Brideshead Revisited in The Dusty Bookshelf

Jun 01, 2017 Anne (Booklady) Molinarolo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: summer-2017, classics, literary-fiction, read-around-world

"My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one gray morning of war-time.

But for Charles Ryder, the coming back to Brideshead evokes much more than memories. Twenty some odd years ago at Oxford, he met Sebastian Flyte and for Charles Ryder
that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave s "My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one gray morning of war-time.

But for Charles Ryder, the coming back to Brideshead evokes much more than memories. Twenty some odd years ago at Oxford, he met Sebastian Flyte and for Charles Ryder
that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence."

There it is. CATHOLIC GUILT in Capital letters. Sebastian lost his joy, his own identity because of Lady Marchmain's deeply held Catholicism. The more she manipulated him, the more poor Sebastian drank. "It's where my family lives," Sebastian tells Charles on the day Ryder first visited Brideshead.

Prior to his second visit to Brideshead and just before before we see Julia Flyte's impressions upon Charles, his old Oxford buddy, Anthony says to him regarding his latest Art Exhibit, " I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers.” “You’re quite right,” I said. “My dear, of course I’m right. I was right years ago—more years, I am happy to say, than either of us shows—when I warned you. I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

But Charles Ryder tells us, Looking back, now, after twenty years, there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise."

And after reading Brideshead Revisited, I agree Charles Ryder couldn't have done anything but what he did. ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2017 Karen rated it liked it

What an odd book. A more apt title would be Brideshead and Casual Racism Revisited. My my but all the references to inappropriate turns of phrase which I need not repeat here. Some books age well. Some don't. This one hasn't. This book is steeped in a culture that really no longer exists, and because it was written from the perspective of one who lived through such a time with such people, there's no room for explaining it to the rest of us. Particularly us "boorish Colonials". So even though I' What an odd book. A more apt title would be Brideshead and Casual Racism Revisited. My my but all the references to inappropriate turns of phrase which I need not repeat here. Some books age well. Some don't. This one hasn't. This book is steeped in a culture that really no longer exists, and because it was written from the perspective of one who lived through such a time with such people, there's no room for explaining it to the rest of us. Particularly us "boorish Colonials". So even though I've heard this is a poignant and oftentimes funny and charming book, brimming with nostalgia and tragedy, I didn't get it. Too much of it seemed frivolous and silly. The people in it hardly seemed people, but caricatures of the uselessly wealthy. They were all the type of people who know how to act and talk but it all comes to nothing. There's no realness beneath their fancy facades. Plus, I felt the narrator to be a callous, grasping fellow. Oh, he's got no money? Better try to get himself an invitation to Brideshead, where they'll pay all his bills. Oh, he's got a wife he doesn't like? Better avoid her at all costs, completely abandon his children, and have an affair with a blank, shallow heiress. Oh, his friend's going in a bad way? Better let him do his own thing. It'll be fine, right?

The real tragedy in all this, I thought, was Sebastian. Here was a man who was brought up on what the narrator calls a bunch of nonsense that wrecked havoc on his psyche, combined with the overwhelming shallowness and, almost, cruelty of the very wealthy to create a man who had no purpose, no happiness, and no escape. All he did was drink and try to forget everything he was. There were references to the fact that he was gay, and that he and the narrator were lovers, but it all sort of came to naught in the end. Personally, I thought that was the root of the trouble: he wanted to love who he wanted to love but his church made it so his conscience was guilty and drove him to drink. But I really don't know because there's not much to go off of, here. And it also certainly didn't seem like he was stopped from loving whoever he wanted to. It seems more like Charles Ryder rejected him and he couldn't see a way to be happy, not that he ever was, so instead he turned to drinking and trying to get away from his family. Really, I wanted the whole book to be about their relationship and I wanted there to be more of a relationship (so much not talking in amongst all the talking). The whole second half of the book was about Charles's doomed love affair with Julia, doomed because of her religion. Because he didn't get her religion so even though she'd never really been that religious, her father's death threw her back into it and she couldn't get over the fact that Charles didn't share her beliefs. Okay. Sure. Whatever floats your boat. But she was boring. She was passionless and he was passionless even as he was declaring his passion. So much of this book was pretty dialogue -- the kind you might hear eavesdropping at Downton Abbey -- and meaningless. Or, if it had meaning, it had meaning to a breed of person entirely different to myself. This might have been one book where I would have benefitted from annotations. For example, Pride and Prejudice is much funnier when someone explains all the jokes. It's a downright hoot. This book left me cold. I felt like I couldn't break below the surface and I also felt like it wasn't my fault as a reader. I was an English major. I know how to pick apart a book. But this one wasn't about literature, it was about the subtle nuances of a culture long gone that I have no real conception of and no great desire to learn about.

The whole reason I even read this book was because of the movie, with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw. The movie is so much the same. I liked both because of their aesthetic. The movie is all clouds and muted neutrals in lovely colors: dove grey and rose pink. There are beautiful scenes and beautiful people being beautiful together. And the score is simply divine. I listen to it often. In fact, I found all the titles of the soundtrack hidden in the book, which made me very happy. But what did I remember of the movie? A dashed romance between Sebastian and Charles. I didn't even remember the Julia bits. So it was beautiful in that lost way of nobles hanging on to Edwardian tradition decades after it should have gone by the bye. It also makes me think of Testament of Youth and Atonement, except that Testament has the badge of being a true story and Atonement the badge of being a good story, full of passion and genuine feelings from the upper classes. Atonement I believe. Atonement I get. Brideshead Revisited? A lovely excursion of an afternoon, soon forgot and left to the past from whence it came. ...more

Like · see review