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A review by michaelontheplanet
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
4.0
Decline And Fall is Waugh at his most piercing, polemical and disturbing. The cast of irredeemable characters behaving outrageously and voicing opinions of such venom and prejudice makes for unsettling - yet hilarious - reading. Unlike lesser haters, Waugh doesn't secretly love or admire them, he hates them all. It's difficult to unpick the authorial voice from the ridiculous views of some of the most preposterous protagonists, and this is the charm of the work - you won't read it and feel uplifted, in fact you'll be lucky if you don't feel a bit sullied.
It's the outbursts that are the best, such as the vicar commenting that an interest in liturgical matters in the laity is usually a sign of the onset of madness, or Dr Fagan's rant about the Welsh - "we can trace almost all of the disasters of English history or the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life...and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging." Can't argue really....
If you think of Waugh as Brideshead, repressed sexuality and country house psychosexual drama, Decline And Fall will disabuse you. One of the most caustic, difficult and unloveable of authors he fathered the decline in deference by portraying the upper classes as demented, sexually dysfunctional, avaricious, stupid and morally bankrupt. It's probably best he's not around to see the celebrity obsessed, Hello/Heat culture of the times, or George Osborne as chancellor....
It's the outbursts that are the best, such as the vicar commenting that an interest in liturgical matters in the laity is usually a sign of the onset of madness, or Dr Fagan's rant about the Welsh - "we can trace almost all of the disasters of English history or the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life...and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging." Can't argue really....
If you think of Waugh as Brideshead, repressed sexuality and country house psychosexual drama, Decline And Fall will disabuse you. One of the most caustic, difficult and unloveable of authors he fathered the decline in deference by portraying the upper classes as demented, sexually dysfunctional, avaricious, stupid and morally bankrupt. It's probably best he's not around to see the celebrity obsessed, Hello/Heat culture of the times, or George Osborne as chancellor....