Waugh’s 1948 novella The Loved One seems to be getting a lot of press attention nowadays. Earlier this week the new CWEW edition was reviewed in the TLS, and now the book is recommended in the New York Times. This is in a column entitled “Read Like the Wind” and written by Joumana Khatib. Here’s a copy:
You probably know Waugh for his novel “Brideshead Revisited,” or if you’re journalism-adjacent you’ve possibly read “Scoop,” or if you really have excellent taste you might cherish “Vile Bodies” as much as I do.
“The Loved One” isn’t as well known, but this novella is quintessential Waugh: outrageously funny, a satire that arrives like a javelin hurled from left field. It is also very, very weird.
The story follows a community of fairly ineffectual British expats in Los Angeles, and centers on a love triangle involving a funeral home aesthetician, her mortician boss and a rival embalmer — of animals.
I’m as skittish as the next maladjusted mortal about death, corpses, embalming fluids, coffins. And yet! I was howling on every other page. The premise is utterly absurd, sure, and Waugh packs a lot in: a lovelorn man called Mr. Joyboy, a pair of newspaper reporters writing a pseudonymous advice column, a madcap cover-up. (The 1965 film version — which, however improbably, features Liberace — deserves a mention in the DSM.)
But it’s the dialogue that sends the story into the extreme. Take this, as a sample:
“An open casket is all right for dogs and cats,” the animal embalmer (who is also a hack poet) explains to his love interest; but parrots “look absurd with the head on a pillow. … Who asked you to the funeral anyway? Were you acquainted with the late parrot?”
God, I’m laughing just retyping that.
Read if you like: Spy magazine, estate sales, “Fawlty Towers.”
Available from: A good library or used-book store, or online at Project Gutenberg Canada (where the book is in the public domain).
If you click on the link to Project Gutenberg you will indeed find a full copy of the book. It is a reprint of the Chapman & Hall 1969 printing [2nd printing of the 1965 edition]. This contains the Preface written by Waugh in 1964 and several edits he made to the text. While you should be able to read it on your computer, you may not be able to download or print it unless you are connected to the internet in Canada where it is out of copyright.
