Father’s Day Roundup

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

–In response to the feverish political activity in London, The Independent newspaper has composed a list of the Top 10 fictional Prime Ministers. While no Waugh character makes the top 10, he is awarded an Honourable Mention:

Honourable mentions for Philip Downer and Matt Wheeldon, who nominated James Brown, in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, who has to resign after the Bright Young Things run wild at No 10, and his successor Walter Outrage, who is baffled about the conversations at cabinet meetings which he doesn’t understand.

Among the Top 10 are Jim Hacker from the BBC series Yes, Prime Minister, Plantagenet Palliser from Trollope’s novels, and Francis Urquhart from another TV series, Andrew Davies’ House of Cards.

–In another reference to the Prime Ministerial selection process, The Spectator has a story by Nick Cohen entitled “Everything about Boris Johnson is phony.” After discussing and dismissing Johnson’s attempts to compare himself favorably to Winston Churchill, Cohen writes:

As I have said before, Johnson bears few resemblances to Churchill, and far too many to Winston’s shifty sidekick Brendan Bracken, who became propaganda minister during the war. Bracken too was careless with the facts. He invented stories about his childhood to con his way into high society. He was an energetic manipulator of the press in both Churchill’s interest and his own. (Whenever he gave dinner parties he instructed his butler to make up a story that the prime minister was on the phone and announce the news loudly to his guests). Evelyn Waugh couldn’t stand him, and in Brideshead turned Bracken into Rex Motram, who marries the wealthy but naive Julia because ‘he wanted a woman; he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her cheap; that was what it amounted to’. Inevitably, he betrays her, within in months of the honeymoon. ‘Rex isn’t anybody at all,’ Julia concludes of Mottram/Bracken. ‘He just doesn’t exist.’

–Another Spectator story, this one by Dominic Green, also mentions Prime Ministerial candidates with reference to a current film based on the British class system:

…you can get away with a lot in Britain if you have the right accent and manners. The Souvenir, directed by Joanna Hogg, is a coming-of-age romance about class and heroin, set in London in the early Eighties, when Britain was awash in smack and class war.

After the characters in the film have been dealt with, the article continues:

Poshness is the grift that keeps giving. The romance of Charles Ryder and doomed Sebastian Flyte wouldn’t be quite as fascinating if it had been conducted on a council estate, instead of a country estate. The beautiful surroundings and balmy memories of Brideshead Revisited tend to obscure the sorry fact that Charles is Sebastian’s enabler, just as Julie is to Anthony [in the film]. The same could be said about The Go-Between, where the past is a different country, distant enough for us to enjoy the pipe dream of paradise recovered, even as [L P] Hartley admits his part in a moral disaster. The Souvenir takes its title from Fragonard’s painting of that name, in which a pre-revolutionary aristocrat carves her lover’s initials into a tree.

—Esquire magazine has posted on its website a full copy of Waugh’s 1953 article “ST. FRANCIS XAVIER’S BONES: A festival in Old Goa honors the farthest-flung of travelers”. The article was also published about the same time in The Tablet but under a different title: “Goa: The Home of a Saint”. That is the version collected in EAR, p. 444. An earlier, shorter version also appeared in Picture Post (24 January 1953).

–The lastest issue of Harvard Magazine has an article in its “Brief Lives” series devoted to Ellen Newbold La Motte (1873-1961). She is described as a “bold activist…who challenged societal norms as a trained nurse, public-health administrator, suffragist, socialist, self-proclaimed anarchist, lesbian, anti-opium activist, and more.” In the course of her travels, she encountered Evelyn Waugh:

In summer 1916, she had left Europe to tour Asia with Emily Crane Chadbourne, a divorced American heiress and art collector who had been living in Paris. They had become a couple during the first winter of the war and remained together until La Motte’s death, their relationship occupying a liminal social space: recognized by some, considered a close friendship by others. (The acerbic English novelist Evelyn Waugh, who met them in Ethiopia in 1930, called them “two formidable ladies” whom “long companionship had made
almost indistinguishable.”)

