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Author, Author

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 418 ratings · 51 reviews

Henry James takes center stage in David Lodge�s brilliant novel of literary ambition, creativity, and rivalry as revealed in James�s public career and private life. Pivoting on the dramatic first night of his play, Guy Domville, and thronged with vividly drawn characters, Author, Author presents a fascinating panorama of literary and theatrical life in late Victorian Engla...more

Paperback, 400 pages

Published November 29th 2005 by Penguin Books (first published 2004)

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Nov 20, 2012 Stela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies, reviews

I always found the biographies (romanticized or not), memoirs, diaries quite fascinating. To see authors become characters but also to see an era revived with its artists that (often) struggle and (sometimes) succeed it's a tribute to our (righteous?) curiosity. But it's also an invasion of their so human weaknesses not always justified by the controversial theory that the person behind the oeuvre can make the oeuvre better understood.
However, Author, author was more to me than a biography. Even...more

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Feb 14, 2008 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers of Henry James and historical fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I love David Lodge. Small World, Changing Places--works of genius. Anyone who has ever darkened the doors of academia should read them.

So, while traveling abroad, I was looking for airplane reading and saw Author, Author. It's a newer David Lodge, and had the appeal of being a novel about Henry James, a literary titan whose work is entirely unknown to me.

But this is a very different Lodge than the one I had known. Gone are the cynical reflections on modern life and its romantic, cultural, intel...more I love David Lodge. Small World, Changing Places--works of genius. Anyone who has ever darkened the doors of academia should read them.

So, while traveling abroad, I was looking for airplane reading and saw Author, Author. It's a newer David Lodge, and had the appeal of being a novel about Henry James, a literary titan whose work is entirely unknown to me.

But this is a very different Lodge than the one I had known. Gone are the cynical reflections on modern life and its romantic, cultural, intellectual, and sexual absurdities. Gone, in large degree, is the wordplay that made his prose such a joy.

In their place there are alternative rewards, to be sure. One really gets to know, or has the illusion of knowing, the character of Henry James. In writing about a man who was almost singularly without romantic attachment or sexual passion, Lodge faced a challenge, and he more than met it. We root endlessly for James to succeed as a playwright and as a novelist, and we writhe with anguish as he fails and fails again. The book is also an extraordinary work of historical fiction--it places itself in late Victorian Britain with assuredness that never wavers for an instant. You leave the book feeling that you took a course in Henry James and the life of letters in that milieu. As a side benefit, you get brief portraits of William James, Maupassant, Kipling, H.G. Wells, GB Shaw, and other literary figures who pop in and out of the narrative.

What is truly lacking is a compelling throughline to the narrative. Lodge's other books are plotted with such care that they build to a comic climax with ease, where you care about the resolution even as you marvel at its complexity. Here, that is lacking. And the greatest flaw is the inartful ending, in which you get James' meditation on immortality word for word, with the author injecting his modern sensibility in his own voice in an epilogue on sources.

This is a book by an English professor, and while many of Lodge's other books showed a knowledge of the profession that was keen and biting, this one is similar to taking a class in Henry James with David Lodge. That's great, for what it is, and I benefited. But it was not as enjoyable as the typical Lodge...(less)

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Dec 26, 2011 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite my admiration for David Lodge, there were points in this longish book where I wondered if should have dedicated 400 pages of reading time to an unread Henry James novel, rather than a somewhat fictionalized biography. On the plus side, I knew nothing about James' unsuccessful theatrical ambitions, and I also did a bit of ancillary reading on his close friends the Du Maurier family, and at some point, I am likely to follow up on Constance Fenimore Woolson, perhaps via Emma Tennant's Felon...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Sam Dupont rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Il existe de nombreuses raisons d’écrire ou de lire une biographie. La plus courante étant la fascination de la personne que l’on y fait vivre (même si cette personne est soi-même dans le cas de l’écriture d’une autobiographie). Tout dépend de ce que l’on espère y trouver, des anecdotes sur un personnage aimé ou détesté, des informations sur son auteur ou encore un petit reflet de soi.

Il est cependant plus rare de lire la biographie d’un individu dont on ignore tout.

