This was a quick, fun read, by a writer I’ve been meaning to dip into for ages. Lodge is known for his books about academic life, and the character Morris Zapp. Those books were written later, in the 70s and 80s. Lodge has also written extensively about literary theory, and has lectured on literature for many years. I have come across his literary studies when researching “stream-of-consciousness” and other things. I also read him in a book I found in the janitorial office of a business hotel in Reykjavik in 2008, and when I pointed it out it was gifted to me by the custodian Marcin. This book “The Art of Fiction” is a collection of Lodge’s columns on literary style from the Independent on Sunday. Anyway, on with the novel!
The British Museum if Falling Down is about a young literary scholar who spends his days in the British Museum. He is also the father of three children and is afraid to have a fourth. Because he and his wife are Catholic, they are not allowed to use birth control methods. The book is set during one day in the spring of 1963 and a marker of contemporaneity is the brief discussion of Beatlemania. In the afterword it is revealed that the book is structured to be aping the prose style of ten different 20th century writers. Quite a steganographic little ruse, is it not?
It also impressed upon me the idea of writing about a library. The British Library was housed in the BM until 1966. Nowadays that space is a book shoppe, and the British Library moved to another location.
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Kinship of all Species 