Waugh met the two ladies at the coronation of Haile Selassie and mentions them in his book Remote People. This reference appears at p. 50 of the US edition which is entitled They Still Were Dancing; see also Penguin, 2011, p. 48.

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Letters to Maro

Posted on June 15, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

An auction house has on offer 5 letters and a post card from Evelyn Waugh to Maro Stathatos (nee Vatimbella, 1919-1989) and her son John. These were written in the period February 1962-October 1963 and are in the nature of arranging for visits and meals as well as expressions of thanks. In the post card dated 1 August 1963 advising her son how to recognize him on the platform at Taunton Station, Waugh describes himself as “short, corpulent and elderly”.

Maro is identified in the auctioneer’s material as an Egyptian-born Greek artist. Her maiden name is frequently associated with descriptions of her paintings. She was also a friend of Lawrence Durrell and one of his letters to her is on offer as well. Patrick Leigh Fermor was a friend of three generations of her husband’s family. He was named Constantine and was apparently a son of Peter Stathatos who features in Leigh Fermor’s biography as the source of the horse he “borrowed” to join the royalist uprising against the Venizelos government in the 1930s.

The auction house International Autograph Auctions has the 5 letters on sale for £200 each and the post card for £150.  Here’s a link via invaluable.com. The Waugh correspondence is Lots 140-45. The live auction will be held on Thursday, 20 June 2019 at 1pm, BST. How Waugh came to know Maro is not explained in the notes but it may come indirectly through her connections with Leigh Fermor who was a close friend of both Diana Cooper and Nancy Mitford. It may also have involved an acquaintanceship with his daughter Margaret who is mentioned by Waugh in the letters and whose presence or absence seems to be relevant to the arrangements.

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Weedon Grossmith (d. 14 June 1919)

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

Weedon Grossmith, best known as the co-author of The Diary of a Nobody (1892) died 100 years ago today. His collaborator was his brother George Grossmith who died in 1912. They were both also successful stage performers and wrote scripts as well as music for the theatre, but Diary was their masterpiece. Weedon also created the illustrations for later editions of the book. William Cook has written an article in the current issue of The Oldie commemorating Weedon’s death and career:

…suburbia has inspired some of our greatest comic works of art – and the first, and finest, is George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody. It’s the diary of Charles Pooter, a middle-aged clerk in an obscure City firm and the proud inhabitant (with his wife Carrie and their wayward son, Lupin) of The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, London N19.

Waugh once described the Diary in a 1930 Daily Mail article as the “funniest book in the world” and explained:

If only people would really keep journals like that. Nobody wants to read other people’s reflections on life and religion and politics, but the routine of their day, properly recorded, is always interesting, and will become more so as conditions change with the years.

Waugh’s article (“One Way to Immortality”) is collected in EAR, p. 84 and CWEW, v. 26, p. 287.

According to an article in a 2005 issue of Evelyn Waugh Newsletter & Studies by Peter Morton, Waugh found several similarities between the middle class suburban lives of the Pooter family described in the Diary and his own (“‘The Funniest Book in the World’ : Waugh and ‘The Diary of a Nobody'”, EWNS No. 36.1, Spring 2005, p. 1). His brother Alec saw many features of Lupin Pooter (hapless son of the fictional diarist) and Evelyn. Morton also describes how Waugh was cheered up in the rather depressing atmosphere of Christmas 1946 by receiving a present of the book from his mother. He went off with the book and made a concordance of his edition with the shorter version of the story as it had originally been serialized in Punch. That 1946 gift copy with Waugh’s marginal notations remains in his surviving library at the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Texas–one of the relatively few marked-up books in the collection.

