A Man of Parts

Dec 22, 2012 Shane rated it 4 of 5 stars

H.G. Wells is described as a comet that arrived out of obscurity in the late 19th century, blazed over the literary firmament for the next few decades and then faded away, perhaps to return sometime in the future.

A brilliant futurist who foresaw events like the World Wars (he saw only one, occurring in the 1950’s), World Government (the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations), the birth of Socialism, and air power that would globalize warfare. Born to humble origins, he became...more H.G. Wells is described as a comet that arrived out of obscurity in the late 19th century, blazed over the literary firmament for the next few decades and then faded away, perhaps to return sometime in the future.

A brilliant futurist who foresaw events like the World Wars (he saw only one, occurring in the 1950’s), World Government (the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations), the birth of Socialism, and air power that would globalize warfare. Born to humble origins, he became a world-famous novelist who never had trouble getting his books published and who lived an affluent life off his writing. His vision of the utopian world bordered on Nazism: run by professional managers, where the People of the Abyss (poor, sick, unemployed, criminals et al) would be eliminated, and where free love would proliferate.

It is his vision of free love that overpowers the book, for we delve into his complex world of love affairs more than into his vast oeuvre. Wells was sexually obsessed and needed a woman to look after him and provide him vigorous sexual exercise all the time, even if they were not one and the same person. It was unfortunate that the two women he married were weak in the sack, yet they provided the perfect cover of a respectable marriage behind which he could engage in his pasades. And there are many lovers: from the wives of his friends to the daughters of his friends, to ardent students struck in awe of his artistic vision. And when these women are in short supply there are also prostitutes. Children born out of wedlock are provided for, as are their unfortunate mothers. This short man with a high pitched voice, given to fumbling over his words, possesses a magical sexual charisma and he does exploit it well in this book.

We get a glimpse into the conflicts at the Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party in England. Wells is a promising star in this organization until his various affairs bring unwarranted attention and his concepts of free love and professional management run afoul of stalwarts in the organization such as George Bernard Shaw. There is also an exchange of letters throughout the novel between Wells and Henry James, a face-off between the practical novelist and the literary one. James admired Wells’ commercial success, something he could never achieve in his lifetime, yet he was critical of Wells wanting to change the world in his novels while James wanted to only describe it. Just as he was pilloried many times with damaging reviews by those closest to him (including lovers), Wells permanently damages his relationship with James by releasing a book, Boon, that caricatures the dying literary writer.

David Lodge uses a clever device to intersperse Wells’ life story with a fictional interview between the ailing author and an interviewer (who is also Wells) taking place in 1944 during the London blitzkrieg, two years before Wells died. In this interview, we discover that Wells has declined as an author, his books, the ones published after World War I, are no longer being read, his visionary powers have dimmed and the insignificance of death is creeping upon him. And his women have died or deserted him. The interviewer holds the mirror to Wells, and the dying author defends himself where he is able to, and eats crow when he has no other option. The Fall of Man, indeed.

Wells was a dreamer indeed, trying to forge the world to conform to his extreme appetites. And yet, Free Love does not account for greed and jealousy which Wells himself was prone to, especially when his former lovers married younger men. But he was a very lucky man indeed, to have wives and lovers - whom he constantly betrayed - faithfully edit and type his manuscripts, to have his novels catch the zeitgeist nearly every time, and to escape reputational damage from his dangerous liaisons.

As much as he is loathsome, he is enigmatic and engaging, and is indeed a passing comet, the likes of which we will not see for a long time, perhaps never.

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Feb 24, 2012 Angie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fairly lengthy book but a rewarding read. David Lodge has cleverly and thoroughly presented his 'interview' with H G Wells amongst a narrative thread of Well's entire life.

At times I felt like I was going through the same cycles of events but this is because Wells was not only a prolific writer but also a lover of women - many women at that. The descriptions of each of his novels as he writes them are usually twined with his latest liaison or love affair. He practised free love during a long se...more Fairly lengthy book but a rewarding read. David Lodge has cleverly and thoroughly presented his 'interview' with H G Wells amongst a narrative thread of Well's entire life.

At times I felt like I was going through the same cycles of events but this is because Wells was not only a prolific writer but also a lover of women - many women at that. The descriptions of each of his novels as he writes them are usually twined with his latest liaison or love affair. He practised free love during a long sexless marriage (with his wife's full knowledge)and his celebrity status at the time no doubt added to his sexual attraction (many of his mistresses were talented and brilliant women of their day including Rebecca West).

I enjoyed learning more about Well's very humble origins, his apprenticeship to a drapers store, his desperate attempts to free himself from a life of service through his aptitude to learning and opportunity to become a student teacher. His vision which is most evident in his fantastical works - most obviously War of the Worlds and Time Machine came about from his love of science and his ability to contemplate advancements in the future. At one point a quote of his regarding how he envisaged a giant encyclopaedia which is constantly updated by all who use it on a 'world-wide' basis was nothing short of staggering.

