David Lodge: Deaf Sentence. David Lodge is one of the last of the great comic-realist novelist of the 1950’s, a younger member of the supposedly angry generation that included Iris Murdoch and Kingsley Amis. He is counted as one of the inventors of the “campus novel,” and as years passed and the novelist aged, Lodge seldom strays far from the university. This latest mild masterwork is no exception. Lodge peaks behind the curtain of familiar contemporary living in a near perfect blend of sorrow and mirth. His storytelling is absurdly simple and good.