SGiannangeli - Notest about "Nice Work" by David Lodge, postmodernism 

NOTES ABOUT “NICE WORK” BY D. LODGE

I am going to analyse this text because it provides a postmodern interpretation of the study of the novel. At the same time, it gives the reader an intelligent summary of the development of the novel, the novel as a narrative form of fiction. Nice Work is a parody of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, where utilitarianism idea is translated into fiction.

Before starting to read the extract, the reader can notice that it belongs to the novel “Nice Work” by David Lodge and that it was written in 1988 and it belongs to a postmodern novel. It has been classified as a campus novel, (a novel about university and his campus). The novel is about the shadow scheme project between Robyn Penrose, a temporary lecturer in English literature at the University of Rummidge, and the other character: Vic (abbreviation of Victory) Wilcox, who is the director of a farm. The extract belongs to the second chapter and has the purpose to introduce the female character; we will now see how her characterization is developed. There is a third person omniscient narrator who tells the reader that he is going to meet a new character: the very first piece of information is that the character he is going to introduce is very different by Vic. Thus, Robyn is introduced as the opposite of Vic. The second element is that she doesn’t believe in the concept of character, and the third element is that she very often says “that is to say”, therefore she’s going to explain something. The additional element is her name and surname, then comes her profession: she’s a temporary lecturer (so her role in unstable) of literature. She hasn’t got a female name, but this name also reminds us Robin Hood, a man who fought the rich to help the poor, for this reason she may be an idealist. Instead the surname, Penrose, is more female than her name, so their juxtaposition seems contradictory or it may alert the reader that she has been able to integrate male and female features. The word “temporary” underlines she hasn’t got a stable work: there’s nothing definite in her life, because everything is relative. There is no reference about her physical appearance. Robyn states that “character is a bourgeois myth” and that it is exploited in order to reinforce capitalism: the reader comes across her way of thinking. She says the rise of the novel in the 18^th century coincided with the rise of capitalism; thus, characters and capitalism are strictly linked to. Moreover, the triumph of capitalism coincided with the best development of novel. Finally, the deconstruction of the classical novel in the modernism and postmodernism happened during 20^th and 21^st centuries, when capitalism met his worst crisis. Indeed, both the novel and the Capitalism are expression of the Protestant Ethic, because the novel deals with family and class, that are important elements of the western society. Capitalism and novel are originated by individualism: the idea of someone who is able to rule his life in competition with others seeking fortune and happiness, capitalists in farms and novelists with a narrator. Indeed, heroes and heroines have always to win a fight, so “the novelist is a capitalist of imagination”: the imagination is exploited to create a novel that can be sold, moreover, the novelist creates a need who doesn’t exist before the novel is created. Moreover, there are publishers who think about selling the novel. So, the novel has been the first cultural mass-produced artefact. The body language proves how the protagonist is confident about what she’s saying. This is the way the narrator presents us Robyn, the most important element is the development of novel, which coincides with capitalism evolution: to support her thesis, she gives some examples: Defoe, Richardosn.

Robyn has a vision which depends on what she has read, so it is a postmodern idea.

1. “There is not a such thing as the self”: she doesn’t believe in the concept of identity, which was on the basis of traditional novel and capitalism. Thus, there isn’t a “unique soul” in the novel or in  capitalism, “esiste solo una posizione soggetta in un’infinita rete di discorsi, discorsi di sesso, potere, famiglia, scienza, religione” there only is a web of discourses which originates a society and efines the individual, so that a human being can’t be made only by himself because the web of doscourses, ideas and concepts (that are previous and determined) influence him.

2. For this reason, she rejectes the idea of author, because no one originates nothing. Thus, every text is a product of many texts who creates a web of signs: “every text is a product of intertextuality”.

She quotes Derrida, who was an intellectual od 19th century who says there is nothing outside the text. She claims: “Not you are what you read” but “you are what you speak” or rather “you are what speaks you”: the others understands something we don’t know when we speak, because we are a product of our unconsciousness, which is the reason why we are unsecure.