Why Waugh?

by T. M. Doran | IPNovels.com

If you made a list of writers who are masters at storytelling, masters of humor, and masters of English prose, it would be a short list. One who belongs on this list is Evelyn Waugh.

British novelist and journalist, Evelyn Waugh, had three books listed among the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th century, but he doesn’t seem to be read by many today, even those in literary circles.  Nonetheless, he is a masterful writer, able to evoke a broad spectrum of ideas and feelings with subtlety, poignancy, and humor.

I’m not an Evelyn Waugh scholar, expert, biographer, or anything of the sort, but I have read many of his novels, including those considered to be his best efforts: Brideshead Revisited, Scoop, Vile Bodies, and Handful of Dust, for both enjoyment and instruction in the art of writing, if such genius can be imparted.

One of the reasons for Waugh’s relative obscurity today, apart from the British society and events of his books belonging to another era, is his implicit rejection of nihilism, the lodestar for most “serious” authors since the 1960s.

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