Wells was involved in politics and a supporter of the emancipation of women. There is also a lot of detail about his associations with other famous writers of his day: George Bernard Shaw, Henry James, Arnold Bennett, E. Nesbitt and Maxim Gorky to name a few. I really enjoyed his letters and reviews of his contemporary's new works, as they also did for his. I came away intending to check out some of his novels I don't know (Ann Margaret is the one mentioned most)and ones which caused scandal at the time for their descriptions of free love and sexual liberation for strong female characters

The book comes full circle to where it started: London after the blitz, Wells in his very old age, his work now out of fashion and his spirits despondent about the futility of war.

Overall I did enjoy this, hence the 4 stars but it was more of a 3.5 for me due to the length and sometimes repetitive subject nature. I'm not sure I would have liked H.G. had I met him but his spirit, intelligence and imagination are unquestionable after reading this very interesting work.

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Feb 08, 2013 Peterhxn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very interesting book, I had never really read a book before that is a kind of biography but written in the style of a novel. Not only did I find it very nice to read, but I also found it really interesting to learn more about the life of a once prominent writer in English literature, in this 'playful' way. I admit I would have never really thought about finding out more about H.G. Wells' life otherwise, but reading David Lodge's book sure made it look like an interesting life, and inspired me t...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Typically obdurate, a dying HG Wells is refusing to leave his Regents Park apartment during the last gasp of the Blitz. It is 1944, and Wells is long past the giddy heights of his literary career and is now a somewhat forlorn, semi-forgotten figure.

Lodge's novel forms part-interview, part-reminiscence of one of the most fascinating literary characters of modern times. HG Wells is of course best-remembered as the Father of Science Fiction, writing such classics as The War of the Worlds, The Time...more Typically obdurate, a dying HG Wells is refusing to leave his Regents Park apartment during the last gasp of the Blitz. It is 1944, and Wells is long past the giddy heights of his literary career and is now a somewhat forlorn, semi-forgotten figure.

Lodge's novel forms part-interview, part-reminiscence of one of the most fascinating literary characters of modern times. HG Wells is of course best-remembered as the Father of Science Fiction, writing such classics as The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man. His combination of apocalyptic, utopian and dystopian views kept him in the public eye and in controversy for much of the period 1895-1914.

Wells had a lively, scientific mind that confounded readers and critics alike. His predictions - of atomic warfare, aerial warfare, travel to the moon, of tanks and flight - were, to a Victorian audience often seen as outlandish and sinister. (As late as 1938, when Orson Welles performed a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, panic ensued across parts of the US as citizens prepared for alien invasion. Great stuff.).

When Wells' works weren't stirring the hornets nest, his Free Love philosophy and actions were. 60 years before the hippies, Wells was deflowering young, aspiring poets and writers left, right and centre.

Yet despite this, 'HG' remained at the centre of Edwardian circles, mixing with the other great authors of the age and the lively political movements pre WW1 such as the Fabians. He was a force of nature, as much admired as he was admonished.

Lodge manages in A Man of Parts to share a very personal vision of Wells, his wife, his lovers and his rivals without overshadowing the very real literary and progressive achievements of the man. There is much ground to cover, but it rarely becomes dull.

Amazingly, Wells also found time to help draft the League of Nations Charter, conduct literary tours to the USA, and seed the concept of a World Brain repository to be accessible to all humans. As with many of his suggestions, predictions and warnings, he was on the money.

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Dec 08, 2012 Jean-marc Depreux rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yes I can say that I really liked "A Man of Parts", it was the first time that I read a book by David Lodge and although it doesn't quite situate itself as a novel, it reads much easier than a real biography. There seems to be a new trend these days for writers to write biographies in a novelistic manner, like Jéromine Pasteur with her new book "Les Femmes Oiseaux", I think this is a good thing as it's an easier way of learning about things or people. But to get back to David Lodge's achievement...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Carl Rollyson rated it 2 of 5 stars

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) is one of those protean modern writers who are destined to last, no matter how critics lament his slapdash prose or deplore his involvement in dubious movements such as eugenics and Fabian socialism. Not even the ire of feminists can ultimately bring down this “womanizing” colossus of concepts and causes and books (he penned more than a hundred of them), not to mention the biographies and critical studies that continue to pullulate around this seminal figure.

Wells was tru...more H. G. Wells (1866–1946) is one of those protean modern writers who are destined to last, no matter how critics lament his slapdash prose or deplore his involvement in dubious movements such as eugenics and Fabian socialism. Not even the ire of feminists can ultimately bring down this “womanizing” colossus of concepts and causes and books (he penned more than a hundred of them), not to mention the biographies and critical studies that continue to pullulate around this seminal figure.

