Waugh Cited in Architectural Satire Article

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall (1928) has been cited in an article on architectural satire. This appears in the online edition of the magazine Building Design. The classic British book in this style, according to the article, is H.B. Cresswell’s The Honeywood File published in 1929, the year after Waugh’s novel appeared, and still in print:

Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 Decline and Fall had already introduced his readers to the world of “ferro-concrete and aluminium”. The matchless Professor Otto Silenus was an “extraordinary young man
 not yet very famous anywhere” who had caught the attention of his patron, Mrs Beste-Chetwynde, with a (rejected) design for a chewing-gum factory glimpsed in “a progressive Hungarian quarterly”. Now she wanted a country house in that idiom.

The result was to replace Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s Tudor country house King’s Thursday with a Bauhaus-style design by Otto.  Other novels containing examples of this rather esoteric genre are Winifred Holtby’s South Riding (1936) and, more recently, Will Wiles’ The Way Inn (2014). 

 

 

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Conservative Think Tank Recommends Waugh Trilogy

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The Hoover Institution of Stanford University has added Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy to its Classics of Military History. This is a recommended reading list posted on the Hoover’s internet site. The explanation for inclusion of Waugh’s war novels is written by military historian Max Boot. Here’s an excerpt:

It deserves to be known as the finest work of fiction to come out of World War II. Certainly it is far superior to juvenile novels such as Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead or even Joseph Heller’s absurdist Catch-22…Ultimately the tone is elegiac, because the books are suffused with awareness that the war is leading to the demise of the British Empire and giving rise to a monstrous tyranny—the Soviet empire—in place of the fascist dictatorships which are being defeated.

Other books on the list include Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War, U.S. Grant’s Memoirs and Churchill’s biography of Marlborough. Thanks to David Lull for forwarding this post.

NOTE (12 March 2016) David Lull has also kindly sent a copy of a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal in which novelist Simon Mawer lists his five favorite books about the experience of war. All deal with WWII.  Waugh’s Sword of Honour is on the list:

Much has been written about the horrors of World War II, but it takes true genius to write a successful comic novel about it. This is what Waugh achieved in “The Sword of Honour.” Published as three separate novels, it is a roman à clef based on his personal experience in the army. The story abounds with ludicrous and appalling characters—from the fire-eating Brig. Ritchie-Hook to the absurd Capt. Apthorpe and his bush thunderbox (a kind of portable latrine), to the lovely and licentious Virginia Troy—all viewed through the increasingly disillusioned eyes of Guy Crouchback, one of Virginia’s ex-husbands and a devout Catholic. At the start Guy fancies himself as some kind of noble crusader, but as the war progresses his sense of idealism is repeatedly undermined. This was more or less Waugh’s own progress through the conflict. His sardonic wit serves as an astringent shock to anyone who might imagine that the war effort was all about heroism and brilliance. More than that, it’ll also make you laugh out loud.

The only other fiction included on Mawer’s list was Dan Billany’s The Trap (1950), which is still in print.

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Waugh Quoted in New Westminster Hymnal

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

A quote from Evelyn Waugh’s 1959 biography of Ronald Knox is printed as a sort of epigram at the beginning of a new edition of the New Westminster Hymnal (originally published in 1939). The hymnal contains Roman Catholic versions of hymns used in worship services. Waugh’s quote explains Ronald Knox’s contribution to the hymnal:

At the Low Week meeting of the hierarchy in 1936, Ronald had been appointed to a committee to revise the WESTMINSTER HYMNAL. Some converts from Protestantism repine at their lost opportunities for congregational singing. Indeed, many adult English Catholics do not hear a hymn from one year’s end to another. Ronald attributed this silence to the low literary quality of many Catholic hymns. He took the work of revision very seriously, and his taste—more than that of any other individual—pervaded the committee, whose deliberations were protracted for two years… 

This is an excerpt from a passage that appears at p. 253 of Waugh’s biography of Knox. The hymnal is reproduced in PDF format on a Roman Catholic website known as Corpus Christi Watershed. It is Part 4 of a blog containing copies and discussions of other musical works written for religious purposes. 

