Waugh! What Is He Good For?

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.)

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.

did he really call a second son 'septimus'?

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?

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

http://theweek.com/articles/751856/evelyn-waugh-fanatics