Cultures Clash, Creating A Humorous Paradise:

David Lodge's reputation in America rests on the strength of novels satirizing academic life. Small World, Changing Places, Nice Work--all these works parody the routine that Mr. Lodge himself followed as a professor of English at the University of Birmingham in England. Paradise News changes its focus from the academic motif, although not entirely, and the result is a pleasing, light work that will satisfy both Lodge fans expecting Morris Zapp and Phillip Swallow and readers not familiar with his career.

The characters in Paradise News are on vacation in Hawaii. They travel to forget their troubles and find a cure for their inherently British boredom and problems, but Bernard, Lodge's hero, has a different purpose for the packaged pilgrimage to this exotic island.

Bernard Walsh, an apologetic theologian, travels with his father to the island to visit the dying Ursula, his great-aunt, and to wind up her affairs. Jack, Bernard's father, hasn't seen his sister in years, and Bernard induces him to come only by the vague intimation that Ursula's fortune awaits an inheritor.

Thus the theme that emerges is one of transformation, of healing. The minor characters hope the sun's warmth will cure their ills; Bernard's family must heal a rift within itself. Bernard himself must try to reconcile his waning faith in God and to heal his loneliness.

Herein lies the structural leitmotif that encapsulates Mr. Lodge's main theme, a device readers of Mr. Lodge's have come to expect. Roger Sheldrake, an aggressive anthropologist, explains to Bernard the thesis of his book: "Sightseeing," he lectures," is a substitute for religious ritual." His model includes travels as a pilgrimage through which some transformative healing process is intended to occur. Mr. Lodge's book is based on the same thesis, to some extent, as Sheldrake's.

Mr. Lodge has moved away from the safe topic of professional life, one with which he was well acquainted. For example, the character Roger Sheldrake, the academic figure, appears only infrequently. This movement results in the foregrounding of Lodge's great writerly strength: characterization.

Lodge subtly and humorously paints the characters in Paradise News. Particularly, the minor characters manage to achieve some sort of depth within the limited scope of their roles in the book. Harold Best's victimized angst and Brian Everthorpe's jocular callousness escape being caricatures without losing humor.

Mr. Lodge's ability to juxtapose different worlds and to effect a composition out of what might be expected to be contradiction makes his work original. Bernard recalls some lines from The Tempest: Sir, he may live./I saw him beat the surges under him,/And ride upon their backs. "Is that, I wonder, the first description of surfing in English Literature?" Bernard muses.

Mr. Lodge can even succeed in finding surfing in Shakespeare; in Paradise News we may find such seemingly misplaced acts, and it is them and the diverse characters who carry them out that Mr. Lodge delivers a pleasing new novel.