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Summary
Summary
A riveting novel about the remarkable life-and many loves-of author H. G. Wells.
H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds , was one of the twentieth century's most prophetic and creative writers, a man who immersed himself in socialist politics and free love, whose meteoric rise to fame brought him into contact with the most important literary, intellectual, and political figures of his time, but who in later years felt increasingly ignored and disillusioned in his own utopian visions. Novelist and critic David Lodge has taken the compelling true story of Wells's life and transformed it into a witty and deeply moving narrative about a fascinating yet flawed man.
Wells had sexual relations with innumerable women in his lifetime, but in 1944, as he finds himself dying, he returns to the memories of a select group of wives and mistresses, including the brilliant young student Amber Reeves and the gifted writer Rebecca West. As he reviews his professional, political, and romantic successes and failures, it is through his memories of these women that he comes to understand himself. Eloquent, sexy, and tender, the novel is an artfully composed portrait of Wells's astonishing life, with vivid glimpses of its turbulent historical background, by one of England's most respected and popular writers.
Author Notes
Writing both literary criticism and novels, British author David Lodge has learned to practice what he teaches. A professor of Modern English literature, both his fiction and nonfiction have found a large readership in the United Kingdom and the United States. To maintain his dual approach to writing, Lodge has attempted to alternate a novel one year and a literary criticism the next throughout his career.
Lodge's fiction has been described as good writing with a good laugh, and he is praised for his ability to treat serious subjects sardonically. This comic touch is evident in his first novel, "The Picturegoers" (1960) in which the conflict of Catholicism with sensual desire, a recurrent theme, is handled with wit and intelligence. "How Far Can You Go" (1980) released in United States as "Souls and Bodies" (1982) also examines sexual and religious evolution in a marvelously funny way. "Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses" (1975, 1979), based on Lodge's experience in Berkeley as a visiting professor, won the Hawthorne Prize and the Yorkshire Post fiction prize and solidified his reputation in America. Some of the author's other hilarious novels include "Nice Work" (1989), which Lodge adapted into an award-winning television series, and "Therapy" (1995), a sardonic look at mid-life crisis.
Lodge's nonfiction includes a body of work begun in 1966 with "The Language of Fiction" and includes "The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts" (1992) and "The Practice of Writing: Essays, Lectures, Reviews and a Diary"(1996). In a unique approach, he often uses his own works for critical examination and tries to give prospective writers insights into the complex creative process.
David John Lodge was born in London on January 28, 1935. He has a B.A. (1955) and M.A (1959) from University College, London and a Ph.D. (1967) and an Honorary Professorship (1987) from the University of Birmingham. Lodge is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this comprehensive, often bland novel, Lodge (Small World) focuses on the extensive erotic experiences of celebrated British author H.G. Wells. As he states in his author's note, every character and plot development is non-fiction, and Lodge makes extensive use of quotes from Wells's personal correspondence. Unfortunately, the result reads more like a biography than a novel, with a plot that strictly adheres to the chronology of Wells's life-from early boyhood to death. Many of the circumstances and details are salacious, from the protective sheaths which Wells uses to make his philandering possible, to his perennial interest in making love outdoors, to some big cats role-play with writer Rebecca West (he was her Panther, she his Jaguar), with some relevant quotes from their love letters-"I shall lay my paw on you this Wednesday night." However, the womanizing becomes repetitive, with one too many frigid wives, and too many virgins in need of a sexual education from an older, more experienced lover, all resulting in a certain tedium best suited for readers who are already devotees of Wells or Lodge. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge (Vintage, pounds 7.99) While DH Lawrence preached the sexual revolution, HG Wells put it into practice. When his first wife failed to satisfy him, he married a second, and when she proved a wet blanket he turned to other women, with her consent. "My story of my relations with women is mainly a story of greed, foolishness and great expectation," he concluded. Lodge retells it as a 500-page biographical novel that explores the relationship between author and lover, prophet and philanderer, bed and book. Just as HG was tireless in his philandering, so Lodge has been tireless in his research and Wells is forced to confront his failures: eugenics, antisemitism, war-mongering, male chauvinism, double standards. There'll still be some who feel that Lodge lets his man off lightly, and that the outward amenability of Wells's wife fails to register the price she paid. But Lodge does succeed in showing what made Wells, in his lifetime, so irresistible; and unlike many of Wells's, Lodge's novel has narrative drive. It bounds along terrifically and never tires, even in bed. Blake Morrison - Blake Morrison While DH Lawrence preached the sexual revolution, HG Wells put it into practice. When his first wife failed to satisfy him, he married a second, and when she proved a wet blanket he turned to other women, with her consent. "My story of my relations with women is mainly a story of greed, foolishness and great expectation," he concluded. - Blake Morrison.
