–The website Books Worth Reading has posted a brief, unsigned article entitled “Evelyn Waugh v. Modern Therapy Culture”. It opens with a discussion of Dostoyevsky’s works in which the characters seemed overwhelmed by what would now be considered mental health problems. It then continues:
…That’s all fine – but it does make me wonder if the most mentally unhealthy generation in history should try to go a different way and perhaps dabble with writers who keep a stiff upper lip – like Evelyn Waugh for instance.
Waugh knew all the misery of the misfit, but unlike most great perceivers of human suffering, he didn’t wallow.
Instead, his heroes do the only thing there is to do in real life – get on with it.
I was introduced to Waugh through Men at Arms, the first book in his mildly autobiographical WWII Sword of Honour trilogy. Waugh was a literary genius with a strong intuition for the English language and a deep understanding of human nature.
All the more delightful then, that, unlike Dostoevsky, he shields us from this knowledge behind an impenetrable wall of understated British humor…
The article continues with a comparison of Waugh’s works (focussing on Men at Arms) with those of the Dostoyevsky generation. It can be viewed at this link.
–A new biography of writer Jan Morris by Sara Wheeler has appeared and is reviewed by Dominic Green writing in the Wall Street Journal, who opens his review with this:
Our protagonist comes from a nondescript family, attends a minor boarding school, falls in love with Oxford, enlists in the British army and is transformed forever by a trip to North Africa. This is Charles Ryder’s trajectory in Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (1945). It is also the story of Jan Morris (1926-2020), a British travel writer who was born James but had gender-reassignment surgery in 1972 in Casablanca, Morocco.
Sara Wheeler’s “Jan Morris” is a compassionate and comprehensive biography of the Tiresias of travel writers. “I have lived the life of man, I live now the life of woman, and one day perhaps I shall transcend both,” Morris wrote in “Conundrum,” a 1974 memoir. This is typical Morris: a claim of duality that demands the spotlight while refusing to be knowable. Ms. Wheeler, herself a travel writer, knew and admired Morris, but she pins the biographical butterfly firmly in place…
–The Irish Times has an article by Paul Clements. This is entitled “A language divided: Charting the rise of American English in everyday Irish speech”. That was a subject of some interest to Evelyn Waugh, and this gets a mention:
…Language discrepancies prevalent in books are often highlighted. Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel, The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948) is about the funeral business in Los Angeles. Waugh dedicated the book to “Mrs Reginald Allen, who corrected my American, and to Mr Cyril Connolly who corrected my English”.
–A Baptist Pastor (Wyman L. Richardson) has posted a brief article entitled “Life and the Big Wheel.” The wheel in this case (handsomely illustrated in the article) is inspired by Waugh’s descriptions in his novel Decline and Fall. Here’s a link to those who wish to read it.
–Finally, a rarely mentioned mentioned Waugh work is apparently about to be offered at auction. This is Wine in Peace and War published about 1947 by Saccone and Speed. Here is the opening of the related article (“Rare book written for fizz up for auction”) as it appears in the Western Daily Press:
A RARE book where the famous author was paid in Champagne as a tax-dodge is set to sell for hundreds of pounds.
Evelyn Waugh’s Wine in War and Peace [sic], written in 1947, explored wine’s role in society during the conflict and postwar. It blended personal reflections, wine culture, and history, highlighting wine as a symbol of luxury, survival, and camaraderie amidst wartime.
While the book itself is a prized collector’s item, it is the story behind its commission that gives it a bit more of a ‘fizz’ with collectors….
The article as posted on the internet site MAGZTER.com includes a full colored copy of the book on offer. Unfortunately, most of the article (including the auction details–identity of auctioneer, time, place, price, etc.) is behind a paywall. Here is a link to what is available.
