však nie je nič v porovnaní s jeho problémami so sluchom. Hovorí sa, že hluchota je smiešna a slepota tragická. Je to naozaj tak? Práve vďaka svojej hluchote sa Desmond nechtiac zapletie s mladou ženou, ktorej správanie ho vyvedie z rovnováhy. Ako, prosím? je vtipný a zároveň dojemný román. Je to skvelá úvaha o snahe muža vysporiadať sa s hluchotou a smrťou, starnutím a smrteľnosťou, komédiou a tragédiou v ľudskom živote.

Nejnovější a nejšťavnatější román britského novelisty a humoristy Davida Lodgea vypráví pravdivý příběh o lidské vášni a posedlosti, ztrátách pozdního života i humoru nadcházejícího konce. H. G. Wells byl jedním z nejpronikavějších autorů, vizionářů a milovníků 20. století. Proslavil se nejen nejčastěji filmovanými romány z oblasti science fiction (Válka světů, Stroj času, Ostrov dr. Moreaua), ale také revolučními postoji v oblasti sociální politiky nebo třeba volné lásky. K jeho známým patřily nejvýznačnější osobnosti tehdejšího světa.