― LondonLee (LondonLee), Friday, 9 January 2004 22:43 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Friday, 9 January 2004 22:50 (twenty years ago) link
But i've never been moved to read any of his later stuff, which i imagine i would have a lot of ideological problems with.
― pete s, Friday, 9 January 2004 23:52 (twenty years ago) link
You should try "A Handful of Dust" as it's like a perfect bridge between his early and later work. It has all the stinging social satire with a sad elegy for the fate of "decent" men in the cruel 20th century.
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Saturday, 10 January 2004 15:19 (twenty years ago) link
(by the by can i just say kudos on the thread title! makes me smile every time i see it!)
― pete s, Saturday, 10 January 2004 16:47 (twenty years ago) link
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/hitchens.htm
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Saturday, 10 January 2004 18:26 (twenty years ago) link
I think the first one, generally.
― sym (shmuel), Sunday, 11 January 2004 02:54 (twenty years ago) link
― Michael Jacobs, Sunday, 11 January 2004 14:14 (twenty years ago) link
The Penguin paperback editions of the 70's / 80's are design classics.
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Monday, 12 January 2004 13:11 (twenty years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 12 January 2004 16:40 (twenty years ago) link
"Sword of Honor" is the dodgy one, despite some brilliant bits you have to wonder when Guy Crouchback thinks WWII is no longer a just cause when the "godless" Russians join the Allies side.
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Monday, 12 January 2004 17:14 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 12 January 2004 20:26 (twenty years ago) link
― writingstatic, Monday, 12 January 2004 22:48 (twenty years ago) link
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 12 January 2004 22:59 (twenty years ago) link
Actually, he wasn't. That was his problem, he came to hate the culture of his period. Orwell called his views "untenable" and Waugh's stance on the Vatican II reforms in the Catholic church was out of step with the times.
even devoting the intellectual power necessary to *question* - religious views in books almost half a century old is akin to being offended by "Fanny" and "Dick" or wondering what Melville really meant by "white whale"
Half a century isn't that long ago you know. That's a really bizarre statement anyway.
And I don't think anyone here is offended, I certainly ain't, I fucking love Waugh and I'm an atheist lefty.
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Monday, 12 January 2004 23:50 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Monday, 12 January 2004 23:53 (twenty years ago) link
― writingstatic (writingstatic), Monday, 12 January 2004 23:58 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 03:56 (twenty years ago) link
This is my opinion. I'm not interested in what makes a writer tick. I'm only interested in whether or not he's any good. If a book cannot stand up without the author attached to it, then it is fundamentally worthless. You obviously feel differently and kudos to you for it.
― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 04:15 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 04:19 (twenty years ago) link
― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 05:04 (twenty years ago) link
Well, okay, but at a certain point 'well-written' might come into conflict with 'untenable opinions'. I really like Waugh up to 'Brideshead,' and his stuff sure is well-written, but there's a lot that's hard to take even in Brideshead. Where before he saw the old Tory county culture as as dead (in 'A Handful of Dust') as the London culture of 'Vile Bodies' he later created a bogus high Tory mirage that I find makes his stuff hard-going.
― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 10:20 (twenty years ago) link
A mention for Labels too. A cracking travel book round the Mediterranean. Constantly referenced by later writers treading the same path. A slight volume full of beauty.
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 11:05 (twenty years ago) link
Strange to be called an "irritant" in a thread you started yourself as a gushing fan of the man. But moving along...
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 13:29 (twenty years ago) link
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
So, after meaning to read some Waugh for a long time, I picked up nearly his whole works at a Canadian book fair -- all those lovely 80s Penguin pbks, about $20 the lot.
Not to begin on an insufferably PC note, but what's with the "Chokey" character in DaF? What's he trying to say here?
― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Friday, 23 January 2004 19:44 (twenty years ago) link
does anyone in the current ILB cohort rate waugh's later (brideshead and after) output?