C’est pourtant ce que j’ai fa...more

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Jun 24, 2010 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Lodge, David. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. (2004). ****. Although I’ve only read a few of his books – all of which have been excellent – I am struck by the versatility of Lodge’s ability to write novels consisting of vastly different voices and styles. Although most of the ones I’ve read use humor as the carrying theme relating his principal characters, this novel relies on pure research and dialog, mostly based on factual occurences. It is the story of the friendship between Henry James and George du Maurie...more Lodge, David. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. (2004). ****. Although I’ve only read a few of his books – all of which have been excellent – I am struck by the versatility of Lodge’s ability to write novels consisting of vastly different voices and styles. Although most of the ones I’ve read use humor as the carrying theme relating his principal characters, this novel relies on pure research and dialog, mostly based on factual occurences. It is the story of the friendship between Henry James and George du Maurier. The novel consists of four sections, the first and last relating the last days of James at Lamb House in Rye. In between, the story is about James' worries about his declining sales and his efforts to earn money by writing plays. He really believed that this was his path to monetary salvation. His plays were all ultimately produced, but they were relics of an age of literary appreciation that had disappeared thirty years earlier. He was competing with the likes of playwrights like Oscar Wilde, whose efforts were whole-heartedly approved of by the English playgoer. James disapproved of the style of the English stage at his time, and tried to bring it back to his sense of literacy to which it should be anchored. His plays were all consistently a failure. His friend, George du Maurier, was an illustrator for Punch, a popular magazine at the time. As a whim, he began writing novels, the first of which was “Peter Ibbetson.” Although not a great success, it managed to outsell James’ efforts during the same period. Later, du Maurier published “Trilby,” which became an immediate best-seller (a term which James could never understand), both in its serialized version and in its book and play form. It ultimately made du Maurier a wealthy man, and James could never wrap his mind around why it was so successful. What is chronicled here is the portrait of a writer who has lived past his time but who continued to write in the same style and on the same topics that had previously made his reputation. There’s lots of interesting background on the writers of the time and their interrelationships. A fascinating book. Recommended.(less)

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Apr 14, 2010 Gerry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A superb factional account of Henry James' life in England. Brilliantly constructed to begin towards the end of his life, reflecting in the middle his years attempting to become a playwright, and returning at the conclusion to the end of his life and subsequent death.

The book brings to life many of the great literary and artistic people of the day who James mixed with. There is George du Maurier, George Bernard Shaw, a young Arnold Bennett and a young Herbert, H G, Wells and even a glimpse of Os...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Andreea rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-council-library, biography, read-in-english

I'm so gutted. Henry James is one of the writers closest to my heart so I was very excited about this book. He's not necessarily a writer I've read extensively - because I haven't, of his 23 novels and almost 150 short stories and novellas, I've read maybe half a douzen books- but for many other reasons. He wrote beautiful, sometimes melancholic, other times insanely clever books, he both experienced and wrote at length about living abroad and being an immigrant in England (which, being put in a...more I'm so gutted. Henry James is one of the writers closest to my heart so I was very excited about this book. He's not necessarily a writer I've read extensively - because I haven't, of his 23 novels and almost 150 short stories and novellas, I've read maybe half a douzen books- but for many other reasons. He wrote beautiful, sometimes melancholic, other times insanely clever books, he both experienced and wrote at length about living abroad and being an immigrant in England (which, being put in a similar situation, I appreciate), he was loved by some writers who are also extremely close to my heart (such as James Baldwin) and he was a very lonely man (although he was friends with 'anybody who was anybody'). He claimed to be 'a committed bachelor' all his life - he didn't have any publicly recognized committed relationships or children and it was (and still is by some) believed he was a virgin. Whether that's true or not, I can't help feeling a wave of tenderness towards somebody who either was that lonely or was forced to hide a huge part of his life because acting otherwise would endanger his life. After all, these were the years of the Oscar Wilde trials and HJ watch both the trials and Wilde's decline unfold. I don't think we can say, without any shadow of a doubt, that Henry James was gay (any more, for that matter, than we can say that he was not), but for somebody living in those times, it's certainly a possibility (which becomes more plausible when you read the more than vaguely erotic letters HJ wrote to young men).