Wells was truly a breathtaking writer. He broke into public consciousness with his early science fiction novels, The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897), virtually creating a new genre. Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr. Polly (1910) retain their status as greatly admired comic novels. Even with its flawed ending, Ann Veronica (1910) is one of the first English novels to explore the consciousness of the “new woman,” and it is still in print. The heavily autobiographical Tono Bungay (1909)—Wells’s bid to be taken seriously not only for his subject matter but also his style—has its place in the history of the English novel and on college syllabi. His Experiment in Autobiography (1934) and the posthumously published H. G. Wells in Love (1984) set a new standard for candor in discussing both public and private life. His Outline of History (1920), little read today, nevertheless had an enormous impact on the reading public and became a staple of household libraries, making world history a popular form of study.

There will always be more to say about H. G. Wells because he was a writer who always had more to say, traveling the world as a journalist interviewing Theodore Roosevelt and Vladimir Lenin, for example, as well as reporting on the establishment of the League of Nations and many other political events. No writer today could possibly command this kind of attention or stand athwart so many different public venues while carrying on the kind of provocative private life Wells enjoyed, one that included affairs with young women who were part of what was called the “Fabian nursery,” as well as with writers as diverse as Dorothy Richardson, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Rebecca West—not to mention the birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger.

It is not surprising that David Lodge—already the author of a novel about Henry James—should want to have a go at Wells, who was in many ways James’s counterweight. To paraphrase Rebecca West’s Henry James (1916), Wells preferred the straightforward declarative sentence to meandering paragraphs swathed in subordinate clauses. Wells wanted the novel to be a shaper of public events, not a pristine art object. As a biographer of Rebecca West, Wells’s most significant lover, I was keen to see what Lodge made of the evidence and commentary amassed by so many critics, scholars, and biographers. What can a novel, a biographical fiction, reveal that these nonfictional narratives and analyses cannot?

Lodge actually hampers the novelist’s advantages over the biographer by deciding to adhere to the documentary record, citing biographies and studies of Wells, West, and other figures in his acknowledgments, as well as confessing where he has made up letters when evidence is unavailable. In other words, rather than boldly using all of the novelist’s resources, he relies slavishly on what Wells and others wrote in order to bootstrap their authentic voices into a novel that often sounds like just another biography. Rather than using the creative power of a novel to challenge received accounts, to provide an alternative history, he does a sort of mash-up of the available sources (using only one technique: the invented interview) to catapult his narrative into territory biographers cannot tread without incurring accusations of excessive speculation.

But these interludes of interviews are ultimately unsatisfactory because we learn nothing about the interviewer, and Wells is allowed to back away in rationalizations of his behavior. The interviewer might as well be just any reporter or biographer about whom we know nothing. Novelists are not supposed to rely on first-person narrators and interviewers about whom we cannot form an opinion. The raison d’être of the novel—at least of a modern novel—is precisely to question the teller of the tale, because achieving a trustworthy point of view has become a problematic enterprise.

And it gets worse for Lodge when he simply relies on the testimony of West, whose ten-year affair with Wells is given full play, and who returns at the end of Wells’s life to provide the coda to his biography. Once again, Lodge is faithful to the documentary record, but his novel never questions West’s veracity. Lodge takes her at her word in a way no biographer can afford to do. To say that she was a liar is not quite the point. Let’s just say she loved to contort the truth, utilizing the wonderful kaleidoscope of her imagination to transform life into a grand drama. Her husband Henry Andrews once cautioned her, “Rebecca, you’re making a scene,” to which she replied, “Me? Making a scene!” To put it baldy, she did not seem to realize when her powerful reportorial gifts were overwhelmed by a need to bend reality to her interpretation of it.

No inkling of this side of West (surely fertile ground for a novelist) intrudes into Lodge’s sedate novel. What went on inside West and Wells remains as inaccessible in this novel as in a biography. Lodge does, occasionally, get a bit intimate, as in this scene when Wells, approaching eighty, tells West he does not want to die: “A tear trickles from one eye down his cheek and loses itself in the roots of the moustache, now grey and rather straggling, with which in his prime he would tickle intimate parts of her anatomy.”

As the biographer of Martha Gellhorn, I confess to deep disappointment that she does not appear in this novel. Wells included her among his inamoratas in a volume of his autobiography intended for posthumous publication. Gellhorn threatened G. P. Wells, H. G.’s son, with legal action if her name should appear in what became H. G. Wells in Love, and so a compliant G. P. bowdlerized his father’s book. Gellhorn, like other ambitious young women writers, got to know the world-famous author, stayed in his London home, and allowed him to guide one of her books through to publication. But she vociferously denied any sexual liaison and treated Wells’s account of their love affair as the fantasy of a doddering old man wanting to boast one more time of his conquests. I never detected anything in Wells’s behavior that would justify her scornful rejection of his account. He did not boast about his passades (as he called them) or make them up. He did not need to. Here then, it seems to me, we have the very case for a novelist to pursue, creating a definitive portrayal in fiction that a biographer can only envy.

