DAVID LODGE
“CHANGING PLACES. A TALE OF TWO CAMPUSES”
SUMMARY
David Lodges’ novel represents the first one of a trilogy that includes the novels “Small
World: An Academic Romance” and “Nice Work”.
“Changing Places” follows the model of an academic novel, which is set on university
campuses and loaded with information and humor about professors’ lifestyles. It is exuberantly
satirical yet intellectual, it not only focuses on English professors of Literature but also includes a
lot of allusions to classics and deals with literary composition issues in a playful manner.
The novel’s premise is a fictional six-month exchange program between two English
Departments, State University of Euphoria and University of Rummidge.
Philip Swallow, the English participant, is a fairly traditional and conformist British scholar
who is rather overwhelmed by the American way of life. The Head of his Department sends him
to this academic exchange only to get him out of the way so that he can promote a younger and
more capable man in his position.
Morris Zapp, on the other hand, is a high-ranking American professor who only accepts to
go to Rummidge when his wife, Désirée, agrees to postpone long-threatened divorce procedures
in exchange for him moving out of the house for six months.
While these two opposing intellectual individuals switch places, the storyline shifts from
one country to another continuously, revealing the differences in each countries' higher education
systems.
The novel, however, is set in the chaotic ‘60s and addresses significant topics of the day,
such as the Vietnam War, racism, and women's emancipation. By adding the Garden conflict to
Euphoria and the student movement to Rummidge, it reveals an unusual contamination of the
academic area, which is generally an isolated domain of its own, with external violence.
“Changing Places”, the trilogy’s most experimental novel, is organized into six chapters:
“Flying”, “Settling”, “Corresponding”, “Reading”, “Changing” and “Ending”.
The novel presents a variety of literary styles. There is a past tense narrative, a chapter
made up of letters between the two professors and their spouses, a part that consists of portions of
newspapers, manifestos, and student handouts, and the ending chapter written as a screenplay.
1.
, 1. FLYING
The first chapter of the novel, “Flying”, opens “High, high above the North Pole, on the
first day of 1969”. The two professors of English Literature “exchanging posts for the next six
months”, are crossing paths above the North Pole, “protected from the thin, cold air by the
pressurized cabins of two Boeing 707s, and from the risk of collision by the prudent arrangement
of the international air corridors”.
This chapter alternately follows the two planes moving in the opposite direction from
shortly after their take-off to the moment of their landing.
One goes to the State University of Euphoria, the famous center of learning located in the
most attractive country “on the Western seaboard of America, situated between Northern and
Southern California, with its mountains, lakes and rivers, its redwood forests, its blond beaches
and its incomparable Bay”. The other goes to the University of Rummidge, “a large, graceless
industrial city sprawled over the English Midlands at the intersection of three motorways, twenty-
six railway lines and half-a-dozen stagnant canals”.
Philip Swallow, from the University of Rummidge, and Morris Zapp, from the University
of Euphoria, both 40 years old, are the two individuals participating in this academic exchange.
While Philip Swallow, flying westward, is portrayed definitely unfamiliar with air traveling,
judging by “his stiff, upright posture and fulsome gratitude to the stewardess serving him a glass
of orange juice”, “the experience of long-distance air travel is tediously familiar” for Morris Zapp,
who is presented “slouched in the seat of his eastbound aircraft, chewing a dead cigar (a hostess
has made him extinguish it) and glowering at the meagre portion of ice dissolving in his plastic
tumbler of bourbon”.
The exchange of Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, represents a departure from the usual
pattern, “Zapp was distinguished, and Swallow was not”.
Philip Swallow is a postgraduate student and junior lecturer at the University of Rummidge.
He is scarcely known outside his own Department, has low self-esteem and no ambition. He “had
published nothing except a handful of essays and reviews” and his last major work was his MA
thesis that he managed to finish only under the influence of a delightful honeymoon in America.
Originally, he traveled to America on a Harvard fellowship, but he missed his love and fellow
2.