― thomp, Wednesday, 16 September 2009 20:19 (fourteen years ago) link
actually, i wish i'd revived the thread without the dodgy pun title
― thomp, Wednesday, 16 September 2009 20:20 (fourteen years ago) link
I especially like the Sword of Honour trilogy and The Loved One from the kater stuff--and Gilbert Pinfold is mad, but very entertaiuningly and deliberately so.
― When two tribes go to war, he always gets picked last (James Morrison), Thursday, 17 September 2009 00:48 (fourteen years ago) link
I rate brideshead but haven't read anything later
― cozwn, Thursday, 17 September 2009 00:52 (fourteen years ago) link
I sort of rate it. In general, it's got lots of virtues: he builds carefully, and the flexibility of his style keeps thing moving: lightly ironic omniscience going into serious melancholy, elegant descriptive detail, and the fragmentary mode is still around in places. Oh, and still brilliant at tricks with dialogue.
So I find the later stuff in general very pleasant to read when I'm in the mood, but it never quite feels like it's got the fun, compression, blank cruelty or young-man sadness of the first four in particular, so I don't really get enthusiastic.
More specifically: The Loved One was fun, but didn't make a huge impression on me. Sword of Honour I remember as his best serious book, but I'm a bit dubious about, or uninterested in, the kind of proper old-school Brit literariness it manages. Brideshead: first time out I raced through it, but it left a bad taste: soapy, toff infatuation. I started again recently but put it down. Same grounds, sort of: so good at pushing buttons - 'melancholy', 'decline', 'gilded youth' - and all in the service of (Enrique OTM upthread) batshit High Toryism and recusant-fetish Catholicism.
Speaking of: I enjoyed Helena when I read it recently. Maybe it's because the historical setting cordons off the craziness, but it didn't wind me up in the way Brideshead does. It's a funny mix of things: legend, historical novel, an extension of his aristo-girl portraiture, an essay on religion and politics, etc. Throws in a few funnies. Strange little book.
And I love Pinfold. It's such a strange self-portrait, honest about and critical of this buffer self he ended up building. And I don't read huge amounts of fiction, but the straight-face narration of deepening madness seems like a really nice piece of work: both funny and terrifying. The voice-transmitting box and conspiracy are made to make sense (personal interest: had a relative with drink issues who after withdrawal/sleep problems also (briefly, thank the lord) went off into lucidly explaining about a conspiracy to drive them mad via a box for transmitting voices into the head, so was fascinated by this.)
― woofwoofwoof, Thursday, 17 September 2009 10:14 (fourteen years ago) link
Absolutely. Pinfold is great - written at an age when to all intents and purposes he seemed an ossified parody of reactionary bullshit, without any self-awareness, Pinfold is vulnerable and tolerant, and also very funny. Well, funny and terrifying.
Kinglsey Amis has got a couple of amusing anecdotes about Waugh, which I'll dig out when the person I've lent the book to gets up.
― GamalielRatsey, Thursday, 17 September 2009 10:41 (fourteen years ago) link
did he really call a second son 'septimus'?
― thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i had forgotten reviving this / not seen the replies / huh
i'd just moved to oxford and was thinking about reading brideshead. also jude. also etc.
i ended up rereading x4 other waugh books and x2 i hadn't before before i got around to brideshead. which has more to it than i'd expected. the stuff about buggery seemed a lot better than the stuff about god.
most of the criticisms of it by purpose seem a little off? because the moments where the objectionable viewpoints come through are the most artistically cack-handed? which goes some way to redeeming it for me? i guess?
― thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:06 (thirteen years ago) link
Absolutely. Pinfold is great - written at an age when to all intents and purposes he seemed an ossified parody of reactionary bullshit, without any self-awareness, Pinfold is vulnerable and tolerant, and also very funny.
this also - i feel like i always want to ascribe waugh self-awareness, possibly because i like him, and in my head it is like that redeems him somehow
i read 'noblesse oblige' recently also and he seems to have much more ironic distance from the whole thing than mitford does, although i guess that's not saying a great deal
― thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:07 (thirteen years ago) link
http://theweek.com/articles/751856/evelyn-waugh-fanatics
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 4 August 2018 02:46 (five years ago) link