Brideshead Revisited (1945) – Evelyn WAUGH

It’s been a while since I read Evelyn Waugh – though the first few novels I read were from his earlier period, when he was still writing satire about the decline of the English aristocracy. Brideshead Revisited, though, is a far more major work, yet it still touches on similar themes.

Charles Ryder comes to Oxford University from a middle class family, and meets the wildly flamboyant Sebastian Flyte. As he becomes more and more enamoured with Sebastian’s way of life, he is introduced to the Flyte family, a relationship that will shift and move over the next twenty years, and make sure that Charles’ life will be changed forever.

This is an exceptionally sad novel. Not in the sense that you’ll be crying all the way through it, but the fact that it is relentlessly depressing in its portrayal of English society of the time means that there is little to find in the way of humour or light comic relief. It is certainly, then, a departure from Waugh’s earlier works, which dealt with similar themes, but in a far more humourous manner. perhaps Waugh thought satirising the crumbling British Empire was no longer the way to go.

Instead, Sebastian’s family – the Marchmains – are portrayed as being at the end of their tether. It is as though they are living out their final days on planet Earth in some kind of bizarre stupor. Lady Marchmain is slowly dying, her husband having run away to Venice with another woman because their marriage simply didn’t work. The children aren’t much better – Brideshead, the eldest boy, is strangely distant and asexual, caring more about matchboxes than continuing the family line. And Sebastian himself is a drunk, a layabout, and probably more concerning to his family, a gay. This is very much only alluded to, but when he shacks up with an attractive German man, the allusions are less than subtle.

Charles, the representative of the middle class, the people about to inherit England, does not understand just how much disconnect can exist between himself and this family.  While he clearly fell hard for the romantic and attractive Sebastian, the more and more he learns about this life, the less he seems to want to participate in it.

Another of Waugh’s earlier occupations is in full swing here, too. Waugh’s own troubled history with religion – starting out as an Anglican, and later converting to Catholicism – has permeated into his literature, and his own views of the Catholic Church, are clearly presented here.  Having Charles as a non-Catholic (indeed, an atheist) provides a sounding board for the other characters – the Marchmain family are, to varying degrees, all Catholic – to try to explain their views on this way of life, and how it interacts with everyday English society.

I quite liked the first thrid or so of the novel, when Charles and Sebastian’s relationship dominates. Sebastian is clearly the novel’s best invention, and he is in turn both charming and terrifying. Charles’ desire to be his friend (or something more) is easy to understand – we all know people like him, who we think are absolutely fantastic, but seem to be far beyond us. The fact that Charles’ dreams come true, and he becomes friends is, of course, the beginning of the end of his dreams. He knows he can never truly be a part of this society, and his disillusionment forces him to leave England, and go travelling in far-flung places to improve his painting abilities.

Unfortunately, I think Brideshead Revisited loses something when Sebastian leaves the stage, and instead we are left with Charles, who just doesn’t appeal that much. He’s so insufferably beige that you can’t help but want to shake him and make him do something. Even at the end, when he divorces his wife to be with Sebastian’s sister – Julia – there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly exciting about him. In fact, he seems to treat his wife quite badly – he has run off to the jungles of South America to paint, leaving her to raise the children he barely knows. It’s no wonder she has an affair with a younger man and wants to run off with him.

There’s a sense of disappointment when you come up against a classic and it doesn’t fulfill you the way you think it should. Alas, I got this sense when reading Brideshead Revisited. I prefer the satirical nonsense of Waugh’s earlier works, where everything is hurtling towards the end, the wheels coming off, plates crashing around you. Instead, the slower pace of Brideshead Revisited is dull in comparison – though by no means boring. If that makes any sense at all.

Black Mischief (1932) – Evelyn WAUGH

I reviewed Evelyn Waugh’s first novel a few months ago, and I was supposed to read this one straight after. Clearly, though, I didn’t. I have some vague memory of starting it (I was probably half-asleep), and not getting it, deciding it was too difficult, and leaving it. Having reread my review of Decline and Fall, it seems I didn’t like it. At all. How, then, did this fare?

Emperor Seth of Azania (a small, independent African island nation off the east coast) has decided, after the latest coup attempt, that the best thing for his minions is to receive a good dose of Progress and the New Age. The Emperor himself, of course, was educated at Oxford, and when one of his friends, Basil Seal, from Oxford arrives in Azania, Seth sets about modernising the entire country, so that everyone may live better lives.