“CHANGING PLACES. A TALE OF TWO CAMPUSES”
SUMMARY
David Lodges’ novel represents the first one of a trilogy that includes the novels “Small
World: An Academic Romance” and “Nice Work”.
“Changing Places” follows the model of an academic novel, which is set on university
campuses and loaded with information and humor about professors’ lifestyles. It is exuberantly
satirical yet intellectual, it not only focuses on English professors of Literature but also includes a
lot of allusions to classics and deals with literary composition issues in a playful manner.
The novel’s premise is a fictional six-month exchange program between two English
Departments, State University of Euphoria and University of Rummidge.
Philip Swallow, the English participant, is a fairly traditional and conformist British scholar
who is rather overwhelmed by the American way of life. The Head of his Department sends him
to this academic exchange only to get him out of the way so that he can promote a younger and
more capable man in his position.
Morris Zapp, on the other hand, is a high-ranking American professor who only accepts to
go to Rummidge when his wife, Désirée, agrees to postpone long-threatened divorce procedures
in exchange for him moving out of the house for six months.
While these two opposing intellectual individuals switch places, the storyline shifts from
one country to another continuously, revealing the differences in each countries' higher education
systems.
The novel, however, is set in the chaotic ‘60s and addresses significant topics of the day,
such as the Vietnam War, racism, and women's emancipation. By adding the Garden conflict to
Euphoria and the student movement to Rummidge, it reveals an unusual contamination of the
academic area, which is generally an isolated domain of its own, with external violence.
“Changing Places”, the trilogy’s most experimental novel, is organized into six chapters:
“Flying”, “Settling”, “Corresponding”, “Reading”, “Changing” and “Ending”.
The novel presents a variety of literary styles. There is a past tense narrative, a chapter
made up of letters between the two professors and their spouses, a part that consists of portions of
newspapers, manifestos, and student handouts, and the ending chapter written as a screenplay.
1.
, 1. FLYING
The first chapter of the novel, “Flying”, opens “High, high above the North Pole, on the
first day of 1969”. The two professors of English Literature “exchanging posts for the next six
months”, are crossing paths above the North Pole, “protected from the thin, cold air by the
pressurized cabins of two Boeing 707s, and from the risk of collision by the prudent arrangement
of the international air corridors”.
This chapter alternately follows the two planes moving in the opposite direction from
shortly after their take-off to the moment of their landing.
One goes to the State University of Euphoria, the famous center of learning located in the
most attractive country “on the Western seaboard of America, situated between Northern and
Southern California, with its mountains, lakes and rivers, its redwood forests, its blond beaches
and its incomparable Bay”. The other goes to the University of Rummidge, “a large, graceless
industrial city sprawled over the English Midlands at the intersection of three motorways, twenty-
six railway lines and half-a-dozen stagnant canals”.
Philip Swallow, from the University of Rummidge, and Morris Zapp, from the University
of Euphoria, both 40 years old, are the two individuals participating in this academic exchange.
While Philip Swallow, flying westward, is portrayed definitely unfamiliar with air traveling,
judging by “his stiff, upright posture and fulsome gratitude to the stewardess serving him a glass
of orange juice”, “the experience of long-distance air travel is tediously familiar” for Morris Zapp,
who is presented “slouched in the seat of his eastbound aircraft, chewing a dead cigar (a hostess
has made him extinguish it) and glowering at the meagre portion of ice dissolving in his plastic
tumbler of bourbon”.
The exchange of Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, represents a departure from the usual
pattern, “Zapp was distinguished, and Swallow was not”.
Philip Swallow is a postgraduate student and junior lecturer at the University of Rummidge.
He is scarcely known outside his own Department, has low self-esteem and no ambition. He “had
published nothing except a handful of essays and reviews” and his last major work was his MA
thesis that he managed to finish only under the influence of a delightful honeymoon in America.
Originally, he traveled to America on a Harvard fellowship, but he missed his love and fellow
2.