To put it another way, what we look to in a novel is the deepest possible exploration of personhood. As wonderful as any biography might be in terms of its narrative scope and the biographer’s access to intimate materials, only the novelist has license to go beyond the facts, the testimony, and the documents to move into the bedroom and the brain, the heart and the soul, of his characters, so that his work stands by itself instead of on a heap of evidence.(less)

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May 07, 2012 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a big fan of David Lodge, I think I have read all of his fiction and some of his books of literary criticism. I do buy all of his new titles in paperback. Since he retired from teaching in HE, he seems to go for a kind of literary biography and I suspect this book came out of his research for "Author, Author".
H.G.Wells makes a more interesting subject than poor old Henry James. As it happens, I have never read any of his books and knew nothing of his life, so the book had lots of surprises...more

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May 02, 2012 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

The sex life of a science-fiction pioneer sounds like it would either be riveting reading, or disturbing reading, or both. Indeed, the "parts" in the title refer not only to HG Wells's various talents and interests, but also to more, ahem, private attributes.

Wells, who died in 1946 at the age of 79, boasted a prodigious literary output across various genres, although he is best known now for visionary science-fiction classics such as The War Of The Worlds and The Time Machine.

He also boasted a p...more The sex life of a science-fiction pioneer sounds like it would either be riveting reading, or disturbing reading, or both. Indeed, the "parts" in the title refer not only to HG Wells's various talents and interests, but also to more, ahem, private attributes.

Wells, who died in 1946 at the age of 79, boasted a prodigious literary output across various genres, although he is best known now for visionary science-fiction classics such as The War Of The Worlds and The Time Machine.

He also boasted a prodigious range of mistresses, from the young daughters of friends to literati such as author and journalist Rebecca West.

But perhaps because they actually existed, the characters of Wells’s women never truly come alive on paper, remaining slightly in the theoretical realm and hewing to certain stereotypes: the tempting nymph, the precocious ingenue, the sexually disinterested wife.

Wells himself is, thankfully, a better fleshed-out creation. When the reader meets him, it is war-time London and an aged Wells is doggedly braving the Blitz, even as his Regent’s Park neighbours have fled town.

He gets “a gloomy satisfaction to observe... the fulfilment of his prophecy as far back as 1908, in his novel The War In The Air, that future wars would be dominated by air power and involve the destruction of cities and civilian populations by indiscriminate bombing”.

As he is watched over by a crew of children legitimate and illegitimate, and lovers past and present, the man reflects on his life and especially his loves.

Amusing at first, the depictions of the various love affairs get tedious after the third or fourth romp. What is more compelling is how the book captures the zeitgeist of early 20th-century England, which faced great social upheaval amid two world wars.

Wells was very politically engaged – he wrote numerous opinion pieces and was a significant influence upon the charters of the League of Nations and the United Nations – and the book is a poignant tribute to how conviction is developed and idealism betrayed.

As one of his sons muses in the aftermath of World War II: “It wouldn’t be surprising if he (Wells) felt he had wasted his energies and gifts as a writer propagandising for a lost cause.”(less)

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Feb 11, 2012 Marya DeVoto rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: tossed-aside

I'm going to continue skimming to the end of this after the first couple of hundred pages because my interest in the gossipy subject matter (H. G. Wells, Rebecca West, the Fabians, E. Nesbit, etc.) is very high, but I have the same reservations about this that I did about Julian Barnes' novel Arthur and George a few years back: it seems unforgivably lax to include so much undigested history in a novel. I want to be able to trust whether a detail or incident is in a novel because the author found...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

man of many parts and many conquests
“A Man of Parts” is a big, nervy book of more than 550 pages devoted to H. G. Wells, a writer not too much remembered in America except for his two Saturday afternoon entertainments “War of the Worlds” and “Time Machine.” Nervy because David Lodge’s decision to devote a big chunk of his own life researching and writing about Wells was risky. Very risky. Would his subject be compelling enough to attract sufficient interest to make the effort worthwhile? The ans...more man of many parts and many conquests
“A Man of Parts” is a big, nervy book of more than 550 pages devoted to H. G. Wells, a writer not too much remembered in America except for his two Saturday afternoon entertainments “War of the Worlds” and “Time Machine.” Nervy because David Lodge’s decision to devote a big chunk of his own life researching and writing about Wells was risky. Very risky. Would his subject be compelling enough to attract sufficient interest to make the effort worthwhile? The answer is, well sort of.

Wells (1866-1946) lived a long, productive life and it comes as pretty much a surprise that as well as being a prolific writer of a hundred-odd books of fiction and nonfiction, the man was a sex machine, a fin de siècle chick magnet.

Lodge describes Wells as not particularly attractive. Late in life Wells humorously described himself in an “auto-obituary” as “bent, shabby, slovenly and latterly somewhat obese figure.” Still, he was as successful in his conquests as a rooster in a henhouse.

Married twice, Wells was a socialist who believed in, was an activist for and practiced free love (ardently and often and with a score or more of women who were married, single, young and not so young, including birth control advocate Margaret Sanger).

Lodge suggests that one of the reasons for Wells’ appeal was his scent. Yes, his scent. His longtime lover the writer Rebecca West, nearly 30 years his junior, said he gave off the aroma of English walnuts, and another of his dalliances, the novelist Elizabeth von Arnim, said he exuded the smell of honey. Whatever the reason for his allure, throughout his life when he approached a potential conquest he was usually eagerly received.

