On Waugh

A nice review on the current public regard of Evelyn Waugh, a personal favorite of yours truly. My only gripe is the strenuous denigration of "Brideshead Revisited," described as Waugh's worst book, an overheated bit of wartime nostalgia and romanticism for an aristocratic Oxfordian England that never existed. Be that as it may, as a work of fiction, it never bothered me that much.

But is it also true that Waugh's growing Roman Catholic piety loaded down the book? But Waugh's developing obsession with his faith meant that the comedy in his work becomes intermittent and less successful: it lacks the cool, gimlet-eyed dispassion of the earlier works. As Waugh's novels became more self-consciously serious - as God entered the frame - so they began to creak and sag. Well, if they "creak and sag" as comedies, they hold their own about the effects of Catholic faith on the mental structure and physical acts of a person's life, the inescapability of the Faith no matter where you run; hence, the interesting inclusion of Chesterton's "Father Brown" mysteries within "Brideshead," with their telling imagery of God "tugging on the thread" of those who have fallen away from Him. If that's not the stuff of novels -- mystery, doubt, escape, and the necessary return -- what, pray tell, is?