–Novelist Robert Harris has recommended the best 5 collections of letters for the Wall Street Journal. Those of Evelyn Waugh are included:
Born in London in 1903, Evelyn Waugh was a reactionary whose distaste for the modern world included the telephone and the typewriter. It is our good fortune that for 50 years Waugh preferred to communicate with the outside world by handwritten letter. Into these compositions he poured the same combination of elegance, wit, satire, snobbery and insight as he put into his fiction. In one classic, Waugh sees off a proposal from Life magazine to publish a series of photographs based on his characters alongside excerpts from his novels: “I have read your letter of yesterday with curiosity and re-read it with compassion. I am afraid you are unfamiliar with the laws of my country.” In another, he describes Winston Churchill’s ebullient son, Randolph, in wartime Yugoslavia, whom Waugh tried to keep quiet by betting he couldn’t read the entire Bible: “Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud: ‘I say I bet you didn’t know this came in the Bible: bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave’ or merely slapping his side & chortling ‘God, isn’t God a s—!'”
The editor Mark Amory is identified and the publication year of 1980. He might have mentioned later collections of letters between Waugh and both Nancy Mitford (1996) and Diana Cooper (1991). These contained letters from both parties.
–David Samuels writing in the American Jewish magazine called The Tablet (not to be confused with the Roman Catholic one by that name in the UK) has written a long article trying to explain how Barack Obama and David Axelrod built a system to control what used to be called public opinion only to see it fall apart in the recent election. There are frequent references in the essay to literary sources which provide relief from the lengthy political analysis. Here’s an example:
…By this late date in Western cultural history, the modern is itself a notably dated category. Whether it is a person or a thing or a style, we know exactly how it behaves, and how we are supposed to react. The modern is a character in an early Evelyn Waugh novel, unflappable in the face of the new. Then there is the conservative, who rejects the new in favor of the ancient verities of the Greeks or the Church. Both figures are rightfully comic, with an accompanying tinge of the tragic, or else they appear to be the other way around. The verdict is in the eye of the beholder, meaning you and me.
The permission structure machine that Barack Obama and David Axelrod built to replace the Democratic Party was in its essence neither modern nor conservative, though.
The article is worth reading if you have half an hour to spare but I must confess that I have no greater comprehension of what a “permission structure” may be after reading it than I did before. Here is a link to the article.
–Oxford University have posted a brief profile by one of its faculty members who writes an explanation of the sources and influences of her recent novel. This is entitled Fundamentally and is written by Dr Nussaibah Younis, a member of the Faculty of English. Here’s an excerpt:
In my debut novel Fundamentally â a dark comedy about a UN program to deradicalize ISIS brides â there is only one scene set in Oxford, and itâs an absolutely miserable one. I feel a bit guilty about that. Though I had ups and downs as a student, my time as a Modern History and English student at Merton College was amongst the happiest â and certainly the most formative â of my life…
I had … become quite disillusioned by the international aid industry and wanted to shed light on the nightmarish difficulties faced by people trying to âbuild peaceâ in a foreign country. At times my work in peacebuilding had been farcical, had reached comic levels of absurdity, and it was ripe for satire. I love the way Evelyn Waugh skewers the war correspondent circus in Scoop, and the hilarious dragging of the BBC in W1A, and I wanted to do something similar for the UN.
Thus was born Fundamentally. Itâs a dark comedy about Nadia, a heartbroken academic tasked with implementing a deradicalization program for ISIS brides. Working alongside a cast of fools and misfits, she becomes engrossed by a hilarious and foul-mouthed ISIS teen bride from East London and is forced to make an extreme choice…
There are more extended discussions about her other two novels at this link.
–The Los Angeles Review of Books has published an interview of novelist Michael Idov in which he mostly discusses his latest novel. This is apparently about spies, but he opens with this discussion of his first novel Ground Up (2009):
Q. The story of how you published your first novel is somewhat miraculous. You were contacted by Nora Ephron, who offered to introduce you to her agent.
A. Itâs as close to a fairy tale as things get in this line of work. This was 2005. I had a kind of funny essay in Slate about my experience trying to open a coffee shop called CafĂ© Trotsky on the Lower East Side. (This was back when you could still put your email address at the end of a story without getting death threats, and when you only checked your email once a day, after you got home.) The day after Slate ran the story, I checked my email and was absolutely shocked to see an email from Nora Ephron. I thought it was a prank at first. She wrote that she thought the story would make a great book or movie, and went on to introduce me to her agent, Amanda âBinkyâ Urban, who is still my agent to this day. So yeah, Iâve been incredibly lucky.
Q. Was Amanda the one who suggested you write the story in the form of a novel?
A. The story made some noise, so a few agents contacted me, but they all wanted me to write a self-help book, like a âhow-not-to-do-businessâ guide. I had zero interest in that. I thought, perhaps stupidly, that this was my chance to write a cool, satirical novel. The moment Iâd tell them I saw it as âmodern-day Evelyn Waugh,â they were like, âOh, I seeâheâs insane. Bye!â Binky was the only one who said, âIf you feel passionate about it, why not?â
So I took a leap of faith, wrote the whole thing the way I wanted, and it ended up at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It wasnât very popular, to be honestâthough it did tick a few âsuccessâ boxes like having the film rights optioned to HBO. The most surprising outcome was that the Russian version became a bestseller. I had literally translated it for the private bragging rights; I just wanted to be the second writer after Nabokov to publish something in English and then republish it in Russian in my own translation…
The complete interview can be read here.
—Anglotopia, a UK-based internet literary/cultural website, has posted an article in its newsletter relating to the various presentations of Brideshead Revisited in book, TV, and film versions. this is by Janna Wong Healy. Here are the opening paragraphs:
I was not alive in 1945, when Evelyn Waughâs highly revered and most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, was published. As an English major in college, I had heard about this thoughtful, beautifully written story of friendship, love, and religionâŠyet didnât read it. In 1982, the talk around town (I live in Los Angeles, and my âtownâ is Hollywood) was all about the extraordinary translation of Waughâs novel by Granada Television for ITV starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews and featuring such famous co-stars as Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, and John Gielgud. I not only opted against reading the book, I watched the first episode but ultimately decided against watching the rest of the show.
In retrospect, I was foolish for not jumping onto the Brideshead bandwagon. But, I have redeemed myself. I just finished reading the novel (or, to be precise, I listened to the lovely voice of Jeremy Irons as he read it to me). I then devoured the series (available on BritBox), and finally, after seeing the movie in its theatrical run in 2008, I rewatched it (available to rent on Amazon) for this article.
I am filled with remorse that it took me so long to truly and completely discover this masterpiece of literature. Hopefully, you are smarter than I, and you got swept up in the story of Charles Ryderâs friendship with the Flytes of Brideshead when the book was first published or the series first aired. But if you havenât, I urge you to explore and enjoy Mr. Waughâs enduring story.
At this point, you may be wondering what the difference is between the book, the series and the movie and, particularly, which one you should invest your time in. Allow me to be your guide…