I don’t know how best to describe the book. It’s either a fictionalized biography or a novel that passes itself off as something very true to life. In a front page, Lodge says the truth is “elastic” and nearly everything he writes about Wells is “inferable from” or “consistent with.” The book begins and ends in 1944 at the end of Wells’ life when in his late 70s he’s ill and in a mood to defend his reputation and define a legacy by talking about his life and works. Between those bookends, Lodge tells his subject’s story in flashback.

Wells was not born to privilege. But his origins weren’t like something from Dickens either. His father was a shopkeeper and his mother worked as a servant to the more prosperous. He struggled to get an education, worked as a teacher and apprenticed as a draper. He began writing while young and relatively quickly found a following. Money and prosperity followed soon after.

West summed up Well’s life this way: "HG was like a comet. He appeared suddenly out of obscurity at the end of the 19th century and blazed in the literary firmament for decades, evoking astonishment and awe and alarm, like the comet of ‘In the Days of the Comet’ which threatened to destroy the earth, but in fact transformed it by the beneficial effect of its gaseous tail.”

Wells said of himself “I want to change the world not just describe it.” Whether he succeeded is open to debate. Lodge’s life of Wells is long and although the book is interesting I wanted it to be something more, engaging enough to hold my interest page after page and affair after affair. I’m still not convinced that it measured up.

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Oct 28, 2011 Chuck Erion rated it 4 of 5 stars