Kirkus Review
At his best when he artfully blends comedy and pathos (Deaf Sentence,2008, etc.), Lodge returns to the fictional biography genre that didn't serve him particularly well inAuthor, Author(2004).At least, unlike Henry James (the earlier novel's protagonist), H.G. Wells had an eventful life rife with political controversies and a tangled variety of love affairs, as well as bestselling books ranging from early sci-fi classics such asThe War of the Worldsto popular nonfiction likeThe Outline of History.The booksare conscientiously covered; indeed, the novel reminds us just how influential and famous Wells was from the 1890s through World War I. But his romantic life is the main focus here, as the writer looks back from the vantage point of 1944 on his tumultuous relations with a parade of independent young women who worshipped him as a titillating socialist/feminist bad boy. They offered sexual excitement while wife Jane provided domestic comforts at home. His straitlaced comrades at the Fabian Society were appalled by Wells' open espousal of free loveespecially in the several cases where their daughters took him up on itand resistant to his desire to make the Society more populist and aggressive. He eventually parted ways with the Fabians, just as he did with his youthful lovers, though his turbulent relationship with Rebecca West lasted the longest and produced an understandably neurotic son. The character sketches are sharp, particularly of West and of fellow Fabians George Bernard Shaw and Edith Bland (better known as children's novelist E. Nesbit), and Wells' uneasy friendship with Henry James is hilariously expressed in fulsomely insincere letters on both sides. (Its rupture after Wells publishes a cruel satire of James' baroque style is surprisingly moving.) Yet Lodge's well-written book doesn't offer any unusual insights that justify making this straightforward narrative of Wells' most prominent and productive years a novel rather than a biography.Readable but ultimately rather pointless.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Writers intrigue and amuse ebullient and droll British novelist and critic Lodge. Imaginary scribblers appear in his satirical novels, and he has portrayed two real-life masters at opposite ends of the literary spectrum, friends who became adversaries: Henry James in Author, Author (2004), and now H. G. Wells. A mad carnival of books, sex, celebrity, social activism, notoriety, and love, Wells' fervent and unconventional life is prime material for astutely mischievous and marveling comedy, and Lodge is all but purring throughout this capacious, bawdy, historically veracious, and profoundly perceptive novel. Ailing and reflective in 1944, after bravely enduring the blitz in London, Wells is sparring with his inner inquisitor, who grills him about his myriad affairs and reputation-damaging snafus and blunders. Extended flashbacks ensue, in which Lodge dramatizes Wells' sexual adventures, excising the pain his philandering caused to emphasis the outrageously needy absurdity of it all. Lodge casts Wells' pragmatic wife, Jane, as confidante and sidekick to his turbulent adultery and tells the extraordinary stories of Wells' lovers, from innocent but determined Rosamund to brainy and resilient Amber Reeves and Rebecca West to the alleged Russian spy Moura Budberg. In Wells and his women, Lodge finds a plexus of creativity and sexuality, and the deep desire to leave one's mark on the scroll of human endeavor. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Literary-star Lodge's sexy bionovel, in conjunction with Michael Sherborne's superb new Wells biography, will kick off a Wells revival.--Seaman, Donn. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE stupefyingly prolific H. G. Wells published more than a hundred books and slept with "well over a hundred women in his lifetime." But who's counting? David Lodge, that's who. Some of Wells's works, including the briskly entertaining science fiction classics "The Time Machine" and "The War of the Worlds," are as familiar as any in English; others, like the appallingly named novel "The Bulpington of Blup" (you can look it up) have sunk from view. Wells died in 1946 a few weeks shy of 80, having written incessantly through two world wars. He was such a virtuoso in so many forms and genres, from the gritty working-class realism of "The History of Mr. Polly" to his Wikipedia-esque best seller "Outline of History," that it's hard to say precisely what kind of writer he was. As Lodge, a shrewd literary critic, observes, "There are eccentric orbits in literary history." Like Robert Louis Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, Wells was the best kind of hack writer, often most adept at offbeat things. The ambitious son of struggling shopkeepers and an autodidact of astonishing intellectual curiosity, Wells, once called "the man who invented tomorrow," was something of a prophet as well. Lodge credits him with anticipating, among other things, armored tanks (or "land ironclads," as Wells quaintly called them), aerial warfare, the atomic bomb and even the Internet (a gathering of all known information, which Wells imagined as involving reams of microfilm and many, many airplanes). A champion of world government, Wells also believed in the equality of women and a fairer distribution of private land. You might think that Wells was all over the place. Or you might conclude, as Lodge does in his smart, engaging novel, that Wells was "a man of parts." Lodge quotes a dictionary definition as an epigraph: "Parts. Plural noun. 1. Personal abilities or talents: a man of many parts. 