Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh: classic or dud?

(Though I think we've dicussed this before, I'm not sure it had its own thread.)

classicish perhaps.

It is such a complex and layered book!

(It also reminds me so much of my own family.)

I don't look to Martin Amis for my opinions, especially not to his fiction; but as a journalist he is better, and 25 years ago, on a BR reissue, he wrote a quite insightful - and thus critical - review of it. Implausibly for such a would-be mandarin, he likened himself to Captain Hooper.

I entirely agree with Martin S. on teddy bears.

i like 'decline and fall', though.

Some x-posts.
The TV serialisation was surprisingly watchable for the first few episodes, much better than the book, but it did tail off badly.

While I don't go out of my way to read 'trash', I've read and enjoyed plenty of books more or less lacking entirely in 'artistic worth'.

I was pointing out to my gf, who is a huge BR (and Waugh) fan how deeply reactionary the book really is, how little of Waugh's worldview she actually subscribes to, and she kept citing all these lovely little passages she has retained over so many years. She also pointed out that as a novelist he was, if possible, less objectionale than he was as an epistolary correspondent. I bought her a book of letters between him and Nancy Mitford and he really does come off as an insufferably whiney curmodegeon especially in contrast to Nancy who is terribly charming.

this is from a horrible 2003 american spectator piece pretending like waugh wasn't a big racist:

Waugh's literary achievement was secure enough to survive the 1981 filmed adaptation of Brideshead Revisited -- described by his son Auberon as "Granada TV's multimillion-pound gay extravaganza" -- and the lamentable Teddy Bears for men craze it inspired, now of a piece with other such risible enthusiasms of the decade: yellow "power" ties for men, Bronco-Nagurski padded shoulders for women, A Flock of Seagulls. And it will doubtless survive the upcoming remake starring Colin Farrell and Jude Law that proposes to "excise" Charles Ryder's conversion to Rome, which is rather like excising the monster from Frankenstein.

rest here

1. is the miniseries more or less gay than the novel? or equally? i don't think the queer reading of BR is all that productive but it is supported by all kinds of textual evidence and the miniseries just runs with it.

2. this new movie no longer has colin farrell or jude law but a bunch of people i've never heard of plus emma thompson as lady marchmain. it is directed by the dude who made becoming jane, which i assume is terrible, and apparently is to focus on charles and julia's relationship. none of this sounds good. but i will see it anyway.

3. is the quoted paragraph accurate? was there a "Teddy Bears for men craze" inspired by BR? really? was it a cultural force comparable to power ties and a flock of seagulls?

4. waugh named his sons auberon and septimus. a+

1. it isn't that productive, at least in 2008

2. yeah

3. no

4. no

book is absolutely atrocious, and i think waugh knew it. he certainly knew the writing was appalling. can't imagine that the film will sign up to the book's catholicism and uh aristocracy-ism. without these things it's meaningless.

not swure how you do a "queer reading" of the book. dude has a pretty openly homosexual crush on the troubled rich kid.

see, i don't exactly agree with that. i think the 'openly homosexual crush' is more of an unhealthy fixation with everything regarding sebastian and his snootyass lifestyle, tinted by the pseudo-romantic imagery of repressive english society @ the time of the incident

I don't think this guy realizes that "Bronco-Nagurski" was a football player not a design team

movie with jeremy's iron is good

Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr Burt Stanton.

see, i don't exactly agree with that. i think the 'openly homosexual crush' is more of an unhealthy fixation with everything regarding sebastian and his snootyass lifestyle, tinted by the pseudo-romantic imagery of repressive english society @ the time of the incident

-- remy bean, Monday, March 24, 2008 9:22 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

waugh doesn't see it as unhealthy. and he *likes* repressive english society! it fucks his character up, and it fucked waugh up, but the anglo-catholic aristocracy represented all that was right and true. iirc he sees in julia what he had seen in sebastian. it's right there, not a queer thing you need to draw out.

is vile bodies worth reading?

yah it's his best book.

if the "openly homosexual" stuff is so open, what's the point of grotesque campus-homosexual parody anthony blanche?

http://www.abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk/Images/Blanche.jpg

Case for the prosecution:

"It was as though a deed of conveyance of her narrow loins had been drawn and sealed. I was making my first entry as the freeholder of a property I would enjoy and develop at leisure."

No wonder his son went on to establish the Bad Sex Award...

Mmmm. See, I'd say that's actually rather good, gets across very effectively what a cardboard souled asswipe Charles Ryder actually is, and how he's really only interested in the fucking house.