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Waugh Novel Adapted for New BBC2 TV Series

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

To mark the 50th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s death, the BBC has announced the production of a new three-part TV adaptation of his first novel Decline and Fall. The series will be adapted by James Wood who also wrote the scripts for the popular TV series Rev. According to the website British Comedy Guide :

Decline And Fall is described by the BBC as the author’s “first, most perfect novel”…The BBC explains: “[Paul Pennyfeather’s] unfair expulsion from Oxford kick-starts a disastrous series of events, wherein he is by turn a naive teacher, a celebrity bridegroom, a wanted fugitive, and an international (and unintentional) white slave-trader – while always being, indubitably – a victim of comic misfortune”…The BBC describes the three part series as “dazzling” and “anarchic, stylish and hilarious.” The series is being made by Tiger Aspect and Cave Bear Productions, and was commissioned Shane Allen, Charlotte Moore and Chris Sussman to mark 50 years since Waugh’s death.

An earlier film adaptation  of the novel by Ivan Foxwell was released as Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher (1968) with somewhat disapointing results. Leo McKern’s portrayal of Capt. Grimes makes it worth a look however. BBC Radio4 produced a successful adaptation of the novel by Jeremy Front only last year. See earlier post.

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Brideshead Urged for Post Downton Depression

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Press reports are appearing that recognize the need for something to replace the void now left by the termination of the Downton Abbey TV series. The Huffington Post in its Off the Shelf column contains an article by Kerry Fiallo recommending a dose of Brideshead Revisited (in either written or DVD format). Here’s an excerpt: 

A beautifully written novel, it is Waugh’s most introspective and personal work; like Charles and his best friend, Sebastian, Waugh struggled with alcoholism, class prejudice, religion, and his own complicated sexuality. It is also one of the most pro-Catholic texts I’ve ever read that also features openly gay characters, infidelity, divorce, and an agnostic narrator who battles against his lover’s staunch Catholic family, themselves adrift in an overwhelmingly Protestant country.

An earlier Off the Shelf column listed 9 other books, including Downton Tabby, which as you may have guessed is about aristocats.

The Toronto Star, on the other hand, devotes a column exclusively to DVD and streaming choices of films or TV series based on interwar novels as Downton replacements. Brideshead is among the recommendations: 

Brideshead Revisited (1981): Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud popped by to add class to this adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel that pulls off the miraculous feat of turning a thesis on Roman Catholicism into an engrossing soap opera.

Others on the Star’s list include Upstairs, Downstairs, A Room with a View and The Remains of the Day (1993)

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Driberg’s Wedding

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The Daily Express opens its weekend TV review column with a quote from Waugh:

WHEN the novelist Evelyn Waugh received an invitation to the wedding of the notorious philandering MP Tom Driberg, he declined to go. “I expect the church will be struck by lightning,” he explained.

The quote is offered in a review of the final episode of the current BBC TV series Call the Midwife and further discussion along that line will be avoided so as not to reveal the ending. The quote itself seems to be taken from the biography of Tom Driberg by Francis Wheen (p. 249) but is somewhat out of context. Waugh reportedly declined the invitation to the wedding because he would be abroad and was, indeed, in France at the time of the wedding, 30 June 1951. Waugh wrote, according to Wheen, “I will think of you intently on the day and pray that the church is not struck by lightning.” Waugh’s concern of such a lightning strike would have arisen not from Driberg’s philandering but, more likely, from his open homosexuality and Communism. The quoted letter is not included in Waugh’s collected Letters, but the collection does contain (p. 352) a letter to Driberg dated 21 July 1951 referring to a wedding present and commenting on press reports and gossip of the wedding.