David Lodge decides to write the bibliography of a straight (not completely asexual, he's shown being in love with the author Constance Fenimore Woolson) Henry James. And that's fine, as I've said before, since there's no definitive proof of either theories, neither is more true than the other. What is, however, unfortunate is the distinct lack of sympathy David Lodge shows towards a potential Henry James who was not as straight as both Lodge and the Victorian public would have liked him to be. This possibility is constantly ridiculed while poor HJ is constantly portrayed as a committed homophobe who is morally appalled by homosexuality - that alone is enough to make me want to punch a wall, but the bomb comes in the last 10 or so pages of the book. The narrative voice suddenly changes and Lodge muses as he describes HJ's last moments:

It's tempting therefore to indulge in a fantasy of somehow time-travelling back to that afternoon of late February 1916, creeping into the master bedroom of Flat 21, Carlyle Mansions, casting a spell on the little group of weary watchers at the bedside, pulling up a chair oneself, and saying a few reassuring words to HJ, before he departs this world, about his literary future. How pleasing to tell him that after a few decades of relative obscurity he would become an established classic, [...] that all his major works and most of his minor ones would be constantly in print, scrupulously edited, annotated, and studied in schools, colleges and universities around the world, the subject of innumerable postgraduate theses and scholarly articles and books (and of course biographies - but it wouldn't be tactful to mention them, or the fact that he would be adopted by a branch of academic criticism known as Queer Theory, whose exponents claim, for instance, to find metaphors of anal fisting in the Prefaces to the New York Edition).

Yes, that's exactly all Queer Theory does, look for metaphors for anal fisting. AKDJGHGDF How can somebody who wrote a textbook on modern literary criticism and theory say such obviously stupid things about a very well established and respected branch of literary criticism? At this point I felt physically repulsed and betrayed by a book alongside which I had travelled for almost 400 pages into the life of a very good man. Why did you have to do this to me? Why the spitefulness? Why is suggesting that HJ might have had feelings for a young man tactless, but suggesting that he had them for a young woman (which David Lodge does at length) is perfectly tactful? I wish I could convince myself that this bitter homophobia is nothing more than bitterness because a few months before his novel was published another fictional account of HJ's life was published by (the openly gay and brilliant) Colm Tóibín - who imaged HJ as gay. Tóibín was better received (it was shortlisted for the Booker) and sold better and Lodge complained almost everywhere and to everyone about how unlucky it was that the two novels were published one after the other. (less)

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Mar 01, 2013 Marcus Speh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

I find it hard to say anything about this book. Not because I didn't enjoy it — I did, though I found it hard to get on with it at times — but because writing a review about a fictional biography of a writer who insisted (apparently) to be known, loved and critically appreciated only through his (published and edited) work and not through his life, feels like lending one's voice to a double betrayal. Were it not for the fact that David Lodge managed to stay away from making up too much of the in...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Marja rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If there’s anything to praise David Lodge’s ’Author, Author’ for, it is its author’s craft. ’Author, Author’ is a well-constructed novel exhibiting good pacing and diction. Portraying the years Lodge has deemed critical for Henry James’s development as a master of the realist novel (his failure as a playwright in the early 1890s), ’Author, Author’ is also a courageous effort – a novel about a novelist – that has been obviously well-researched. In its own way, too, it is an inspiring novel for yo...more If there’s anything to praise David Lodge’s ’Author, Author’ for, it is its author’s craft. ’Author, Author’ is a well-constructed novel exhibiting good pacing and diction. Portraying the years Lodge has deemed critical for Henry James’s development as a master of the realist novel (his failure as a playwright in the early 1890s), ’Author, Author’ is also a courageous effort – a novel about a novelist – that has been obviously well-researched. In its own way, too, it is an inspiring novel for young novelists, due to its focus on the profession of the author and the connection between real-life events and their fictional accounts. Indeed, at its most enjoyable, ’Author, Author’ is a paean to the art of fiction and a defense of the value of good literature. In these senses, then, it is a very passable piece, and one that I would not disrecommend.

Yet, for all its craft, Lodge’s ’Author, Author’ is a tacky and prolix reading experience. For the first 70-100 pages, the novel reads much like a lecture, despite some of the lecturing taking the ostensible form of dialogue. For example, the first time ’HJ’ visits George Du Maurier, Lodge describes GDM as ’relat[ing] to Henry the principal events of his life’, after which the reader is treated to a long dialogue-form GDM-biography. After about a hundred pages, Lodge settles more comfortably into fictional form, but the strand of obviousness never goes away. Often, text-book examples of good literary techniques – from allegories to ’hanging a lantern’ to show-don’t-tell – are ruined by Lodge pointing out that what he just wrote could be interpreted metaphorically, too. But, in his defense, Lodge mostly does let his jokes, at least, stand on their own feet.