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New Betjeman Collection

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

The Sunday Times has previewed a new collection of previously unpublished poems by Waugh’s friend John Betjeman, some of which have fairly explicit homosexual themes. The collection is entitled Harvest Bells and will be published later this month:

A newly discovered Betjeman poem entitled Sweets and Cake includes “the sturdy little arse of Teddy Sale” in a graphic and passionate encounter between a pair of schoolboys.The comic but increasingly explicit account of a heated fumble between Teddy, believed to be Betjeman’s alter ego, and another schoolboy named Neville is thought to have been written during the poet’s undergraduate days at Oxford in the mid-1920s.It was unearthed much later in a college archive and appears in a new collection of previously unpublished Betjeman poems called Harvest Bells. The most startling addition to Betjeman’s literary canon is undoubtedly Sweets and Cake, which takes a lurid turn after a memorable couplet: “I say, you’re awfully decent, Ted / Let’s find a place and go to bed.” […]

It was among Tom Driberg’s papers at Christ Church, Oxford, that researchers found clues that Betjeman may have gone far beyond schoolboy crushes. In addition to Sweets and Cake, they found a scatological poem believed to have been written to entertain his friends. In Summoned by Bells, his blank verse autobiography, Betjeman wrote of a youthful love that proved “too deep for words or touch”. But there is plenty of touching, not to mention messy mutual orgasms, in Sweets and Cake. Kevin Gardner, editor of Harvest Bells, said: “If in Summoned by Bells Betjeman dared not speak this love’s name, the two poems in the Driberg papers . . . fairly shout it out. In place of pastoral myth and innocent fantasy we encounter cheap, practical sex.”

Waugh was a friend of both Betjeman and his wife Penelope (who is thought by many to have been a model for certain traits of St Helena in Waugh’s 1950 novel). Waugh rather bullied Betjeman about his Anglicanism after Penelope converted to Roman Catholicism. Waugh’s friendship with both of them seemed to have rather cooled after that, although it continued at some level. For example, Betjeman gave Waugh a Victorian wash hand stand for his 50th birthday (1953) which provided the basis for one of Gilbert Pinfold’s hallucinations in Waugh’s late novel.

 

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Roundup: Wavian Influences

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley
–A long-neglected British artist named Frank Bowling is enjoying a renewal of interest in his work. This is led by a retrospective at the Tate Britain which opened on 31 May and continues through 26 August. Another smaller exhibit includes a 1980s work that was influenced by Evelyn Waugh. This is explained in an article by Javier Pes in ArtNet News:
“It would be tragic for Frank to just become a commodity before he is given his rightful place in the canon,” art dealer Paul Hedge tells artnet News. He reveals that he and his colleagues have also been kept busy reading Evelyn Waugh’s tragic-comic novel A Handful of Dust ahead of Art Basel this week because of Bowling.Why get up to speed with Waugh’s satire of the English upper classes, which was published the year Bowling was born, in what was then British Guyana? “Frank’s reaction was all about the way Waugh described the Guyanese jungle,” Hedges says. “He really took exception to that.” As a result, Bowling painted a series of “Cathedral” paintings in 1987 that Hales is presenting in its solo booth at Art Basel.
The Art Basel event is also mentioned in Apollo magazine:
Hales Gallery brings six of Bowling’s previously unshown Cathedral Paintings from the 1980s, inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust (1934) and built up with materials and objects through a process Bowling refers to as ‘cooking’ ($200,000–$400,000).
The Apollo article by Melanie Gerlis also includes a reproduction of one of the work’s in Bowling’s Art Basel exhibit: According to Waugh (1986). The Art Basil exhibitions and other events are open in that city from 13-16 June.
–Waugh’s work has also influenced art in another genre. This is popular music where a rock group known as Vampire Weekend, made up of former Columbia University students, had been profiled in the American Conservative magazine:
Vampire Weekend’s first three albums are heavily indebted to Evelyn Waugh. The band’s song “Arrows” is explicitly about Brideshead Revisited. The lyrics directly reference the book, while the arrows in the title and chorus are a reference to Saint Sebastian, and the music borrows elements from the Brideshead BBC series soundtrack. The band’s second album is titled “Contra,” which is, at least in part, inspired by the line in Brideshead where Charles says he’s with Sebastian “contra mundum.” Ezra Koenig, the frontman of the band, repeatedly mentioned Waugh in early interviews, and has recounted how he once dressed up as Sebastian Flyte for Halloween. While Koenig compared the band’s first three albums to Brideshead, their trilogy is closer in structure to Waugh’s Vile Bodies, in that the first two acts burst with quirky exuberance but build to a dark and bleak third act.

