Weekly Standard Remembers Waugh

The latest issue of Weekly StandardĀ carries an article memorializing Waugh in this 50th anniversary year of his death. This is by Algis Valiunas who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The essayĀ begins with the familiar characterization of Waugh as a writer of very funny books but a very unpleasantĀ person. ItĀ provides a summary of several of Waugh’s recorded misdeeds including his persecution of Dean Cruttwell and Clarissa Churchill and his meltdown when his friend Henry Green and his wife smoked at the dinner table. ItĀ then provides a brief descriptionĀ of Waugh’s works starting with Decline and Fall in which:Ā 

Waugh unleashes every anarchic impulse …, as he does in the best ones to follow. And when every civilized institution has been definitively laid wasteā€”the universities and public schools, the aristocracy, the military, Parliament, marriage, the great country houses, the Empireā€”the reader is hard put to think of anything he holds dear that might withstand such withering fire. All that remains is manic laughter. One can still grovel with hilarity amid the devastation.

The essay findsĀ Vile BodiesĀ and Black MischiefĀ to beĀ darker andĀ less funny, and it skipsĀ over what is probably Waugh’s funniest book Scoop and focuses on A Handful of Dust in which disappointment is expressed:

But when Waugh does turn serious, it is to ill effect. A Handful of Dust (1934), which takes its title and epigraph from T.ā€‰S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, retails the haphazard adulterous collision of two nullities moved principally by boredom. The story is told in a leaden monotone that aspires to devastating irony but overdoes the moral emptiness.

Similar disappointment is notedĀ in Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy. The essay, which is entitled, “Waugh’s Gift”, concludes with this:

These five novels, the serious ones, are widely considered to be Waugh’s best. Far from it. He came to see his vocation as instructing a godless world in the true nature of God, when his true calling was as a minor comic master, funny as hell, who could laugh at the most appalling outrages and play jazz clarinet with consummate virtuosity in the devil’s band.

This is odd and a bit unfair because the essay began by positing that Waugh should be remembered for his humorous works but then, aside from Decline and Fall, ignores the best of them. There is no analysis of Scoop and no mention of Put Out More Flags and The Loved One which are generally considered his funniest works. Nor is there any recognition that Brideshead and Sword of Honour contain some of Waugh’s best humorous passages.

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This entry was posted in A Handful of Dust, Anniversaries, Black Mischief, Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, Humo(u)r, Newspapers, Put Out More Flags, Scoop, Sword of Honour, The Loved One, Vile Bodies and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.