The British Museum is Falling Down
by David Lodge
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The British Museum is Falling Down is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. First published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted - not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.Tags
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A short, comic novel, from 1965 and tied to its era, although not as securely as I'd wish. Adam Appleby is a graduate student in literature, commuting to the British Museum's reading room every day to work on his thesis. The thesis is going too slowly, his scholarship term is running out, and he, his wife, and their young children are squeezed into a too-small flat. As Catholics, Adam and Barbara are hoping fervently that the ongoing Vatican II council will allow the faithful to use more reliable means of birth control than the rhythm method they now follow. Meanwhile, though Adam is only 25 years old, they have three little ones - and Barbara's period is late.
The book follows Adam through a single day, as he tries to make scholarly show more progress while wondering how they'll feed a fourth child. The day proves to be an unusual one, with comic mishaps variously foreshadowing brighter or dimmer futures for Adam and his family. Lodge includes in each chapter a pastiche of one of the twentieth-century authors Adam is studying, including Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce, to name just the ones I was able to identify - e.g., to renew his admission card to the reading room, Adam gets a turn with the Museum's Kafkaesque bureaucracy. He must cope with eccentric colleagues and a mysterious American, and struggle to keep his aged motor scooter on the road. I laughed a few times, and smiled often.
My edition has an introduction written by Lodge in 1980, outlining his circumstances and thinking at the time - his life was not nearly as exigent in 1965 as Adam's, as he began his own career as a literary academic and author of comedies of academic life. He muses that Adam and Barbara eventually would have opted for the pill, regardless of Humanae Vitae.
It would be lovely to think of this novel only as a funny record of a vanished past. But I write the month after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and the right wing in the US is now calling for restricting the availability of contraception. An entire genre of story, once relegated to history, becomes currently relevant again. We will see many more young couples face Adam and Barbara's troubles - and worse. For me, that made the novel less enjoyable, seeming to look back not to 1965, but the introduction's 1980, a time that now seems more innocent. show less
The book follows Adam through a single day, as he tries to make scholarly show more progress while wondering how they'll feed a fourth child. The day proves to be an unusual one, with comic mishaps variously foreshadowing brighter or dimmer futures for Adam and his family. Lodge includes in each chapter a pastiche of one of the twentieth-century authors Adam is studying, including Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce, to name just the ones I was able to identify - e.g., to renew his admission card to the reading room, Adam gets a turn with the Museum's Kafkaesque bureaucracy. He must cope with eccentric colleagues and a mysterious American, and struggle to keep his aged motor scooter on the road. I laughed a few times, and smiled often.
My edition has an introduction written by Lodge in 1980, outlining his circumstances and thinking at the time - his life was not nearly as exigent in 1965 as Adam's, as he began his own career as a literary academic and author of comedies of academic life. He muses that Adam and Barbara eventually would have opted for the pill, regardless of Humanae Vitae.
It would be lovely to think of this novel only as a funny record of a vanished past. But I write the month after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and the right wing in the US is now calling for restricting the availability of contraception. An entire genre of story, once relegated to history, becomes currently relevant again. We will see many more young couples face Adam and Barbara's troubles - and worse. For me, that made the novel less enjoyable, seeming to look back not to 1965, but the introduction's 1980, a time that now seems more innocent. show less
A hilarious and self-conscious examination of Catholic views towards sex, marriage, and birth control, and a great parody on academia. The scene with the woman sobbing to save her doctoral dissertation is so spot-on, I howled with laughter. I've been there.
Set in one day, 26 year-old literary graduate student, Adam Appleby, father of three, with a possible 4th on the way, is trying to finish his thesis, studying at the British Museum Reading Room. The theme is the practising Catholic wrestling with the realities of life, sex in marriage and the Safe Method in place of modern contraception (i.e. the Pill which is only just coming in).
It's comical, and a quick holiday read. At a more interesting level, for those who can identify the references, it alludes to and pastiches a number of 20th century writers including Woolf, Hemingway and Greene. Adam's thesis has been honed down by his supervisor to what seems an odd subject: the long sentence in English literature. By the end of the novel, show more where he employs Joyce's unpunctuated stream of consciousness from Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses, even the uninitiated can enjoy the irony where Adam is missing the very thing he needs for his thesis, as he misses almost everything else he needs in this one day. show less
It's comical, and a quick holiday read. At a more interesting level, for those who can identify the references, it alludes to and pastiches a number of 20th century writers including Woolf, Hemingway and Greene. Adam's thesis has been honed down by his supervisor to what seems an odd subject: the long sentence in English literature. By the end of the novel, show more where he employs Joyce's unpunctuated stream of consciousness from Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses, even the uninitiated can enjoy the irony where Adam is missing the very thing he needs for his thesis, as he misses almost everything else he needs in this one day. show less
They had embarked on marriage with vague notions about the Safe Period and a hopeful trust in Providence that Adam now found difficult to credit. Clare had been born nine months after the wedding. Barbara had then consulted a Catholic doctor who gave her a simple mathematical formula for calculating the Safe Period - so simple that Dominic was born one year after Clare. Shortly afterwards Adam had been released from the army, and returned to London to do research. Someone gave Barbara a booklet explaining how she could determine the time of her ovulation by recording her temperature each morning, and they followed this procedure until Barbara became pregnant again.
