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David Lodge¡¯s novels deal with the relations between academia and the outside world (¡°Laughing from the inside¡±, Features, 29 January). They are highly realistic in terms of detail but questionable for the values that they promote. In Nice Work, Robyn Penrose, a young lecturer in English literature, is supposed to be brought into the real world (industry) by shadowing Vic Wilcox, the manager of a small factory. She heartily dislikes the boredom and repetitiousness of industry, but the alternative to labour ¨C automation ¨C horrifies her (and her author) with its ¡°lightless and blind¡± machinery.

The question is what values does academia have to offer against this? Robyn is typically book-making (and on the industrial novel, ironically) not because she has anything to say but because she wants to promote her career. Lodge is quoted on this: ¡°Much academic publication is done merely to maintain the author¡¯s position in the profession¡±, and he appears to endorse this ¡°value¡± in his heroine. The novel fails in my view because it does not incarnate an academic world that supplies a satisfying alternative to industrialism. Lodge is said to be a satirist ¨C but a satirist has to take a scalpel to things. He seems more like a Doc Martin ¨C can¡¯t stand the sight of blood.

Nigel Probert
Porthmadog