Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

I read for knowledge

Umfassend recherchiert; lebendig geschrieben; eine echte Hilfe, um sich die Literatur des "Jazz Age" zu erschließen, natürlich insbesondere die Romane E. Waugh's.

Very good material for a work on spiritual theology. This book recounts the "Aesthete's Conversion" but I am still not quite sure whether or not it was a complete moral and religious conversion. Evelyn's own evalutation of "Brideshead Revisited" varied later he felt it too "sentimental". His magnum opus is a marvelous thing to rival Shakespeare in its ability to fascinate and mesmerise - especially in its GRANADA Television rendition. I think Waugh is like Shakespeare though with a rather more archetectural approach to the composition of character and narrative. The key thing I am referring to in the title of the review is Lord and Lady Beauchamp's somwhat opposing appreciations of the window in their chapel. The problem with Evelyn and Catholicism as representated in England is that it does come with a taint. Kierkegaard was also concerned that metaphore and story can hide as much as reveal theological truths.I think in a way Evelyn Waugh has laid out the ordinary man's journey to and away from God. G K Chestertons remarks about Anglicans being more devoted to beauty than truth has a bitter truth to it. But Evelyn at least tried to address the aesthetic needs of those addressed by his "apology". He is doing aesthetically what Newman tried to do intellectually- present an "Apologia Pro Vita Sua".

Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Paula Byrne has an obvious love not only for Evelyn Wagh and the 'Mad' Lygons, but for the world they inhabited. A world that faded just as the country homes and the life-style those homes supported faded with the end of the Second World War.An easy read, well researched and well presented. Mad World made me reach for my well thumbed copy of Brideshead Revisited with new eyes, appreciating more fully the nuances of the story told by Waugh through the voice of Charles Ryder. The book took on new meaning as I uncovered the composite characters that went to make up the world of Brideshead; from Sebastian to Snodgrass, from Cordelia to Marchmain, a world I thought I was familiar with had its access changed through the revelations made by Byrne's research.Like Brideshead after the death of Sebastian Flyte,'Mad World' looses its sense of romance with the untimely and tragic death of Hugh Lygon. In the pages that follow Hugh's demise there is a feeling that Byrne is striving to reach her conclusion and leaving the last pages feeling they have lost some of her sensitivity and natural style. Perhaps volume two may be around the corner? If so, I'll place my order now. Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Although Ms Byrne labors to include mention of buggery into every other sentence, the book failed to sustain my attention. Waugh wrote a few good novels in his youth ( "Scoop" is much better than "Brideshead" ) but, other than that, seems to have been little more than an emotionally repressed snob. He himself makes rather inadequate subject matter for a book.