David Lodge	Out Of The Shelter

First edition Macmillan, 1970. Extensively revised edition Martin Secker & Warburg, 1985 and Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1986.

A first-person novel about a boy's childhood in wartime England, and his extended visit to Germany, aged 16, in the early fifties. The story is not autobiographical, although it does draw on the author's similar background.

The naturism depicted here is shown both as the object of Donald McGill postcard nudge-nudge titillation, and as nothing more than innocent naturalness - with no particular sexual or sensual connotations - found in (say) eighties' issues of BN. The G.I. sounds very like Alan Alda's Hawkeye in M*A*S*H, who was always eager for his mail-order nudist magazines to arrive.

I think the contrast between and juxtaposition of the two attitudes to nudity and naturism are beautifully done. It's impossible to say where one ends and the other begins.

So, the G.I. takes his films home and he and his friends yell and slobber over them for a bit. I can't help thinking that eventually they'll find them rather a-sexual and unerotic!

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2002 December 21.
 
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