David Lodge’s fictional biography of H.G.Wells, and Anne Enright’s latest novel The Forgotten Waltz, both published in May, share a theme: the emotional politics of marital affairs. A Man of Parts (Random House UK, $34.95) is a 560-page life of HG, the self-made novelist, social reformer, and Free Love advocate. David Lodge is a British novelist with some 14 novels to his credit, many of them parodies of the academic life. He also has penned ten works of essays and literary criticism, but A Man...more David Lodge’s fictional biography of H.G.Wells, and Anne Enright’s latest novel The Forgotten Waltz, both published in May, share a theme: the emotional politics of marital affairs. A Man of Parts (Random House UK, $34.95) is a 560-page life of HG, the self-made novelist, social reformer, and Free Love advocate. David Lodge is a British novelist with some 14 novels to his credit, many of them parodies of the academic life. He also has penned ten works of essays and literary criticism, but A Man of Parts may be his biggest opus.
Wells (1866-1944) was similarly prolific, in both fiction and essays. Best-known for his science fictions (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine), he authored a steady output that kept him on the bestseller lists and financed an affluent lifestyle that was a far cry from the poverty of his childhood. His two-volume Experiment in Autobiography was released in 1934, but Wells also recorded a third volume that he insisted not be published until he and all the women listed in the book had died. HG Wells in Love came out in 1968 and it is this sexual odyssey that Lodge is mining in A Man of Parts. In a unique twist, after each narrative chapter, Lodge “interviews” Wells, venting some criticism of his subject’s egotism and the emotional damage his series of affairs caused.
It was Wells’ second wife, Catherine, a name he changed to Jane, who accepted his need for extramarital relationships both short- and long-term. Free Love was advocated by the Fabian Society, a group of social reformers headed by G.B. Shaw and Edward Pease, whose wife was the suffragette Emily Pankhurst , and Hubert Bland whose wife was the children’s writer, Edith Nesbit. (I recently took my grandson to see Nesbit’s The Railway Children in Toronto.) Wells had extended affairs with the Blands’ and with the Pease’s daughters. The friction this sparked with the Fabians eventually led to Wells’ resignation from the group. While the Fabians promoted women’s right to the vote, they were unwilling to give up their Victorian standards regarding the sanctity of marriage. Wells was later attracted to the young journalist, Rebecca West, among several other lovers and railed against those who criticised his polygamous position with two families: his two sons with Jane, and his new son with Rebecca.
Have attitudes regarding monogamy changed much in the century since Wells’ heyday? I think that Anne Enright’s latest novel suggest they have not. The Forgotten Waltz (McClelland & Stewart, $29.99) takes place in 2009 Ireland, just as the Green Tiger economic bubble is losing its affluence-for-everyone helium. It is a woman’s memoir of desire, from the first tryst with Sean in a Dublin hotel, to his divorce and moving into her late mother’s home as they wait to sell it in a market gone soft. As in A Man of Parts, it is children that prove the greatest challenge to the affair. Sean’s daughter, Evie, has epilepsy, with her first seizure corresponding to the start of the extramarital liaison.
Enright’s The Gathering, about several siblings brought together by their mother’s funeral, won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She is a master at weaving telling details into a tale where passion overrides the boredom of the status quo. Social anthropologists argue whether homo sapiens’ inherent nature is monogamous or polygamous. What Enright and Lodge explore is the often-overwhelming challenges and emotional fallout of the affair on both its partners and their “exes” and children. Both make clear that, despite the consequences, affairs of the heart are incurable and remain core to their subjects’ humanity.
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Sep 25, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Lodge, David. A MAN OF PARTS. (2011). ****.
In his latest novel, Lodge again takes a close look at one of the literary icons of England around the turn of the century – H. G. Wells. He uses a variety of stylish techniques to get the story across; most of which work very well. He has also managed to do his research very well, using letters, novels, and articles by and from Wells to make this novel read more like a biography than fiction in many parts. He is honest about where he inserts his inven...more Lodge, David. A MAN OF PARTS. (2011). ****.
In his latest novel, Lodge again takes a close look at one of the literary icons of England around the turn of the century – H. G. Wells. He uses a variety of stylish techniques to get the story across; most of which work very well. He has also managed to do his research very well, using letters, novels, and articles by and from Wells to make this novel read more like a biography than fiction in many parts. He is honest about where he inserts his inventions, and tries to remain true to the facts of Wells’ life. The obvious thrust of this work is a close examination of H. G.’s sex life. If there was a man who had a rampant case of satyrisis, it had to be Wells. Over his lifetime, he was married twice and had mistresses galore, along with over one-hundred affairs with different women. He saw nothing wrong about his sexual behavior, but was a staunch advocate of free love. The women he had in his life were usually much younger than he and well educated – along with coming from respected families. The novel begins after the end of WW II, but covers previous ground in a non-uniform way. Wells was a visionary writer and soda water philosopher who made his mark early in the literary world. His first novel, “The Time Machine,” was an instant success and best seller. It has not been out of print since it was written. In spite of his dependence on sex in all its varieties, Wells found that he got most satisfaction outside of his married lives, where his wives were relatively cold sexually. Most of the women in his life were intelligent and interesting, and he bore two children by two different women – not his wives. It was his last great affair that manages to capture the imagination – that with Rebecca West, a highly respected author who chose her pen name from an Ibsen play. He also had a child with Rebecca whom he continued to support for years. Wells’ circle of friends reads like a Who's Who of literature of the time, and included Arnold Bennett, G. B. Shaw, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and the list goes on and on. He was an active member and director of the Fabian Society, and helped establish its principles. In his lifetime, he wrote over one hundred books, many of them becoming best sellers and still widely read today. He was a visionary who argued early on about the changes he saw coming in the way war would be conducted and how civilization would evolve over time. Of course, he was often way off in some of his predictions, and many of his books tanked early and can’t be found today. Lodge does an excellent job of getting us into Wells’ head – much as he did, though in a different way for Henry James in “Author, Author” – and heart. Recommended.
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Sep 22, 2011 Felice rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My favorite novels by David Lodge combine the comedy and suffering that ambitions, greed and life in general surprise people with in telling and entertaining ways. Books like Nice Work, Small World and Deaf Sentence are quick and entertaining reads that leave you with very memorable characters that experienced situations that cut a little too close to home. In A Man of Parts, like his novel about Henry James, Author, Author, Lodge fictionalizes the life of seminal novelist whose work straddled d...more My favorite novels by David Lodge combine the comedy and suffering that ambitions, greed and life in general surprise people with in telling and entertaining ways. Books like Nice Work, Small World and Deaf Sentence are quick and entertaining reads that leave you with very memorable characters that experienced situations that cut a little too close to home. In A Man of Parts, like his novel about Henry James, Author, Author, Lodge fictionalizes the life of seminal novelist whose work straddled different eras. A Man of Parts the more (much more) successful of these two fictionalized biographies is about H.G. Wells.

Wells was born in 1866 and died in 1946. Could he had lived that long in any other time period and seen as many changes as occurred between 1866 and 1946? I do not think so. Some changes Welles predicted in his fiction: tanks, aerial warfare, the atom bomb, television and even a sort of primitive internet/library of worldwide knowledge banks with door to door airplane service delivering information to the public. In private Welles was way ahead of the curve on one change in particular what was called in more repressed times Free Love.
Wells was born into a struggling family. His ascent was like that of some of his characters, a Horatio Algier story. He was born the son of a housekeeper, as a young man he was a draper’s assistant, then a science teacher and soon after a bestselling novelist.

Given the vast number of things H.G. published in his lifetime, the one hundred novels and thousands of essays and articles, you might think that his Free Love was somewhat curtailed. You would be wrong. Apparently when H.G. wasn’t writing he was indefatigable in collecting wives, mistresses and lovers. Smart women, celebrity hounds, political allies, daughters of friends, Wells seductions and seducers ran the gamut. That might be business as usual today but in the 80 years that he was alive this was a no-no and many times he came close to scandalous ruin.

