The New York Public Library has marked Evelyn Waugh’s upcoming birthday (28 October 1903) with an essay on The Loved One which also compares the Hollywood novels of other writers. The essay is by Meredith Mann who works in the library’s Collection Development division. Mann writes:
Waugh’s LA novel mocked Americans as vacuous, uncultured saps, easy marks for the nearest British expat. Its ending is classic Waugh dark comedy, doubtless the reason why Waugh called it his “most offensive work.” (Footnote omitted)
The essay goes on to discuss other novels, notably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust and offers anecdotes from the Hollywood experiences of other writers such as Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner. The NYPL resources on film studies are also summarized.