A comic novel set at the time of the second Vatican Council, when show more Britain's Catholics were desperately hoping that the Church would change its stance against Birth Control. Adam Appleby, a post-graduate English student, spends his days researching his thesis in the British Museum Reading Room and worrying about the possibility that his wife is pregnant again. One of the most amusing parts was Adam day-dreaming about being elected Pope himself and changing the rules to the annoyance of the Cardinals.
Maybe it is funnier if you have been brought up as a Catholic. It stuck a chord with me since I certainly would never have been born if my parents had been using a reliable method of contraception - my birth not quite 14 months after their marriage was a financial disaster for them, and my sister came along a few days under a year later. We definitely weren't planned babies!
According to the Author's Afterword very few of the original reviewers noticed the passages parodying ten famous authors, which makes me feel better about not realising either! show less
A comic novel set at the time of the second Vatican Council, when show more Britain's Catholics were desperately hoping that the Church would change its stance against Birth Control. Adam Appleby, a post-graduate English student, spends his days researching his thesis in the British Museum Reading Room and worrying about the possibility that his wife is pregnant again. One of the most amusing parts was Adam day-dreaming about being elected Pope himself and changing the rules to the annoyance of the Cardinals.
Maybe it is funnier if you have been brought up as a Catholic. It stuck a chord with me since I certainly would never have been born if my parents had been using a reliable method of contraception - my birth not quite 14 months after their marriage was a financial disaster for them, and my sister came along a few days under a year later. We definitely weren't planned babies!
According to the Author's Afterword very few of the original reviewers noticed the passages parodying ten famous authors, which makes me feel better about not realising either! show less
The British Museum is Falling Down: a quick read, delightful, though a bit dated, that humorously considers one day in the emotional rollercoaster life of an aspiring academician as he contemplates the possibility that his wife is yet again pregnant. Adam and Barbara Appleby, devout Catholics, can ill-afford another child and are flummoxed and frustrated by the Rhythm Method in the days before the pill and reform. Through all the humor that devolves to slapstick comedy, the essential consideration of the story is the regulation of sex within a marriage and the sometimes unintended consequences of such imposed restraint.
Short but entertaining and well written novella by Lodge. One of his earliest works, it is structured as a literary pastiche of different authors- each chapter (following the somewhat disastrous efforts of the main character to finish researching his thesis, and secure employment at the university, to support his ever growing family, and the concerns at whether the catholic approved birth control methods have led to another accident) written in the style of a different author.
Que fera Adam Appleby s'il perd encore à ce jeu qu'est la ' Roulette du Vatican ', seule forme de contraception autorisée par l'Eglise ? Ce jeune thésard catholique est hanté par la peur d'être père pour la quatrième fois, et Barbara, son épouse, observe fébrilement la courbe des températures. Dans son troisième roman, La Chute du British Museum, David Lodge s'amuse à nous raconter les pérégrinations d'Adam Appleby dans le brouillard de Londres, et fait du dilemme religieux et sexuel du héros la structure obsédante de ce livre. Cocasseries, parodies et pastiches font des tribulations d'Adam un roman des plus comiques. En un jour, le héros est propulsé dans une série d'aventures picaresques tournant autour du British show more Museum et sa vie en est incroyablement transformée. show less
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- Canonical title
- The British Museum is Falling Down
- Original title
- The British Museum is Falling Down
- Original publication date
- 1965 (MacGibbon & Kee) (MacGibbon & Kee); 1981 (Secker & Warburg) (Secker & Warburg)
- People/Characters
- Adam Appleby; Barbara Appleby; Claire Appleby; Dominic Appleby; Edward Appleby
- Important places
- British Museum, London, England, UK; London, England, UK
- Important events
- Vatican II
- Epigraph
- Life imitates art.
OSCAR WILDE
I would be a Papist if I could. I have fear
enough, but an obstinate rationality prevents me.
DR JOHNSON - Dedication
- To Derek Todd
(in affectionate memory of B M days)
and to Malcolm Bradbury
(Whose fault it mostly is that I have tried to write a comic Novel) - First words
- It was Adam Appleby's misfortune that at the moment of awakening from sleep his consciousness was immediately flooded with everything he least wanted to think about.
- Quotations
- Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)it will be wonderful perhaps even though it won't be like you think perhaps that won't matter perhaps
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