Varying Degrees of Success: A Memoir 1992-2020

Description

The third part of award-winning literary giant David Lodge's memoir covering 1992 to 2010 when he was developing his literary career and also making forays into television and stage work both at home and abroad. In a career spanning six decades, David Lodge has been one of Britain's best-loved and most versatile writers. With Varying Degrees of Success he completes a trilogy of memoirs which describe his life from birth in 1935 to the present day, and together form a remarkable autobiography. His aim is to describe honestly and in some detail the highs and lows of being a professional creative writer in several different genres- prose fiction, literary criticism, plays for live theatre and screenplays for film and television. Few writers have excelled in so many different forms of the written word. Lodge's creativity, and his wonderful sense of humour, have made his work popular in translation in numerous countries, and his extensive travels around the world are recorded here. Each of the three memoirs has its own thematic focus. In this latest one it is on the hope and desire of writers to make a significant and positive impression on their readers and audiences. The elation of success, and the depression that follows disappointment, are familiar emotions to most writers in varying degrees. David Lodge describes these feelings with rare candour. Varying Degrees of Success provides the reader with a privileged insight into the working practices and the creative life of a major British novelist.

David Lodge (CBE)'s novels include Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work (shortlisted for the Booker) and, most recently, A Man of Parts. He has also written plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize * The Times * One of the leading writers of his generation * Guardian * As an account of the period, Varying Degrees of Success is continuously engaging... glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most dependable of novelist-critics. * New Statesman * A wonderfully candid and insightful account of a writer's life -- William Boyd * on the previous volume of memoir, WRITER'S LUCK *