Usually, reading a novel that is boring for its lack of subtlety, I look forward to the end as a dramatic culmination with the potential to redeem all the flaws inherent to the text. With Lodge’s ’Author, Author’, however, no redemption was to be found. Not only is the denouement of the novel overly long and rife in detail (after 300 pages set in the 1890s, who really cares what happens to the servants in 1916?), but ’Author, Author’ also boasts what I can only describe as the worst final paragraphs of any novel I have ever read, including a reference to a ’celestial video player or DVD laptop’. But, content-wise, the last few pages of ’Author, Author’ seem to explain something, too. Writing, nearing the age of 70, about the lives of an ambitious, canonised writer and his popular contemporaries, David Lodge was obviously contemplating his own death. Tackling topics too close to home, we can all expect to fail to be eloquent. But there’s nothing wrong in trying.(less)

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Jul 16, 2009 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read

This was more boringly written than how I remembered it, which is a shame. It doesn't exactly sparkle and crackle with the kind of life that you find in works like the movie "Amadeus," which has a similar storyline. You can definitely tell that Lodge researched the shizz out of this... unfortunately, this was also the book's downfall for me. At times it just reads like a list of what Henry James wrote in his journal and who he went out to dinner with and It's so rigidly true to life that the nov...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Timing is everything, and Lodge seems to have written the wrong book at the wrong time. Author, Author, his novel about a novelist, is the third title this year__following Colm T_

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Nov 03, 2009 Gail rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, library-book

"Author, Author" is a fascinating, if fictionalized, look at the great Henry James, presented here as a very human author who is concerned not only with his art, but with such mundane things as money, his reputation, and the true feelings of his friends. The story(ies) here is James's failed attempts to write for the stage, and his friendship with George DuMarrier, which is somewhat shadowed by Henry's jealousy of his friend's unprecedented success. Complex and finely drawn, Lodge's book reminds...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: keeper, bought-new

Part-biography, part-fiction, with some literary theory thrown in for good measure. I definitely picked this for David Lodge, rather than Henry James who, up to now, I'd never read. But, having just started 'The Portrait of a Lady', it's easy to see the inspiration for this novel's verbose and slightly stilted manner. And Lodge and James share a flair for dialogue.

It is not a flattering portrayal but it is an overwhelmingly human one. James' feelings and experiences - battering of professional c...more

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Jun 29, 2012 DR rated it 2 of 5 stars

David Lodge is one of my very favorite "dryly observant Brits," and I've been reading him for a long time. Think: Saul Bellows with a great sense of humor.

Lodge is best at the "town versus gown" thing, and I still can't read a NY Time opinion piece by Stanley Fish without recalling what a hammering Lodge gave him by fictionalizing his worst qualities in "Changing Places." THIS novel, however, acquired too many of the faults of its inspiration, Henry James. It was tedious, not trenchant; convolu...more

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Oct 24, 2012 George rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel which reads as a biography of Henry James for the last couple of months of his life and the period of 5 years when he attempted to become a successful playwright. Other periods of his life are briefly alluded to. I gained an appreciation of the difficulty of being a playwright, an understanding of the very sociable Henry James, his close friends and how he went about writing his short stories and novels. This novel isn't the usual witty Lodge book. It is a drier read and very detailed...more

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May 27, 2009 eb rated it 3 of 5 stars

Poor David Lodge. What are the odds he'd find himself pitted against Colm Toibin in the battle of lightly fictionalized accounts of Henry James's life? Lodge falls woefully short; Toibin is more insightful, more sympathetic, and far more skilled, which makes him the closer kindred spirit to James. I like Lodge's work a lot, but found myself almost bristling as I read Author, Author, and wanting to know what on earth gave Lodge the idea he could understand a master like James, much less get in hi...more

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Dec 26, 2011 Ellen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, fiction

What a book! As I read through it I found I could hardly put it down. I'd read for hours and lose sleep, saying to myself, "Oh, just a couple of more pages...".

