Gypsy Scholars Small World

By Paul Gray

"An Academic Romance," the subtitle of Author David Lodge's seventh novel, seems at first glance a contradiction in terms. Even those who have read no more deeply in this field than Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim (1954) know that works of fiction set on campus are supposed to be funny, not fond. As it turns out, those looking for laughs will hardly be disappointed by Small World. But Lodge, 50, who is also a critic and a literature professor at the University of Birmingham in England, sees the humor in academic life and something else besides: a number of the principal players have started to move in strange but well-worn patterns.

"Scholars these days are like the errant knights of old, wandering the ways of the world in search of adventure and glory." So says Morris Zapp, a cigar- chewing American professor whose extensive lecture itinerary has temporarily stranded him at a dreary medieval conference in Rummidge, a drab, provincial English university. Also on hand to suffer the droning speeches and inedible food is Persse McGarrigle, a young Irishman who is a virgin both in the traditional sense and vis-a-vis the brave new world of gypsy scholars. What dazzles McGarrigle most about the proceedings is Angelica, a beautiful and budding literary critic who befriends him but mysteriously eludes his chivalrous advances. Persse muses: "It's as if she had a magic ring for making herself invisible."

Those who pick up this allusion to fanciful old tales may move to the head of the class. Lodge sets his swelling cast of characters into frantic motion across what only looks like the contemporary world; in truth, they move through enchanted old paths out of Ariosto, Spenser and the Arthurian legends. As he takes up the pursuit of Angelica, Persse becomes Percival on the trail of the Grail. For Zapp the quest centers on the newly endowed UNESCO chair in literary criticism, a post that pays $100,000 a year, tax free, and carries no duties whatever.

Zapp is not alone in desiring this prize; he and other contenders keep meeting at academic conferences and trying to upstage one another. The man they must impress is Arthur Kingfisher, "doyen of the international community of literary theorists," whose approval will bring the award. Unfortunately, the Fisher King is filled with despair "at no longer being able to achieve an erection or an original thought."

Can Persse find Angelica, thereby bringing fertile rain to the critical wasteland? Not before Lodge pulls out all the old tricks: hidden births and revealing birthmarks, magical instances of love at first sight and many, many journeys. The author's wry and graceful style keeps a complicated plot briskly in motion and surprisingly fresh. Along the way, he takes some gentle but funny swipes at reigning scholarly ideologies and provides enough surface diversions to beguile readers who have never heard of Sir Thomas Malory or the Modern Language Association. The author even helps neophytes along with a definition given by one of the characters: "Real romance is a pre-novelistic kind of narrative. It's full of adventure and coincidence and surprises and marvels, and has lots of characters who are lost or enchanted or wandering about looking for each other, or for the Grail, or something like that." Small World is something like that.