2. short for private parts." Wells was a short man of 5-foot-5 with a squeaky voice, but he happened, according to Lodge, to be "better endowed" than Michelangelo's David. In the comic romps about academic life for which he is best known, "Nice Work" and "Small World" (both finalists for the Man Booker Prize), Lodge made something of a specialty of intellectuals behaving badly in bed. In his previous foray into biographical fiction, "Author, Author," Lodge took on Henry James, who seems to have done nothing much in bed but sleep. H. G. Wells gives Lodge a much, much wider field. Like others of his utopian generation - the lush erotic fauna of Bloomsbury comes to mind - Wells subscribed to free love and open marriage, especially after his two marriages turned out to be sexually tepid. His tastes ran to younger women, or theirs to him. The "virgin daughters" of his colleagues in the socialist Fabian movement were a particular temptation. When Rosamund Bland declared her availability, Wells accepted on the dubious grounds that her predatory father was also pursuing her: better H. G. than incest. Wells considered sex a matter-of-fact recreation "like tennis or badminton." But Lodge is oddly reticent about how exactly Wells played the game. We are told of "vigorous and joyful intercourse" and of "rustic copulations on the hillsides." We learn a bit about his scattershot methods of birth control. ("I always used sheaths when prudence dictated it," Wells claims.) Stray phrases hint at interesting complications ("She was still locked in the curious triangular relationship with her celibate lover Grad and her ardent bisexual flatmate Veronica"). Wells himself kept a record of his amorous pursuits, discreetly left unpublished until 1984. If the documentation nonetheless remains incomplete, what are novelists for? The writer Dorothy Richardson (another of Wells's paramours) once complained that the women in Wells's novels all seemed derived from "one specimen carried away from some biological museum of his student days." Like Wells, Lodge works up his women from the outside. One has "a mass of dense crinkly black hair" while another, three pages later, has a "long chin and mass of hair." Wells's long-suffering and long-forgiving second wife, Jane, remains an enigmatic cipher. Tolerant of her husband's philandering, she managed his career, typed his manuscripts, arranged the frolics in his sequence of big houses, then meekly died of cancer. "In all this story," a friend once told Wells, "the really interesting person seems to be your wife." That may be true, but our interest is not satisfied. Only when Rebecca West, an able novelist and a journalist of genius, enters the narrative do we feel that we have a character equal to Wells. Trained as an actress and active in feminist circles, she had borrowed her nom de plume from a dangerous heroine in Ibsen. West first came to Wells's attention when she trashed one of his books, a prim novel called "Marriage." Wells, she claimed, was hardly the prophet of sexual liberation he pretended to be. He was, instead, "the old maid among novelists," and the "sex-obsession" in his books "lay clotted . . . like cold white sauce," revealing "a mind too long absorbed in airships." When West revealed that she was pregnant with Wells's child, the mind absorbed in airships came crashing down to earth. IN his treatment of the tormented relationship of Wells and West, Lodge, as elsewhere in "A Man of Parts," hews close to the known biographical facts. "Nearly everything that happens in this narrative," he assures the reader, "is based on factual sources." From time to time, however, the third-person narrative is interrupted by lively conversations between the aging Wells, looking back on his life from his London lodgings toward the end of World War II, and a probing internal "second voice" that could be Lodge or might be a stand-in for the skeptical reader. "You don't admit that there was something compulsive about your womanizing?" asks the interlocutor. "I just happen to enjoy sex," Wells answers defensively. Such narrative experiments make one wonder where Lodge himself stands on the contrast, broached several times in "A Man of Parts," between Henry James's concept of the novel as an aesthetic construct and Wells's more "instrumental" notion of fiction as a way to improve society. In his satirical book "Boon," Wells cruelly skewered James's fiction, comparing it to "a church lit but without a congregation. . . . And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an eggshell, a bit of string." But James's noble response to Wells makes a more lasting case for what novels are ultimately for. "It is art that makes life," James wrote, "makes interest, makes importance, . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process." The documentation of Wells's amours may remain incomplete, but what are novelists for? Christopher Benfey is the Andrew W. Mellon professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. His memoir, "Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay," will be published next spring.
Library Journal Review
In Author, Author, acclaimed novelist/critic Lodge reimagined the meteoric rise and fall of the great Henry James. Here he performs the same task for the novelist best known for such popular tales as The War of the Worlds. Drawing deeply on H.G. Wells's auto-biographical writings and on a wide array of secondary literature, Lodge draws a portrait of a novelist in his final years, reflecting on his powers spent and fame gained. The narrator's thoughts on Wells's mistresses are woven with Wells's own reflections on mortality, free love, politics, and writing. The novel plods along as Wells wonders whether the world will remember him, and the one-dimensional characters (the women, even Rebecca West, simply stand for sex and how much about sex Wells can teach them) elicit no deep feelings. In a mournfully didactic ending, the narrator declares that H.G. was like a comet that appeared suddenly and blazed in the literary firmament for decades before his imagination and intellect dwindled in brightness. VERDICT Lodge is a brilliant comic writer, but this dull and dreary novel about a now mostly forgotten writer is disappointing. It would be sad to think that, like his take on Wells, Lodge's imagination and intellect have dwindled in brightness. Still, most public libraries will want this book to satisfy his many fans. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/11.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