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Alexei Sayle Names Sword of Honour

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Comedian and author Alexei Sayle names Waugh’s Sword of Honour as the book that has been most important to him. The selection appears in yesterday’s Glasgow Herald: 

Name: Alexei Sayle

Latest Book: Thatcher Stole My Trousers

A Book That Made Me: The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh.

I always loved Evelyn Waugh from the first time I read Decline and Fall even though he was a right-wing alcoholic who hated the working class. The Sword of Honour Trilogy though is his masterpiece, a trio of books relating the wartime experiences of Guy Crouchback, priggish and diffident officer in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. Blissfully funny and irredeemably tragic, the finest evocation of the wasteful and perverted nature of warfare. If I ever went on Celebrity Mastermind (which I never will) my specialist subject would be the Sword of Honour trilogy.

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Waugh Gender Misperception as Good Career Move

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The Independent has published a report from its correspondent at the Bath Lterature Festival, Katy Guest. When learning of Time’s recent mistake re Waugh’s gender, Guest wondered if the perception of Waugh as a female writer might be a good career move.  Women writers apparently shift more books but win fewer awards and less critical praise. The magazine’s recent error made her 

wonder how Evelyn’s books would be reviewed and marketed if she had written them now. In 1928, Decline and Fall was lauded as a viciously funny social satire; but would the same novel by Mrs Waugh be read as semi-autobiographical flimflam about a wedding? A Handful of Dust: a condemnation of the futility of humanist philosophy, or a thinly disguised roman à clef? Vile Bodies was a dark view of a decadent, doomed generation, but today’s Evelyn would have had her novel forced into pink covers, renamed Pretty Young Things and marketed as a romcom.

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Larry Kramer Lists Waugh Novel

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Playwright and AIDS awareness activist Larry Kramer has named Handful of Dust as one of his 10 favorite books. The list is in the New York Times “T” magazine and reflects the 10 books Kramer woud select to take with him to a desert island. Here’s his explanation for this selection:

“A Handful of Dust,” Evelyn Waugh

Waugh, along with P.G. Wodehouse, was one the greatest users of the English language. Both men just loved words and how to use them to their unusually best advantage. Anyone trying to master the English language would do well to study either one. Any of Waugh’s novels is impressive, but this one may be the best.

Other novels on the list include Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (Scott Moncrieff, translation). 

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Arcadian Doubts

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The latest issue of the magazine of Oriel College, Oxford (The Poor Print) has an article that opens with a passage from Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall:

‘You see, it wasn’t the ordinary sort of Doubt about Cain’s wife or the Old Testament miracles or the consecration of Archbishop Parker. I’d been taught how to explain all those while I was at college. No, it was something deeper than all that. I couldn’t understand why God had made the world at all.’

Doubt. That the was reason Mr. Prendergast gave for leaving the comfortable life of a parish priest in Worthing for the life of a master in a beastly North Wales school…

The author of the article (Fergus Higgins) returns to these thoughts as he awaits the funeral service of a young friend. In the church:

… another Waugh novel registered in my thoughts. This time his magnum opus: Brideshead Revisited. Waugh entitled the first chapter of the book ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ – ‘Even in Arcadia I am’. That is to say, even in the most idealised situation, death will always be present. The injustice that, in the Arcadia of his youth, this promising young man had met death, with the possibility of his future cut short before it could ever be fully realised, struck me.

His doubts then coalesce into remembrance of a poem (“Friday Morning”) by poet-songwriter Sydney Carter (1915-2004)  on the same topic:

You can blame it on to Adam,
You can blame it on to Eve,
You can blame it on the apple,
but that I can’t believe.
It was God that made the Devil,
And the woman and the man,
And there wouldn’t be an apple,
If it wasn’t in the plan.

It’s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me,
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree.

The article is headed by the reproduction of a 17th century painting. This is by Nicholas Poussin and is called “Et in Arcadia ego.” Thanks to David Lull for forwarding this artice.  

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