 

—The Guardian reviews the broadcast of the latest installment of ITV’s SevenUp series. This follows the lives of several British children of various class backgrounds from the 1960s to today, There us an update every seven years and the latest is called 63Up. Among those interviewed over the years with increasing interest is Neil Hughes. From a middle class background as the son of two schoolteachers, he seemed at first to have a promising future. According to the Guardian:

He adored literature and, after reading Brideshead Revisited, dreamed of going to Oxford. He got the required grades but flunked the admission exam. “I think I misquoted someone,” he sighs. It haunted him for years. He spent six months hitchhiking to toughen himself up. “When I think of the risks I took, the places I stayed, the people I associated with, I swallow hard.” He ended up at Aberdeen university, studying languages and law when Scottish nationalist students mounted what he calls a “soviet-style takeover” of student halls. “If you were not Scots, then woe betide you. Nobody threatened me, but it was a horrible atmosphere.”

Over the years, after dropping out of university, he was found living in a squat and working as a labourer and a grouse beater but later he seemed to settle down and was serving as a Liberal Democrat member of a town council and also as a lay reader in the Church of England. Although he says he stopped watching the series several years ago, he agreed to be interviewed for the latest series. This in episode 3 of the new series and is available on itvPlayer.

–A trace of Waugh’s influence is found by a reviewer of a new novel Red Line Blues by Scott Seward Smith.  This is about a Washington, DC romance between a conservative “foreign policy wonk” Owen Cassel and  Audrey, a liberal librarian. According to the Washington Times reviewer:

There are moments reading “Red Line Blues” when the hero and heroine reminded me of two Evelyn Waugh characters: Owen as an older, wearier version of Paul Pennyfeather, the hapless hero of “Decline and Fall,” and Audrey as a deeper, more intelligent Aimee Thanatogenos, the beautiful, innocent apprentice mortician in “The Loved One.” Unlike Waugh, who reveled in inflicting pain on his most sympathetic characters, Mr. Smith treats his with an engaging affection and compassion.

 

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Brideshead at 75

Posted on June 8, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

It was 75 years today that Evelyn Waugh completed his draft of Brideshead Revisited and sent it off to the typist. According to Robert Murray Davis (Evelyn Waugh, Writer, Chapter 6), Waugh had first mentioned writing another novel in October 1942 (Diaries, p. 529). Since his return from Crete, he had been moving around from one inconsequential army position to another. This continued in 1943 during which his father died in January and in September he again comments that “I want to get to work again” (p. 548). The story began to come together when he visited his friend Hubert Duggan at his deathbed in October. He helped arrange Duggan’s reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church and after that, began to think in earnest about writing the novel. In November during parachute training he cracked his fibula, requiring rest and recuperation. In January 1944 he formally applied for leave based on a “plan for a new novel which will take about 3 months to write” (p. 557, n. 1).

He set up his writing venue at the Easton Park Hotel in Chagford, Devon, and spent most of his time there writing the book. In the end it took a bit longer than he expected but the army extended his leave to accommodate him. His wife joined him at Chagford after he had finished drafting on 8 June  (Corpus Christi Day, 1944),* and they spent the next week correcting the typescript as it was returned to them (p. 568). On 16 June he left for London where he delivered the typescript to his publisher, sending another copy to a reader in Oxford to be vetted for religious howlers. On 20 June, he instructed his agent to send that copy to the US publishers.

Waugh rejoined his army unit a few days later with not much expectation of any meaningful activity. But then fate intervened when Randolph Churchill requested him on 28 June to join his mission to Marshall Tito’s forces in Yugoslavia. He was on an airplane in that direction by 4 July 1944 (p. 568-69), leaving behind, for the time being, the text of Brideshead to be seen through preparation by his agents and publishers.