The first and last chapters of the book are about the death of the writer, Henry James; those in between follow James' attempts to become a successful playwright in the English theater. I hate to spoil the book for you so I'm not going to comment as to his success or failure, but I encourage you to pick this book up as soon as possible an...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Jgknobler rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a piece of historical fiction about Henry James during the years he was hoping to be a playwright. It is boring and lacks entirely the wit and humor I expect in a novel by David Lodge. I did learn from this book the derivation of the name "Svengali," and it is interesting to note who is famous during their own time, and who gains with history. Although why Henry James, with his interminable sentences, is so revered I will never understand.

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Jan 17, 2009 Richard Kiefer rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a good read for people who at least know, better yet like, Henry James. It is slow in pace, pays great attention to detail and puts you into the situation of an ambitious writer who can never quite live up to his own standards.
It is also worth reading for people who write and can never be sure that what they write is any good at all. (I fall into this category myself.)

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Jan 15, 2013 Sara Pernas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Una "biografía" diferente de Henry James, centrada en su faceta de autor teatral. Pero lo más destacable me ha parecido el fantástico retrato de una época literaria, donde se entrecruzan H.G.Wells, Ford Madox Ford, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Barrie... y el gran best seller de George du Maurier "Trilby", hoy casi olvidado. Y finalmente, lo injusta que puede ser la popularidad literaria con sus contemporáneos. Todo eso contado por uno de los más competentes estudiosos y enseñantes de la lit...more

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Nov 22, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Was concerned for the first 50 pages or so that I wasn't going to enjoy this but David Lodge, as ever, came good. It became an absorbing account of Henry James' dealings with the world of the theatre and it's interesting to see how little change has actually taken place in many respects. Also made me think I really ought to go back and revisit him as a novelist. Having been put off by studying "Portrait Of A Lady" at the tender age of 17 he's someone I've tended to avoid. This novel, however, le...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Marie Bouteille rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a beautiful tribute to Henry James ! As a big fan of HJ, I absolutely loved it. It is also interesting to see the different ways and purposes of authors, how they come up with ideas, how they choose (or not) whether they'll write novels, short-stories or plays, etc... How even Henry James who is such a monument in literature struggled to make a decent living. It's a fascinating journey in the world of writing.

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Sep 14, 2012 Pinpilin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: tried-but

This book shows Lodge' versatility. A novel set in Victorian London portraying Henry James fears. The novel is over 600 pages long. HJ anxieties are always caused by desperation, deep apprehensiveness of failing to succeed. HJ managed to be remembered among the greatest but failed a calmed life. I am also imperfect. I did not finish reading, impatience won.

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Aug 24, 2012 Rita marked it as to-read

MAYBE I would like parts of this book... Probably not to read the whole thing [400 pp]
"Lodge's first venture into fictionalized biography", taking Henry James as his subject.
"...not about James's success as a writer, but an affectionate and witty look at the man."

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Jan 26, 2011 Sunne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

It's an interesting, mostly well written book that thought me a lot about the time between the Civil War and WW1, as well as Henry James.
I thought the book was a little slow towards the end, and that is the reason why I give it only 3 stars, as I enjoyed the first half way more.

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Nov 15, 2010 Heather Marie rated it 4 of 5 stars

HILARIOUS, esp. if you are an English major who's spent way way way too much time in an English Dept. I am haunted by the image of Hamlet, the bulldog, as he decides where and when to do his business... deciding... deciding...

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Jul 29, 2012 Susana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11301617

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May 11, 2011 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: britain, 21st-century, fiction

I like David Lodge, and this rating is probably not fair. But I had just read The Masterby Colm Toibin, and this so feeble by comparison, I couldn't make myself continue reading it.
I might try it again one day...

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Feb 03, 2010 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

How can you not admire HJ's dedication to his craft? Thank goodness he is not here to witness our era of blogs, tweets and memoirs.

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Feb 17, 2012 Tim rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-british-fiction, reviewed

Reviewed for the Chronicle and PW -- as much as I like Lodge (and I love Lodge), this is not one of his best.

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About David Lodge

Professor David Lodge is a graduate and Honorary Fellow of University College London. He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987, when he retired to write full-time.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was Chairman of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989, and is the author of numerous works of li...more

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