Black Mischief is so much better than Decline and Fall. Clearly, Waugh has had some time to practice, and is now able to do things like plot and characters. Shock! And while the first few pages are a little confusing (it wasn’t just my tired brain), and once you realise this book is supposed to be farcically funny, it really is. The things that happen are just so ridiculous and stupid, you can do nothing but shake your head and laugh. Seth’s stubborn refusal to do anything that night not be seen as ‘modern’ – and conversely, to do everything that is ‘modern’, simply because it is – is hilarious, and while many people may now see Seth’s ideas as comparably mainstream, they are quite clearly ridiculous here.

Of course, this is a Waugh novel, so conservative politics and ideals are very clearly brought into play. Nothing escapes Waugh’s satire – and he is very good at what he does. The English population of Azania, a population Waugh was clearly frustrated with at the time, are presented as doddering old fools, who care more about the latest gossip from home that anything else. William and Prudence, the two young people, are particularly subject to vicious satire – they laze around all day making out, while Prudence tries to write a novel that appeals to the common man, that takes on the ‘Panorama of Life’. This little dig at the modernist movement, along with many other parts of the English upper classes are what we come to expect from Waugh, and in this novel, he doesn’t disappoint. Similarly, the French are presented as suspicious and conniving, and several running jokes about French women and English men are part of what we have come to expect as part of Waugh’s ‘delayed detonation’ technique of humour.

There is a clear juxtaposition between the anarchy of Seth’s rule (read: ‘modernity’), and the sombre and restrained ending which Waugh presents. Once the attempts at modernity have been stopped, Azania can return to being ruled by the colonial powers – in this case, the English and the French, and a sense of normalcy and safety returns to the island. Similarly, those characters who have left the island return to a life of restrained Englishness in their proper place in society. Basil, in particular, is completely neutered as a character – though, he is already fed up with Seth before the final events. This, from a character who was a little bit of a cad to begin with. Clearly, Waugh is not a fan of the cad. Sorry, I just love that word. Cad.

Ok, so in the end, I actually really enjoyed this novel. A lot. It restored my faith in Evelyn Waugh, and I will most definitely be going out to read some more of his stuff. I love that nothing is sacred, and everything becomes this site of attack, and everything is hilarious – but witty, at the same time. On the flip side, though, I think, so far, he only has one trick – attacking progress. Hopefully he finds something else to pick on.

Decline and Fall (1928) – Evelyn WAUGH

Continuing with my many books that have to be read for uni this semester (yes, my life is very tough…), I present Decline and Fall. I’d heard of Evelyn Waugh, but had never read him, and after being told that this was a hilarious satire about the upper classes of England in the inter-war period, I was very much looking forwward to being entertained.

Paul Pennyfeather is a young man at Oxford, having arrived after a fairly average high school career. An unfortunate case of mistaken identity, however, sees him booted out of Oxford, and he finds himself as a teacher in a second rate private school for Britain’s rich and elite. In Wales. Here, he meets a number of people who will change his life in ways he never imagined, least of all Margot Beste-Chetwynde.

To be totally honest, I’ve never really been a big fan of satire. Partially because it usually goes over my head. My lecturer believes that satire is good for the reader because it panders to their intelligence – it makes jokes at the expense of the context in which it is written, and which the reader is expected to understand. Maybe it’s because this book was written eighty years ago. Maybe I’m just not smart enough. I didn’t get it.

Probably the biggest problem I have with the novel is Paul himself. He’s so badly written, that I had a lot of trouble identifying with him at all. He just seems to go from event to event, never changing, and barely making any sort of assertion or opinion of his own. He is very much a wet blanket, who you just want to slap in the face and tell him to do something. Anything. He seems to get lost underneath all of the other crazy events and over-the-top characters that exist in this book. And there are many. Some of the farcial bits of this book are just plain silly. The Sports Day, for example, is the main set-piece of the novel, and it just gets confusing. Admittedly, there are some bits that are funny, but they get lost in the mess that is Waugh’s writing. And I can’t even describe what’s so wrong about it – it just doesn’t gel with me in any way.

I do like some of the caricatures of people, though, that are ever present in this novel. The architect, Professor Silenus, is very good as an exaggerated, frustrated artist, who designs these completely unliveable modernist houses, and everyone praises him ’cause they think they have to. So, too, are the teachers in LLanabba School – they have all completely lost the will to teach, and the boys that populate the school are little brats, anyway. Perhaps this is the redeeming feature of Decline and Fall – the caricatures of people that exist throughout the whole book. Now they just need to be written into a good novel…

In the end, I’m afraid this wasn’t for me. While some of the characters are nice, I didn’t enjoy reading it. I kept waiting for it to end, which is not a good sign. I think the thing that frustrated me most was that while Waugh’s ideas were sound enough, the execution of said ideas failed as a novel. And now I have to read another one. Hmm. Hopefully he got better as he went on.