*NOTE: Prof Gerard Kilroy says that Waugh “dated the ‘End’ of his manuscript of Brideshead: ‘[Eve of Corpus Christi, 1944]’.” See previous post. That would be 7 June in 1944. In his diary, Waugh wrote on 24 June 1944: “On Corpus Christi Day 1944, having been to communion at Gidleigh, I finished the last version of Brideshead Revisited and sent it to be typed.” (p. 568). It was probably the case that when he finished writing the day before, he considered the manuscript was completed but on returning from communion some additional changes occurred to him. Corpus Christi Day falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (which  is, in turn the Sunday after Whitsun). In 1944, Whitsun was 28 May, Trinity Sunday was 4 June and Corpus Christi Day was 8 June.

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Edmund Campion, Father Pro and Brideshead Revsited

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

Gerard Kilroy has written an interesting essay appearing this week in the Tablet. Prof Kilroy is the co-editor of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh volume of Waugh’s biography of Edmund Campion. The essay begins with a discussion of Campion’s dying words where he refers, inter alia, to the prayers of “the household of the faith”. Waugh chose as his working title for Brideshead Revisited, which he wrote 10 years after the biography: “A Household of the Faith: A Theological Novel”. Prof Kilroy explains several other connections between those two books as well as between the Campion biography and Waugh’s book on Mexico, Robbery Under Law. In the latter case the connection comes via Graham Greene’s contemporary books on Mexico where he describes the martyrdom of the Mexican priest Fr Miguel Pro which bears marked similarities to that of Edmund Campion.

The essay concludes with this:

Campion and Brideshead were closely linked in Waugh’s mind. In 1945, when sales of Brideshead Revisited in the United States soared past half a million, Waugh asked his agent to “cash in” on its success by publishing the first US edition of Edmund Campion. In a new Preface, Waugh portrays Campion as “amongst us”, the victim not of a moribund Elizabethan regime but of the secular state: “We have seen the Church driven underground in one country after another. The martyrdom of Father Pro in Mexico re-enacted Campion’s. In fragments and whispers we get news of other saints in the prison camps of Eastern and South-eastern Europe, of cruelty and degradation more frightful than anything in Tudor England, of the same, pure light shining in the darkness, uncomprehended. The hunted, trapped, murdered priest is amongst us again, and the voice of Campion’s comes to us across the centuries as though he were walking at our side.” […]

Waugh dated the “End” of his manuscript of Brideshead: “[Eve of Corpus Christi, 1944]”. “A Theological Novel” has to be read as an eschatological assertion: all earthly power will turn to dust while “A Household of the Faith”, the Church, will be crowned in glory. The eve of Corpus Christi occurred on 7 June 1944.

There was a US edition of Edmund Campion published by Sheed and Ward in 1935, but it consisted of sheets printed in England. The 1946 US edition contains a new preface written by Waugh and may reflect other revisions. It was issued by Little, Brown and was the first edition both printed and published in the USA. Prof Kilroy’s essay is highly recommended and may be viewed at this link. A subscription is required but the Tablet will give limited access with a simple registration.

UPDATE (22 June 2019): In a comment received today, Prof Kilroy corrected the last sentence in the above quote and this has been incorporated into the post.

 

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Barford House Revisited (Not Quite)

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

Duncan McLaren has posted his report on his visit to Barford House in Warwickshire following his trip to Piers Court. This was the house where Alastair Graham and his family lived and where Waugh made many visits even after Alastair took employment overseas. McLaren reports that there have been several improvements to the exterior walls and entrances to the property. He suspects this can be attributed to revenue from development of adjoining land but cannot determine whether there have been comparable improvements to the house and garden (in particular the temple) from that source. This is because he has not been granted access to visit the house and gardens.

He also develops an argument that Waugh’s landscaping improvements at Piers Court were inspired, at least to some extent, by the design of the Barford gardens and offers several pieces of evidence (including photographs and maps) to support this theory. In addition, he sends a report from a colleague relating to the protected building status of the house and temple:

I have done some research today. As a small correction, although possibly significant, to your Barford Revisited page, the Barford House itself and the Temple are not both Grade II. The house has the more significant Grade II* listing whilst the Temple is Grade II.

Another blogger (gerardcharleswilson.com/blog/) has posted a recommendation of McLaren’s earlier essay relating to Waugh and Orwell. He concludes:

Duncan’s writings are for the extreme Waugh lover. Prepare for a wild ride. He had received a letter from someone who mentioned a meeting between Waugh and George Orwell. Duncan’s imagination took flight. Enjoy.

