false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171054051m/84392.jpg 30937 7 Mordant, mirthful, and unrelenting in their lampoon of aristocratic mischief, Evelyn Waugh's novels have earned him a permanent place in the literary pantheon. But this cantankerous master--the scion, by the way, of a decidedly middle-class family of publishers and writers--was no less adept when it came to the short form. Indeed, Waugh first broke into print in 1926 with "The Balance: A Yarn of the Good Old Days of Broad Trousers and High Necked Jumpers," an early story that suggests a modernized and misanthropic P.G. Wodehouse. And he continued to write short fiction throughout the rest of his career, all of which has now been collected in the delectable <i>Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh</i>. <p> The first few entries in the collection capture a kinder, gentler author, not yet red at the verbal tooth and claw. But by 1932, when he wrote "Love in the Slump," Waugh's eye for the black-comic detail was firmly in place: <blockquote> It rained heavily on the day of the wedding, and only the last-ditchers among the St. Margaret's crowd turned out to watch the melancholy succession of guests popping out of their dripping cars and plunging up the covered way into the church.... A doctor was summoned to attend the bridegroom's small nephew, who, after attracting considerable attention as a page at the ceremony by his outspoken comments, developed a high temperature and numerous disquieting symptoms of food poisoning. </blockquote> Waugh's wit only sharpened throughout the succeeding decades, and the very texture of his prose thickened (although it never took on much in the way of modernist adipose tissue). In "Compassion," a 1949 tale that belies the author's vaunted anti-Semitism, a mere glimpse of some Yugoslavian partisans leads to this superabundant sentence: "He passed ragged, swaggering partisans, all young, some scarcely more than children; girls in battle dress, bandaged, bemedalled, girdled with grenades, squat, chaste, cheerful, sexless, barely human, who had grown up in mountain bivouacs, singing patriotic songs, arm-in-arm along the pavements where a few years earlier rheumatics had crept with parasols and light, romantic novels." Nobody can accuse Waugh of squishy sentimentality--remember, romantic prose is strictly for convalescents. Still, <i>The Complete Stories</i> offers an accurate and stupendously entertaining vision of human folly, no less effective for being administered in smaller doses. 518841 1997 The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh total:131|5:41|4:63|3:22|2:3|1:2| 131 531 266 14 4 0 false false Sat Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 05:28:44 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 05:35:39 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 22 07:14:47 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 22 07:18:22 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Jul 07 09:22:47 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 09:23:49 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 09 06:04:09 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 09 06:06:24 -0700 2008 the complete stories are brilliant, of course. It's amazing how well he mingled deep misery and hilarity: most of these pieces make you laugh while you're reading, then afterwards you feel extremely sad. I'm rating it only three stars simply because at least half of the book is unfinished wo...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Dec 18 08:08:01 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 21 08:43:17 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 23 19:25:15 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 28 12:02:11 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Fri Feb 22 19:08:29 -0800 2008 Thu May 10 20:05:34 -0700 2007 Sat Jan 19 22:32:55 -0800 2008 Aptly described by the guy who reads to me in bed as "England's Fitzgerald," Waugh's short stories skip lightly to a usually grim end.]]> 5 0 true false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 20:37:10 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 22:21:38 -0700 2008
Next on to "The Loved One."]]> 5 0 false false Wed Oct 01 14:19:34 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 01 14:20:31 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Fri Jan 02 09:13:36 -0800 2009 Mon Apr 27 10:05:35 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Mar 08 23:10:21 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 18 22:31:53 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 21 20:24:22 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Mon May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sun Aug 02 00:38:11 -0700 2009 Wed Nov 11 21:50:41 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jan 23 22:08:30 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 23 22:09:00 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 12 10:08:37 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 20 06:07:13 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Sat Nov 21 20:31:23 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 21 20:31:23 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Nov 10 17:50:57 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 17:50:57 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sat Nov 07 10:51:25 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 10:51:31 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Oct 25 09:03:58 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 09:04:01 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Oct 22 06:06:49 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 06:06:49 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 16 08:49:38 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 16 08:49:38 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=84392