Lodging protests

“Deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic,” declares Desmond Bates, the hard of hearing protagonist of Deaf Sentence, the latest novel by veteran comic author and literary critic, David Lodge. As Kelly Mullan finds out, while he’s not deaf to the arguments and knows much about disability from his own and his son’s experience, he stops short of fully embracing the politics

Called “one of the best novelists of his generation” by Anthony Burgess, Lodge won the Whitbread Prize in 1980 and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. He’s best known for satirising university life in his campus novels drawn from his experience as a professor of literature.

Aspects of Deaf Sentence are autobiographical; not the invitation to spank an American postgrad but the rather less racy experiences of living with acquired hearing loss, caring for a dying father, and being a retired professor.

Much of the comedy in Deaf Sentence comes from Desmond trying to hide his impairment. On using deafness as a motif for his fourteenth novel, Lodge says: “To write it, almost like a gay novelist, I had to come out as a deaf novelist.

“It’s painful, recognising it and accepting it as part of life’s lottery for you. People who are hard of hearing do tend to be in denial about it for a very long time. It is possible to conceal it. You can try to get away with it by pretending you aren’t interested or by talking all the time.

“Writing can be a positive thing. A lot of comedy comes from pain. Through fiction you can transform a negative experience. That is the privilege of being an artist; you can do that.”

A year on from publication, as Deaf Sentence appears in paperback, Lodge reflects on the reaction to the book from the deaf community: “Some deaf people aren’t comfortable with the book as it exploits the comic and absurd aspects of deafness.

“I’ve exploited the comic possibilities of deafness for personal concern. Deafness is legitimate for comedy but with other disabilities writers think twice. Deaf characters in fiction are nearly always figures of fun, whereas I use blindness as a contrast. Blindness is always associated with tragedy and pathos.”

Meeting this reserved man of letters, whose resemblance to a bird of prey makes him seem like a more softly spoken colleague of Professor Yaffle, it doesn’t seem appropriate to say, “what about Mr Magoo?” so instead I ask: “What’s so funny about being deaf?”

“It’s not inherently life threatening (unless you don’t hear a bus coming). It has no visible peculiarity to incite compassion or sympathy. And it is constantly creating misunderstandings and mistakes and puns of an absurd kind that can be inherently funny.

“Deaf Sentence is written in the style of an essayistic journal and Desmond describes his most humiliating incidents in the third person. And I suppose for me it was therapeutic.”

This essayistic-journal style allows Lodge to write about various deaf artists such as Goya and Beethoven and how their impairment affected their work, and he has come up with a sliding scale of how deafness impacts on various art forms.

“The writer is halfway between the painter and the musician: deafness affects ability to collect material and affects ability to collaborate but it doesn’t affect ability to compose.”

Lodge misses the collaboration of writing for TV and theatre, and the pleasures of verbal sparring with fellow academics, but says that for the most part technology, such as email and hearing aids, means he can get around most communication problems.

Hearing him enthuse on the difference technology has made to the lives of deaf people, I ask if he subscribes to the social model of disability. He hasn’t heard of it before but quickly dismisses it: “That’s an extreme reversal. A disability can’t just be attributed to the context of the social structure. It’s a real loss of some kind. It can be ameliorated. Take the example of Stage Text, I can follow the action but it’s a greatly diminished pleasure. A social model is a rather extreme position to take up. Perhaps mental illness or madness is a social construction but it can’t be a total blanket explanation.”

So Lodge’s views on disability might not be fashionable, but as the parent of a disabled son, he is no stranger to campaigning: “I have a son with Down’s. He’s 42 now. We were told he’d never learn to read or write or travel on his own but he did.

“We’ve been campaigning as parents of a disabled person with learning difficulties for 40 years. Usually not in terms of some abstract movement but to do with the community our son is in. The type of place my son is in, which has been brilliant for him, is now out of favour with social services and Government. The Government has a policy of reducing residential places. It’s closed down quite a lot and caused a great deal of distress for residents and families.

“It’s a case of ideology leading policy rather than consulting people involved, and there is a financial and economic reason behind this. That’s an issue I feel quite strongly about.

“My son is deaf as well, which is a great shame and a great injustice in the lottery of life. He’s deafer than I am. It’s been very sad as he’s done very well to live an independent life, and he still does, but it has affected his ability to relate to other people in the community he lives in, and in fact he had an episode of depression a year or two ago. He’s come out of that now, not with his old confidence, but he’s developed recently a talent for visual art, which is terrifically good news. It’s given him positive reinforcement and a sense of achievement. It’s like the story of Goya.”

Talking about his own experience of depression and anxiety, Lodge says: “In trying to transfer to life the control I have over fiction, I miss the pleasure of life by worrying about the bad things that might happen. I try to get my characters to believe that and value the passing of time. I truly believe that.”

While he does believe in savouring the passing of time, he says that the decline of his religious faith can be traced chronologically through his novels. He now calls himself “a catholic agnostic” and says: “Religion is an inevitable part of human life. There are no answers but the questions remain.”

Coming back to reactions to Deaf Sentence he says: “Although I didn’t write about it with any polemical or propagandist intent, it has had the effect of maybe making it easier for people with my problem. It’s extremely exasperating for people who live with people who are losing their hearing but won’t admit it. I’ve heard many cases: ‘my husband won’t admit he’s going deaf; he won’t use his hearing aid. He’s driving me mad’. They find this book quite helpful and pass it along.”

Comparing the experience of acquired hearing loss to being born deaf, Lodge says: “Someone who goes deaf later in life is in a different position from someone who is born deaf and encouraged to overcome it and not see it as a loss.

“I’ve only had a few encounters with deaf culture. I don’t have much sympathy with the more extreme forms of that: deaf parents wanting the right to choose deaf embryos, seems to me unnatural.

“I wrote a review of an American book called My Father’s Hands. It gave me a much more sympathetic understanding of that world. A boy who is hearing is born to deaf parents in the days before an enlightened attitude to deafness. Deaf people were called dummies in the street, discriminated against, but developed sign language in spite of it actually being discouraged in favour of lip-reading.”

Declaring his love of literature and his fascination with creativity Lodge is transfigured: his recollection of first reading Ulysses as a student seems akin to a religious experience. This interview is becoming more like an encounter with an inspirational priest except I’m moved to go forth and read more than the one good book.

Talking about disability, he is much more wary. On deafness he says: “I usually say everything I have to say in a novel. I may give the impression of knowing more but that’s an illusion. Now, can I call you a taxi?”