UPDATE (7 June 2019): Duncan McLaren has added the following report regarding Barford House:

Tim Jones has been in touch with the Principal Conservation Officer at Warwick County Council, stating his concerns about the state of the gazebo at Barford House. He was told:

‘The Council does reserve the right to issue urgent repairs notices under S.54 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as an immediate interventionary measure when we are concerned about the building’s structural stability and state of repair.
‘We have been in touch with the owner previously and visited the site last year. Some repair work was carried out by the owner following this, however we will be visiting the site soon to assess the structure’s current condition and whether repairs are still ongoing.’

Which is encouraging, especially combined with the observation that there appears to be lots of renovation going on around Barford House, presumably linked to the sale of new houses built on ex-Barford House land.

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Early June Roundup

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

–In the current issue of TLS, Michael Caines reviews a short book of poetry parodies entitled Poets Cornered by Mark Handley:

Via chronological hops the collection proceeds from Chaucer (“to Spayne the pilgrims wende / A wholly blysseful suntanne for to seke”) as far as Philip Larkin (“She winds you up, your better half”). It includes a lukewarm essay in Pope’s mock-heroic mode, a translation of the Ancient Mariner into an Ancient Undergraduate, and Christmas as a Keatsian affair (“Season of pistes and frightful hollowness”) […] Consistently charming, however, are Handley’s linocuts, several of them of writers known more for prose than verse: the Iris Murdoch of The Sea, The Sea, masked as a Neptune and suitably armed for the role; Virginia Woolf smoking a pipe (“very soothing”, she apparently said of that habit); Evelyn Waugh with an ear trumpet; Georgette Heyer, for some reason, on a page opposite Handley’s take on Tamburlaine.

A copy of the Waugh and Virginia Woolf linocuts are reproduced in another review appearing in The Lettering Arts Trust journal. The book is not currently available from Amazon or other online sources and seems to be sold out elsewhere as well. It is published by a small house called Ye Fulle Bore Presse and copies may be ordered directly from them: (click to email). See comment below.

—The Spectator has an article on ideal literary-themed picnic sites. Among those selected is this:

Book: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

‘I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chñteau Peyraguey,’ announces Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s classic – which sounds like the perfect picnic to us. Although you may want more than strawberries to soak up the wine if you’re driving. Oxford’s Port Meadow, common land beside the river Thames (or Isis, as it is here) is as dreamily romantic a picnic spot as you can find: long grass, wild horses and the dreaming spires in the distance. The Perch is a 17th century tavern by the water with an outdoor bar and a huge garden, a twenty-minute stroll from the town centre.

The accompanying photo is a bit misleading, however, because it shows the Radcliffe Camera bracketed by Brasenose and All Souls Colleges. It seems doubtful that the proctors would allow picnics on the small plot of land appearing in the photo.

Another site recommended is associated with Kenneth Graham’s The Wind and the Willows:

Still the archetypal picnic for anyone who read this book as a child, Mole and Ratty’s picnic on the river has an innocence and universal appeal that can be recreated anywhere.

This is illustrated by a photo of the River Cam along the backs of colleges in Cambridge, whereas I was under the impression that the river stretch that inspired Graham was the Thames between Oxford and Marlow.

–A filmblog specializing in classic movies has posted a profile of actor Edward Woodward who died 10 years ago. It starts the review of his career with this:

Edward Woodward began his acting career by working in theatre and television. He first gained recognition with his performance as Guy Crouchback, in the 1967 BBC television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy, Sword Of Honour.

That six hour, three episode production is occasionally shown by the BFI and is available for individual viewing in their premises but is not accessible online from the BBC archives or retail digital media, probably due to “copyright” issues; or wasn’t the last time I looked.

