Jonathan Keates on Great Letter Writers

The writer Jonathan Keates, interviewed by The Browser for their splendid FiveBooks series, selects Evelyn Waugh as one of his "great letter writers."

The thing about Evelyn Waugh is that you must take everything with a pinch of salt. Because there is this kind of parallel universe in which he lives. The pleasure of reading his letters is to see somebody at work on constructing a personality, on constructing a self. Which isn’t necessarily his true self. Do we ever get to the true self in Waugh? I think we don’t. I don’t think he necessarily knew where it was himself. What you get instead is this apparently tweedy, peevish, reactionary figure – but underneath it amazingly perceptive and very funny.

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