Paul's review
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
Tee hee. As someone who knows The Secret History almost by heart, I look forward to seeing how Brideshead Revisited compares to it. I'll check it out for myself very soon.
I read this while in college and spent nights trying to gain a deeper understanding of it by drinking cheap beer, all the while thinking to myself, "What the hell is REALLY going on here?"
As I remember it, the story was all heavy implications coated in an eloquent writing style, containing characters I was completely indifferent to.
I don't think another 6 pack of good beer could get me to read this again.
Reading your review was a total delight. It's like having a much smarter friend who is not too sniffy to tell a girl from the provinces what the real world of books and the mind is all about. You had me from the first of your reviews I read, Smila's Sense of Snow ( I think) -- and I've never looked back.
Viz the way Lord Lucan's cronies all rallied round him when the old boy murdered his nanny.
I've flirted with reading this one a time or two. I think you've just saved me a good deal of time. Thank you, and I owe you some good chocolate.
Delightful review. Not so sure I'll read the book - but I love the quotes you chose to share. But I did enjoy The Secret History and you called it a what? Oh "slowly crawling overfed turtle of a book" that's funny!
Thanks for all these comments. I may go after Graham Greene next, he's due for a light kicking I feel.
Try "The Power and the Glory". Lots of fuel there.
Mmmm, Heart of the Matter...
Can you mark this for spoilers? I just read too much :(
Oops sorry Lynn - I need to learn how to do that
The homosexuality is often debated. I'd tend to agree with you that it's very prominent (the new, oddly rewritten film version makes it all the more so with a kiss, etc) but you have to remember a few things--liek when it was set. As the father's mistress tells Charles in Italy, in England very close almost romantic relationships between young men in those old British colleges was accepted as normal in England and even as maybe necesary (EM Forsters' Maurice takes this as a starting poitn when the character of Maurice fails to see his relationship as more than that and his firend isn't happy to move on to women after).
I love the book, but what confuse sme about your review is why you expect things like the homosexuality to be disapproved of. I think you expect Waugh to side more on the fence one way or the other with his themes, and that doens't interest him.
Interestingly Waugh was known to have mainly gay relationships in his college days, then was married three times and "straight" afterwards (some argue that he never really was able ot make it work which could be argued of the character of Charles as well) and he became a VERY devout catholic who served in the war (I always foudn this amusing because to my mind Brideshead is most about Catholic guilt and the problems it causes). That sadi apparantly, in his Oxford days anyway, Waugh was less like Charles, and much more like the character of Anthony Blanche!
I may have been unclear about where I was expecting the disapproval of homosexuality to be coming from. In the first place, there's no disapproval expressed at all by the characters in the book. In the second place, likewise no disapproval expressed by the author. This - to me - was surprising and very gratifying. Perhaps gay people weren't so despised as I had thought they were. Then finally, when the book was published in 1945, again, no disapproval. Very enlightened all round. Of course throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s gay men were being given prison sentences for having sex - so hence my surprise. I hope this is clearer.
The romantic-attachment thing I take to be a polite euphemism, by the way!
Ah that makes sense--sorry I think I mis read it that you felt there should be disapproval. Many critics do think that his mom's disapproval of, and the Catholic guilt over his homosexuality is one reason Sebastian starts drinking so much--but again like every detail in regards to the sexuality, that could be, and has been, argued both ways.
I think if you asked Waugh he might actually say Charles and Sebastian's relationship wasn't sexual--it was an idealized one that reanscended that, but personally I'm with you on the issue. But, like I said, in the upper classes of the time for the most part close male to male relationships in college were seen as a antural part of growing up. I think as long as you got married after, etc, mostly they didn't care what you did. Anyway, I liked the book much more than you, but you raise a lot of really interesting points--that probablymake me like it all the more (I'd wonder if reading it when Iw as a yougn teen dealign with my sexuality played a part--though it's also a fave book, and miniseries, of my father and a number of fairly, I'd say, "straight" guys I know).
E
Paul's review
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Paul's review
rating:
bookshelves:
novels
********Please note - contains spoilers ************
One's head is rather spinning, there are so many terribly good things and likewise so very much abject wretchedness it's hard to begin. Let us try.
1) This book is the twisted story of a homosexual affair, which I was truly not expecting it to be. It's famously set amongst the upper classes, firstly in Oxford, so you get pages of blissed-out descriptions of life amongst British aristocratic students in the 1920s and how many plovers eggs they eat and which claret they guzzle. That part is what I was expecting, and very lush and delectable and appalling it is too. But what surprised me is that it all takes place within a thick pall of implied and overt homosexuality. The two principals of the first half, Charles and Sebastian, are in love, clearly. they do everything and go everywhere together. And the best character in the whole book is a Quentin Crisp-style flaming queer called Anthony Blanche who says things like
"Goo...more
One's head is rather spinning, there are so many terribly good things and likewise so very much abject wretchedness it's hard to begin. Let us try.
