MORE ON WAUGH TO COME....
This was his "breakout" book as we would say today. It was hailed as a comic masterpiece. But one wonders if its humour translates well across tome and cultures. Read it for yourself and see. I'll re-read it myself and see.
This was followed by his second novel "Vile Bodies" which whilst well received did not receive the stellar reviews of his first. But he was Clearly established as a "Literary Lion" on the basis of these two books.
A small book he wrote that I read whilst at University - mainly as the subject of the book appealed to me - this was a biography of Edmund Campion. The book raised his stock in Catholic circles and was published just prior to his marriage and after the annulment of his first marriage. Whilst not his greatest book by far still I enjoyed it when I first read it. He dedicated the book to Father D'Arcy the priest who received him when he "swam the Tiber" and was sometime master of Campion Hall the Jesuit college at Oxford.
Fir this short biography Waugh won the Hawthornden prize in 1936 at the time the most prestigious literary prize in England.
Today whilst critically acclaimed at the time it is not regarded as his best book. That accolade is reserved for A Handful of Dust.
BUT - To what extent has his writing survived the vagaries of time and shifting tastes? They are certainly still readable to some extent, But I suspect that the sharp humour/satire of his comic novels has dulled and perhaps faded beyond modern taste.
What has prompted these musings about Waugh was my purchase of a new Biography whilst in London - Philip Eade - Evelyn Waugh A Life Revisited.
It is perhaps the better biography of Waugh than that of Sykes that I've read. Although fair to say I need to re-read the Sykes biography.
Ordered and arrived today the Penguin edition of Waugh's diaries. A true pity there are none from his time at Oxford. He apparently destroyed all of these or what he had written at that time. One wonders why.