—The Scotsman reviews a collection of short stories entitled salt slow by Julia Armfield. The reviewer Stuart Kelly makes this observation toward the end:

The prose is just a delight, wrong-footing the reader at every turn. The adjectives clash against the verbs, the names are sometimes wryly funny until the unexpected happens. My favourite line was: “My Father said a town was only as interesting as its bad apples and only as safe as its lunatics.” Second place would go to: “I told her that Evelyn Waugh’s first wife had also been named Evelyn and that the guy who voiced the Bugs Bunny cartoon had been allergic to carrots.” There is a smart-ass raised eye-brow in this, but with a deep emotional ache at its heart. Say the smart thing because you cannot bear to say the truth of a gruesome universe.

–The New York Times reviews a novel called Original Prin by Randy Boyagoda. According to reviewer Tom Barbash:

“Original Prin,” Randy Boyagoda’s third novel, is an original animal, a comedy of literary and cultural references, with wordplay involving unfunny matters like cancer, a crisis of faith and Islamic terrorism, as well as easier comedic subjects like juice-box fatherhood and academic power plays […] There are references throughout to those who were likely Boyagoda’s influences: Kingsley Amis (Prin’s comically domineering father is named Kingsley), Evelyn Waugh, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. Most of this is clever, often ingenious, but the frequency of one-liners works against the novel’s trajectory. The comedic exit ramps feel like authorial escapes, as if we can’t go more than a page or two before the next absurdity, and so we’re less involved in Prin’s journey, and more aware of Boyagoda’s restless intellect.

UPDATE (3 June 2019): The publisher of the book of parodies Poets Cornered has supplied their address for those wanting to purchase copies: (click to email)      See comment below.

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New Academic Journal Features Article about Waugh and Parties

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Jeffrey Manley

A new academic journal has been announced by H-Net.org (Humanities and Social Sciences Online). This is the Journal of Festive Studies. As explained in H-Net’s announcement releasing the first issue:

Journal of Festive Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed title publishing new research from all fields interested in festivities, including holiday celebrations, family rituals, carnivals, religious feasts, processions and parades, civic commemorations, and more. The first issue offers articles, state of the field essays, and reviews that consider a wide range of approaches to festivity […] The journal is co-edited by Ellen Litwicki (Professor of History, SUNY Fredonia) and AurĂ©lie Godet (Associate Professor of American Studies, Paris Diderot University) and backed by an editorial board of internationally recognized scholars in diverse fields of the humanities and social sciences, including cultural anthropology, sociology, history, management, folklore and popular culture, and Spanish and Portuguese.

The first issue (v.1, #1, Spring 2019) includes an article entitled “Reading the Party: Festivity as Waste in Evelyn Waugh’s 1930s Fiction”. This is by Naomi Milthorpe and Eliza Murphy, both from the University of Tasmania. Here’s the abstract:

This article outlines an approach to understanding festivity through the lens of literary texts. Studies of festivity in early twentieth-century literature center largely on the image of the party. Representations of parties in the literary texts of this period range widely, and the sheer number of parties found in this body of literature highlights the shared interest of writers of the time to explore the implications of festive sociability. Given these parameters a reader might expect the literature of the period to show parties positively: as utopian occasions for transformative jouissance leading to catharsis and (satisfying) narrative closure. Yet many texts of this time represent festivity not as pleasurable renewal but as unpleasurable waste. This is particularly the case in fiction by the English satirist Evelyn Waugh (1903–66). In Waugh’s texts, celebration tends toward destructive (rather than restorative) disorder. This article will read Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies (1930) and short story “Cruise: Letters from a Young Lady of Leisure” (1933), using Roger Caillois’s theory of games, to explore the ways in which parties become sites of wasteful play. Moreover, as this article will demonstrate, literary texts are central documents for understanding the cultural history and subjective experience of parties. They evidence the felt and imagined experiences of social and moral transgression; bodily, mental and affective transformation; and class, race, gender, and sexual boundary-crossing occasioned by festivity. In that sense, the discipline of literary studies can contribute to a robust interdisciplinary approach to understanding festivity.

Here’s a link to a PDF copy of the full article. Dr Milthorpe is editor of the Black Mischief volume in the Complete Works of Waugh Project, author of the book Evelyn Waugh’s Satire and Senior Lecturer at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.  Eliza Murphy is a PhD candidate at that university.

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