1) This book is the twisted story of a homosexual affair, which I was truly not expecting it to be. It's famously set amongst the upper classes, firstly in Oxford, so you get pages of blissed-out descriptions of life amongst British aristocratic students in the 1920s and how many plovers eggs they eat and which claret they guzzle. That part is what I was expecting, and very lush and delectable and appalling it is too. But what surprised me is that it all takes place within a thick pall of implied and overt homosexuality. The two principals of the first half, Charles and Sebastian, are in love, clearly. they do everything and go everywhere together. And the best character in the whole book is a Quentin Crisp-style flaming queer called Anthony Blanche who says things like
"Goo...more
Tee hee. As someone who knows The Secret History almost by heart, I look forward to seeing how Brideshead Revisited compares to it. I'll check it out for myself very soon.
I read this while in college and spent nights trying to gain a deeper understanding of it by drinking cheap beer, all the while thinking to myself, "What the hell is REALLY going on here?"As I remember it, the story was all heavy implications coated in an eloquent writing style, containing characters I was completely indifferent to.
I don't think another 6 pack of good beer could get me to read this again.
Reading your review was a total delight. It's like having a much smarter friend who is not too sniffy to tell a girl from the provinces what the real world of books and the mind is all about. You had me from the first of your reviews I read, Smila's Sense of Snow ( I think) -- and I've never looked back.
Viz the way Lord Lucan's cronies all rallied round him when the old boy murdered his nanny.
I've flirted with reading this one a time or two. I think you've just saved me a good deal of time. Thank you, and I owe you some good chocolate.
Delightful review. Not so sure I'll read the book - but I love the quotes you chose to share. But I did enjoy The Secret History and you called it a what? Oh "slowly crawling overfed turtle of a book" that's funny!
Thanks for all these comments. I may go after Graham Greene next, he's due for a light kicking I feel.
Try "The Power and the Glory". Lots of fuel there.
Mmmm, Heart of the Matter...
Can you mark this for spoilers? I just read too much :(
Oops sorry Lynn - I need to learn how to do that
The homosexuality is often debated. I'd tend to agree with you that it's very prominent (the new, oddly rewritten film version makes it all the more so with a kiss, etc) but you have to remember a few things--liek when it was set. As the father's mistress tells Charles in Italy, in England very close almost romantic relationships between young men in those old British colleges was accepted as normal in England and even as maybe necesary (EM Forsters' Maurice takes this as a starting poitn when the character of Maurice fails to see his relationship as more than that and his firend isn't happy to move on to women after).
I love the book, but what confuse sme about your review is why you expect things like the homosexuality to be disapproved of. I think you expect Waugh to side more on the fence one way or the other with his themes, and that doens't interest him.
Interestingly Waugh was known to have mainly gay relationships in his college days, then was married three times and "straight" afterwards (some argue that he never really was able ot make it work which could be argued of the character of Charles as well) and he became a VERY devout catholic who served in the war (I always foudn this amusing because to my mind Brideshead is most about Catholic guilt and the problems it causes). That sadi apparantly, in his Oxford days anyway, Waugh was less like Charles, and much more like the character of Anthony Blanche!
I may have been unclear about where I was expecting the disapproval of homosexuality to be coming from. In the first place, there's no disapproval expressed at all by the characters in the book. In the second place, likewise no disapproval expressed by the author. This - to me - was surprising and very gratifying. Perhaps gay people weren't so despised as I had thought they were. Then finally, when the book was published in 1945, again, no disapproval. Very enlightened all round. Of course throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s gay men were being given prison sentences for having sex - so hence my surprise. I hope this is clearer.
The romantic-attachment thing I take to be a polite euphemism, by the way!
Ah that makes sense--sorry I think I mis read it that you felt there should be disapproval. Many critics do think that his mom's disapproval of, and the Catholic guilt over his homosexuality is one reason Sebastian starts drinking so much--but again like every detail in regards to the sexuality, that could be, and has been, argued both ways.
I think if you asked Waugh he might actually say Charles and Sebastian's relationship wasn't sexual--it was an idealized one that reanscended that, but personally I'm with you on the issue. But, like I said, in the upper classes of the time for the most part close male to male relationships in college were seen as a antural part of growing up. I think as long as you got married after, etc, mostly they didn't care what you did. Anyway, I liked the book much more than you, but you raise a lot of really interesting points--that probablymake me like it all the more (I'd wonder if reading it when Iw as a yougn teen dealign with my sexuality played a part--though it's also a fave book, and miniseries, of my father and a number of fairly, I'd say, "straight" guys I know).
E