At the start of A Man of Parts it is 1944 and Lodge has his Wells looking back on his life. Wells is responding to an interviewer only he can hear. His careers as a novelist, an aggressive member of the Fabian Society, his acquaintance with virtually every public figure of his day and especially his tangled relationships with women are the main topics of recollection. The encounters with the good and the great that Lodge details are numerous and interesting as in Wells butting heads with fellow Fabians George Bernard Shaw and E. Nesbit and sometimes funny as in his awkward friendship with Henry James but it is the many and wide ranging love affairs in Wells life that dominate the novel. Knowing next to nothing about Wells I have no idea how much of what Lodge tells is true and how much is cut from whole cloth but instinct can be a good guide.

My favorite passages in A Man of Parts are about Wells writing. It is worth remembering how influential Wells was and is. Lodge conscientiously addresses Wells many, and justly famous books but unfortunately in A Man of Parts H.G.’s creativity with a pen takes a back seat to his more salacious endeavors. This perspective might have been more engaging if the novel contained more historical background or if at this point revealing a Victorian as a sex maniac was surprising. The shopping list of events, conquests and titles that Lodge details are interesting but Lodge does not provide any insight into Wells the man, the writer, to explain why he was such catnip to all of these women or put each of those things in the context of the incredibly changing times in which Wells lived. (less)

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Nov 19, 2011 Dot rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having read some other reviews of this book on Goodreads, I feel I should say at the beginning that I am a huge fan of David Lodge. I have read all his novels and find him a witty and compelling author.

It is certainly true that this book is not a quick read...any life of HG Wells would have to be long to encompass his extraordinary life and work. It is written in the same style as his fictionalized biography of Henry James...indeed, I did wonder if the idea for the book came to the author while...more Having read some other reviews of this book on Goodreads, I feel I should say at the beginning that I am a huge fan of David Lodge. I have read all his novels and find him a witty and compelling author.

It is certainly true that this book is not a quick read...any life of HG Wells would have to be long to encompass his extraordinary life and work. It is written in the same style as his fictionalized biography of Henry James...indeed, I did wonder if the idea for the book came to the author while researching Author, Author.

I don't think this is Lodge's best writing. I was a bit put off by the author's habit of referring to HG always as "he" even when another person has been mentioned in the same sentence or paragraph which is sometimes a bit confusing. However, this is a minor quibble and I did find the book very readable and very interesting....and well worth the time it took to read it. Lodge uses an interesting technique to explore the contradictions in his subject's personality. He imagines Wells when he is near death, reviewing his life as though being interviewed by a journalist for his obituary. I found that this worked very well.

I was also interested in the details of Wells' relationship with the Fabian Society and the development of socialism in England. Wells interacted with a great many writers and thinkers of his time and the accounts of his relationships in this area are very informative.

Wells is a fascinating subject...a brilliant author who nevertheless had many failures, a believer in feminism but had many adulterous affairs usually with younger women, some of whom called him "Master", and a pacifist who longed for a world government to ensure peace yet nevertheless predicted the development of military advances such as the tank, the carpet bombing of cities and the atom bomb. He was an egotistical and opinionated man, whose views on many things changed throughout his life. I think that Lodge portrays these inconsistencies very well.

I have to confess that while I am aware of the most famous of books by HG Wells, I have not actually read any of them. Perhaps I will now be motivated to give them a try.(less)

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Dec 03, 2012 Alon Motro rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have read all of Lodge's fiction books. I generally find his characters and stories interesting, deep, accurate and ultimately rewarding. His insight into the thoughts and emotions of both men and women have resonated with me and his literary style and language is intellectual yet readable.

However, I found A Man of Parts to be rather boring and pedantic.

There is no doubt that I have learned a great deal about H.G. Wells and have learned to appreciate his take on a peaceful, utopian society wh...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this. It made the life of a much-admired author of my youth (I read The Time Machine and War of the Worlds with horrified delight.) come to life. That it's moderately dirty (The sex-life of HG Wells is amazing and disreputable, two things you long for as a 65 year-old man) is a plus. The women that HG Wells had, their ability, their age, and their influence on later society, amaze one even when one considers his massive stature at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The other attra...more

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Aug 27, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, biography

A delightful book. I don't suppose I would have read a conventional biography of HG Wells but David Lodge brings him alive in this book, as a man and of course lover, as well as a writer and political thinker. My guess is that Lodge respects him considerably, and this certainly comes through in the novel which is cleared closely based on his life and more especially his loves. Wells comes across as likeable and also fallible, despite his status as one of the early twentieth century's best known...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Lola425 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book did not read like a novel and that was not necessarily a good thing. I feel like I learned a lot about things I did not know and introduced me to another side of H.G. Wells, but it was not very compelling and I had to pep talk my way through it. I came away feeling that for all Wells' talk about sexual liberation for women that it was all lip service because the second that the "liberation" became troublesome for him or threatened to disturb his comfortable status quo, he encouraged th...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Alisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

I really enjoyed parts of this novel, one that I picked up off the shelf at random from the local library, framed as the novelist H.G. Wells is dying and looking back at his life. Structurally, the book has several sections: the opening and closing frame as HG is dying, mostly from the perspective of his family, an "interview" in his delirium with H.G. often defending himself against (self) criticism, and the bulk of the novel winding its way through H.G.'s life, loves, affairs, and politics. I'...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Alex rated it 2 of 5 stars

There is a huge relief in having finished this. For a week and a half (with two books and a hundred pages of short stories in between) I slogged it out with Lodge, trying to figure out what his intention was, whether he had a central thesis in his meandering account of H.G. Wells' life. Turns out he didn't. This novel is actually a fairly straightforward and dry biography of Wells given some of the trimmings of a novel.

