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Title	:	Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)
Author	:	David Lodge
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 277 pages
Published	:	July 27th 1990 by Penguin Books (first published 1988)
Categories	:	Fiction. Humor. Novels. European Literature. British Literature

Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)

David Lodge

Paperback | Pages: 277 pages

Rating: 3.84 | 4849 Users | 241 Reviews

Relation Concering Books Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)

In this witty novel, Lodge engineers a confrontation between Robyn, a young, left-wing female literary theorist, and Vic, an older, conservative, senior manager type. There's a government initiative where Robyn is supposed to "shadow" Vic one day a week, an arrangement that initially neither of them can stand. Each of them thinks the other's world is absurd and pointless. I liked the book partly because I have also spent my professional life flitting between industry and academia. I can absolutely understand Vic's criticisms of academics. They're helplessly disorganised; most of what they do makes no sense and is just empty posturing; they're trapped in a rigid power structure, where the people in charge are mostly tenured professors whose minds atrophied long ago; and why are they inflicting all this pain on themselves anyway, when there's no money to be made? But Robyn's criticisms of the business world also make sense. They're equally trapped by the constant requirement to turn a profit, so they never have time to reflect on whether things could be different. Ultimately, what they do makes no more sense than academia.

It's amusing to see each character's life through the other's eyes, and I particularly liked the ironic presentation of Robyn's feminist views on sex and relationships. (She can explain to you, with footnotes from Lacan, why "love" is just a bourgeois construct, and she thinks penetrative sex is wrong on theoretical grounds). But the passages that have most firmly struck in my memory have to do with literary theory. Lodge just adores literary theory, and he is so ingenious about working bits of it into his novels so that you can also appreciate what a fun game it is. There's a discussion near the end about the technical concept of "aporia". Robyn is explaining it to Vic, and she quotes the following line from Tennyson's Locksley Hall:

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

As she says, the line brilliantly exploits the novel image provided by railways, which had just been invented. (Stevenson's "Rocket" was built in 1829; Tennyson wrote the poem in 1835). But there's a problem. Trains don't run in grooves, but on rails, so the image is fatally flawed. Despite this, it's still a great line! Robyn has clearly used the example many times before in academic settings. But Vic asks whether Tennyson might not have been thinking of trams, which do run in grooves? Hm! That hadn't occurred to her.

I thought of this discussion the other day when we watched Despicable Me. My favourite scene was the one where Gru, the supervillain with the well-hidden heart of gold, has been persuaded to read Sleepy Kittens to the three little orphan girls. The text, presented in its entirety, is purposely constructed to be as idiotic and saccharine-sweet as possible. Gru starts reading:

Three little kittens loved to play
They had fun in the sun all day

"This is GARBAGE!" growls the supervillain. "You LIKE reading this?" It is garbage. But the film shows you how the little girls see it, and for them it's the story they've had read to them every day at bedtime. They view it uncritically, and for them it's full of love and comfort. Gru unwillingly continues to read, stroking the kittens' fur and making them drink their milk as instructed, and by the end he's been won over. Even so, it's still garbage.

Is this another example of aporia? Damned if I know: my knowledge of literary theory is pretty much limited to what I've gleaned from David Lodge novels. But I wished Robyn and Vic had been sitting next to us, so I could have listened to them bickering about it on the way out.

Describe Books During Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)

Original Title:	Nice Work
ISBN:	0140133968 (ISBN13: 9780140133967)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	The Campus Trilogy #3
Literary Awards:	Booker Prize Nominee (1988), Sunday Express Book of the Year (1988)

Rating Of Books Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)

Ratings: 3.84 From 4849 Users | 241 Reviews

Discuss Of Books Nice Work (The Campus Trilogy #3)

I read Nice Work before, a long time ago, but I still found that the humour tickled me on the first couple of pages: the wifes bedside reading Enjoy your Menopause and her pride in her en suite are two gems. I loved the fact that one of the loos was avocado a joke that was possibly lost on me, twenty years ago.Nice Work is an intelligently written novel, the conflict between the two main protagonists being a sort of representation of right and left politics of the UK. But Robyn and Vic dont

Fondly dedicated to Manny. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if I'll have time to finish this review as you waited this Friday, but I'll make an effort. My passion for collecting Catholic writers took me to the track of Englishman David Lodge, I came to him online, but I remember a very sympathetic anecdote, that Jack Valero https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... , who was very present at the canonization of St. John Henry Newman https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... came to Valladolid,

Funny, moving and, in the long run, feel good. Vic Wilcox a workaholic managing director of a small engineering firm who is opinionated, dismissive and seeking to be upwardly mobile for the sake of his wife ends up sharing his Wednesdays with a ' shadow' from the local University on a project to get business and university inter-relating. (A tad prophetic Mr Lodge). The shadow in question is a self-opinionated, elitist snob called Robyn Penrose who specializes in English literature but

Having read now entire the Campus Trilogy I found this last installment to be the most compelling in terms of characterization and themes. At times I felt like I was reading the script for a British television mini-series: there is something sentimental, melodramatic, predictable about the way the two main characters' relationship is portrayed. Nevertheless, a novel worth reading, for its apercus on academic life, forward-driving plot, and fascinating depiction of the clash between two worlds:

Very loosely based on E.M. Forster's Howards End, Nice Work follows Vic Wilcox, a head honcho in a British factory, and Robyn Penrose, a feminist PhD trying to secure a job at a university. Lodge does a really nice job of developing the characters and allowing them to change as a result of their interactions. He also manages to bring the novel to a satisfying and believable conclusion after leaving me wondering for most of the book where the story would end up. Overall, a book worth reading.

In Nice Work David Lodge introduces the campus novel to the 19th century industrial novel. The excuse for this unnatural pairing is a work exchange scheme and true to the late 1980s setting the basic assumption is the Lecturer from a thinly disguised Birmingham University English department has plenty to learn from industry, while the opposite, not not never, could be so. Lust, however, intervenes to shake up all the best laid plans of mice and men...Background splashes of colour from the

Smart book. Very clever. Lots of moments of, 'ooooooh, I see what you did there!' Wildly feminist professor meets traditionalist industrial business man via crazy shadow scheme in time of state budget cuts and overall economic downturn. Riddled with literary references and social critique focused on academic life, industry, and business practices it also includes clever commentary on gender roles and family dynamics.