Souls and Bodies

by David Lodge

Book Overview

The ups, downs, and exploits of a group of British Catholics--for whom the sexual revolution came a little later than it did for everybody else... In this bracing satire, a group of university... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688009336
• ISBN13: 9780688009335
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Snakes and Ladders

In "How Far Can You Go?" (also released as "Souls and Bodies," I believe) David Lodge charts the spiritual growth ("decay" might be more accurate) of a group of British men and women from their university days through young adulthood, blossoming careers, marriages, children, marital affairs, and on into middle age. Their development coincides with the innovations to the liturgy introduced by the Second Vatican Council, and Lodge charts their spiritual progress, or lack thereof, with such provocative chapter titles as "How They Lost Their Virginities" and "How They Lost the Fear of Hell." "How Far Can You Go" deals intelligently with the constant tension between the spiritual and the material, the sacred and the profane, the eternal and the ephemeral. More specifically, Lodge examines the ramifications of birth control that resulted from the Sixties Sexual Revolution set against the backdrop of Vatican II. It's a book about sex, is what I'm trying to say, and how a handful Catholics struggle to reconcile the tenets of a two-thousand year old religion with the vicissitudes of modern, sexually "liberated" life. Each of Lodge's characters reexamines their faith in light of the proliferation of prophylactics and the ubiquity of the Pill. As a reader born post-Vatican II, I was intrigued by Lodge's account of the clash between Orthodoxy and Modernity (or Catholicism versus Contraception), since I have grown up oblivious to the magnitude of the changes in attitude since the Council. Also, I think John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" has since helped to elucidate Vatican II themes and ideas about human sexuality, reframing it in a positive light instead of as something shameful. These difficult and complex themes are treated with Lodge's characteristic humor: subtle, wry and dry as dust. A good example of this appears in his impish summary of Catholic dogma as compared to the board game, Snakes and Ladders: "The name of the game was Salvation, the object to get to Heaven and avoid Hell. It was like Snakes and Ladders: sin sent you plummeting down towards the Pit; the sacraments, good deeds, acts of self-mortification, enabled you to climb back towards the light..." Ultimately, "How Far Can You Go?" is a very interesting time capsule, a "primary source document" of the upheavals during Vatican II from the perspective of Catholic men and women experiencing it directly and trying to come to terms with its consequences in their day-to-day lives.

One Ounce of Humor, One of Desperation...

Lodge's impeccable English style and wry humor will always entertain the reader and evince deep reflections. Still, are not his characters, at times, utterly predictable? Polly, Miles, Miriam, Michael and all others end up in 1980 more or less as faint variations of what they were in the 1950s, when their stories start being told. Were the major changes in the world and in the Catholic church really just a sad joke played on them? There is a rather sad and depressing side in all of Lodge's novels from the sixties and the seventies that few people seem to notice. (On the contrary, his most recent "Therapy" is quite an exception.)

Perceptive case studies Catholics born circa 1940

Lodge is always worth reading. He is a very honest writer, a handy thing when so much of his stuff is quasi-autobiographical. These are real people, or as real as Lodge understands them, and he's not without insight. I don't relish Lodge as others would, because I've taken a different direction to him (and, perhaps, because he's more of my parents' generation). He can't help but favour characters more in line with his own value system, and this is particularly going to rub against me in a novel such as this one which has religion as its central concern. That being said, he's not overwhelmingly judgemental, and often is describing more than prescribing. He commonly uses sex as the climax of his novels (Out from the Shelter; Small World, Paradise News, Therapy - although in this latter it's more the resolution), and this is no exception. He's more matter of fact about it than overly voyeuristic, and I suspect he'd contend that it was just part of his honesty; sex is such big issue to us, and he's giving it a proportionally justifiable position. The title of the book relates to several areas though, not just the obvious sexual one. The one I found most cogent is more the Roman Catholic issue of how far can you break away from the traditional teaching of the church and still be a Roman Catholic - or, indeed, be anything at all? This issue, of course, has been felt deeply in Protestant circles as well. But, right or wrong (and thankfully he has the good grace not to tell us), for example, hell disappeared somewhere during the 60s. And if you don't believe in that - as in practise myriad Catholics stopped doing - a lot of things start drifting. The major issue he relates this to is the Catholic stance on birth control. It's no co-incidence that the decade of the pill was also the decade of a massive turn away from the church. You finally could have your cake and eat it too. No sex outside marriage was not such a huge sticking point for people staying with the church before contraception: everyone unavoidably had the Catholic stance on birth control. People now think they can have sex without responsibility; before they knew they couldn't. And the churches both Protestant and Catholic can still seem to convey that as long as you're not sleeping around you're a good Christian. In some ways this has been a bit of a favour for the church: nominalism is not the problem it used to be. Liberalism, however, is rampant. I must confess, too, I think the Catholic stance on birth control is more consistent with a theology which values sex as highly as the bible does. It makes sense that this act is seen as always profound - profound enough to begin life. This does not have to cancel the pleasure, but it sure as hell adds the appropriate sense of responsibility. I agreed with the way he concluded the novel by setting up sound bites of different Catholics at a festival (playing with the form as he likes to do, this time switching from narrative to a video transcript

Now THAT'S Catholic humor!

David Lodge's story of a group of British Roman Catholics passing through Vatican II is by turns funny, touching, and sad. But it's the humor that lingers -- not the surface-level "don't nuns look funny?" stuff that usually passes for Catholic jokes, but smart, pointed humor that comes from an intimate knowledge of the joy, pain, absurdity, and glory of wrestling with a two-thousand-year-old religion and struggling to reconcile it with everyday life in a changing world. Example: a bright medical student kneeling at Communion, trying not to be preoccupied with the theological implications of the Body of Christ passing through the whole digestive process. But none of the shots are cheap: the attitude toward faith is respectful without knee-jerk acceptance or rejection of orthodox pieties. A brilliant, sensitive, funny, tragic, hopeful, doubting, unforgettable book.

Good, but it's the same book as how far can you go!

The book is great, but only the cover and the title make it different from the book 'How far can you go' from David. Still it Christianity living on the edge!