Wells basically writes books of varying success and feasibility, while entert...more

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May 05, 2013 Robert Wechsler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-lit, bio-autobio

I don’t know if I would have enjoyed this book as much had I not (1) been interested in H. G. Wells and (2) been interested in that period of English intellectual history. But I would certainly have enjoyed it. The prose is fine, although never showy, as expected from Lodge. The quality of the prose takes the reader in hand through a long book, so that it never seems a chore.
It’s a pretty straightforward biography with fictionalized dialogue, except for two things. One, throughout there are dia...more

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Oct 16, 2012 False Millennium rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The only reason I starred this as "liked" was because it was well researched and well written. I wish he had called it "A Man Controlled by His Lust," or "A Man and His Penis," or "Man and Superpenis," or....well, you get the drift. What a cad. And what a ragtag of women trailing behind him and his sperm comet. Took advantage? Yes. Sometimes of innoncence, sometimes mutual. One thing I noted that I didn't know. He carried out some of his seductions on a Square I used to live in London. I'm not e...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Tom Clarke rated it 5 of 5 stars

David Lodge is a wonderful writer who balances a pleasant, modern English style with a gentle and frequently ribald sense of humour. So who better than he to write a biographical novel about HG Wells and his women?

Wells was an outspoken defender of the free love principle and had numerous lovers in his time. But this modern attitude to sex led to numerous scandals and his departure from the socialist-leaning Fabian Society to which he had dedicated much work. His later writing often seems obsess...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Robert Drozda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Trochu zmaten. Lodge píše když ne skvěle, tak velice dobře. Wells, jeho životní dráha, postoje, dílo... jako na dlani. V knize je spousta faktů, detailů, vše pečlivě podloženo a přesto působí jako... bulvárek? Nevím. Důraz na osobní život, ani ne tak spisovatele, jako žen jeho života a že jich nebylo málo. Na rozdíl od Wellse si nemyslím, že se snad pokoušel žít podle filosofie a názorů, které zastával, jako spíš že se vrhal po každé, která projevila zájem. Na to jak je společnost té doby líčena...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm actually a big fan of HG Well's books (I know many find them boring) so I continued reading to the end despite not being overly keen on this one. There is far too much about his lovelife (women apparently fell for him left, right and centre. Really?!) and not enough about the man as a well-rounded human being in general and gifted author in particular. The format is also a bit disconcerting with 'pretend' interviews interspersed with more conventional narrative, which I couldn't decide wheth...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Ashley Teagle rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. I started this knowing nothing about H.G. Wells, and I found this book to be entertaining. Despite the fact that H.G. declares early in the book that a utopia is achieved without minorities and people with special needs, I was drawn into the story.

H.G. claims to believe in Free Love and his numerous affairs dominate this book. He wants to believe he can have sex freely as a purely physical release, but the women he has his affairs with are often unable to draw that line. He se...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Callie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is my first David Lodge, had an inkling I would like his books! He explores the life of HG Wells, but the focus is on Wells' relationships with women, his politics, and a little of his writing life. This is the way to do biography! For me, it's so much more interesting to read Wells' life as a novel (I wouldn't even bother to read about his life otherwise). However, something about Lodge's prose puts me to sleep--I could never read more than ten pages a night before I'd inevitably nod off....more

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Nov 05, 2012 Andrew McClarnon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was looking forward to reading this having enjoyed 'Author Author' (and indeed all the other David Lodge books I've read in the past), and having had a teenage fondness for HG Wells's science fiction stories.

The book was like a great big, cosy sofa of a read, a bit overstuffed in parts, but somewhere to settle down and put your feet up. Yes there were a few moments of ennui, after all this was a long life with a certain repetative theme, but the writing was direct, well paced and painted in th...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Beatrice Gormley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, biographical-novels

I love David Lodge and I'll read (almost) anything he writes. However, this isn't one of his typical contemporary novels, usually in a British academic setting. This is what you might call a biographical novel about H.G. Wells. It's full of fascinating literary gossip (Wells was at the center of the turn-of-the-19th century London literary scene, including big names like E. Nesbit, George Bernard Shaw, Rebecca West, Henry James.) It's often funny--one of the funniest parts, I thought, was Wells'...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Kay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Excellent novel based on the life and works of H G Wells. His advocacy of "free love", ie unlimited adultery on his part, is extremely annoying because you can see how the relationships adversely affected many of the young, bright women he had affairs with. Nonetheless he clearly had a social conscience and wanted to work for greater fairness in society and towards world peace. The fact that the literary and political worlds moved on, largely leaving him behind after the First World War, meant t...more

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