Reading the Classics discussion

Discuss Brideshead Revisited here.
In the beginning, we can discuss our expectations of the book, then later maybe we can open a spoiler-thread to discuss what happens in the book.

I read this one 1st as an undergrad & then again in my '30s. So it is probably time for another read & there is also a recent book on the eccentric family who were Waugh's models for the Marchmains.

This is my first Waugh. After reading the introduction, I am amazed that he wrote this book in a mere few months. Otherwise, I am embarking on this read with little in the way of expectations.

Just got Paula Byrne's Mad World: Evelyn Waugh & the Secrets of Brideshead from the uni lib.

I have been busy and haven't had a lot of time for reading, but this book is starting to drag a bit for me. If this discussion thread is any indicator, it doesn't appear as if anyone would characterize this book as a page turner.

Waugh wrote BR in the last years of WWII, when he'd pretty much failed as a commando officer & this book is a kind of memoir of spacious prewar life amongst the upper classes (narrated by what we'd call 'a wanna be') & also propaganda for a romantic species of Roman Catholicism to which he was a convert. (Vat II blew him quite out of the water.) The pudding now seems ever so slightly over-egged but as a story of uni-life for me it remains a classic & if the ICPL gets back its audio, I'll have more to share soon.

The book is somewhat slow, I agree, but I also think that is partly the style of writing at the time. Most of the types of Oxford students described are tied to their period in history, and for that view the book is interesting. The period between the wars was so distinctive and enthralling as well as nostalgic for what is already passing that it made for a lot of great literature. This is also the Golden Age of mysteries.

I made the mistake of reading about Waugh and his beliefs and now I don't like him (and it seems his eldest son was a chip off the old block). Of course if I decided not to read books by any author I disagreed with, my reading would be limited and I wouldn't be very well-rounded. However, combined with the slow pace of the book, it's making it difficult. I plan to finish though, and am hoping there will be a payoff at the end. I found Middlemarch to be extremely slow in a lot of places, but am very glad I pushed through. It was definitely worth it. I'm hoping this book will fall in that category.

I haven't seen the series or the movie, so the story is completely new to me.

Kathy wrote: "I made the mistake of reading about Waugh and his beliefs and now I don't like him (and it seems his eldest son was a chip off the old block). Of course if I decided not to read books by any author..."
EW was indeed a very odious person & his variety of Catholicism pretty toxic. It didn't help that he drank much more than was good for him. At his funniest, tho', he is an absolute screech & he was a superb social satirist. Decline & Fall, A Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies, & The Loved One are all brilliant, as are the better parts of the Sword of Honour trilogy.

When I 1st read BR 55 yrs ago, I wasn't as nearly struck by how overwhelmingly male EW's Oxford was. Now the absence of women students seems very odd indeed. Perhaps related to that is how much more fluid the sexual identities of the characters seem to be compared to now. Contemporary culture divides everybody between 'straight' & 'gay' whilst in the world of BR it's perfectly possible to have a relationship with someone of either sex.

Bill wrote: "Perhaps related to that is how much more fluid the sexual identities of the characters seem to be compared to now. Contemporary culture divides everybody between 'straight' & 'gay' whilst in the world of BR it's perfectly possible to have a relationship with someone of either sex. .."

Yes, I noticed that too. It seems it was almost expected that men at least, would experiment with male-male relationships. I don't know about women. The difference between then and now of course is that they were also expected to "grow out of it", since homosexuality among adults was illegal.

Yes, homosexuality was illegal, but it was also quite socially acceptable, @ least in sophisticated circles, so long as one was discreet. Perhaps contemporary attitudes towards using drugs might give us a parallel.

Now about 40% into BR. Struck by the detail that Sebastian & Julia resemble each other physically: as both become involved with Charles, it's sort of like incest by proxy. The terribly OTT Anthony Blanche wss based on two real people, Brian Howard & Harold Acton. Howard came to quite a bad end but Acton was a successful art collector & writer. He wrote an autobiogrphy called Memoirs of an Aesthete (thank you Jeremy Irons for teaching me the classy pronunciation; first syllable as in 'east' not as in 'estimate'). I've not read it but I did once read The Last Bourbons of Naples & found it excellent. Apparently Anthony Blanche's account of being ducked in the fountain by a gang of drunken hearties - which I once more found hilarious - is pure Acton, to whom it really happened. The don Mr. Samgrass is based on Sir Maurice Bowra, the Warden of Wadham College & rumoured to take rather a strong interest in the undergraduates, tho' I gather more as an observer of their relationships than a participant. Rex Mottram is based on Brendan Bracken, one of Winston Churchill's principal polital lieutenants.

I was struck by how strange the Roman Catholic elements in BR now seem. Of course there ought to be lots of things we find odd - this is a classic after all, not a work of contemporary fiction. (When I first read it, some 15 years after it originally appeared, it was contemporary & Waugh was still alive & publishing - which means that I'm now a classic too!) Not that the official rules have changed (one reason why I'm not still an RC) but the way they are lived is quite different. Hard to imagine a 15 year old today making a novena - much less that her pig will get a prize in the fair. Farm Street, which is often mentioned, was the Jesuit church & residence house in the fashionable part of London, where people like the Marchmains would go for spiritual direction. I suspect Msgr Bell is based on Ronald Knox, whose biography Waugh was to write.

Charles seems to become more unpleasant towards the latter part of the book. I'm now in the midst of the stormy Atlantic passage on the liner, where he encounters Julia. I had completely forgotten that Charles had married Celia. He obviously doesn't care for her. Also has Charles found Julia attractive before or has shc become a kind of substitute for Sebastian?

Also pondering the question: Is BR really a classic & if so, of what sort?

I'm only about a third of the way through, but I've been struck by how offensive the parents are toward their children. Despite Sebastian's insistence that his father adores him and his mother always supports him, he seems adrift in world of cold adults who should be more interested in him. Charles's father is appalling.

Now that I’ve been through Brideshead Revisited once more, I wonder whether Evelyn Waugh’s novel really is a literary classic, & if so, what kind of classic is it? Two qualities mark a classic. It perfectly embodies the values of the culture it represents. But if also must express universal values that continue to resonate with readers of other ages & cultures. For example, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress captures wonderfully the spirit of 17th-century English Puritanism, but it also creates marvellous settings & images that all who have attempted any demanding programme of spiritual discovery & growth will encounter: the Slough of Despond, the Hill Difficulty, the House Beautiful, the prison of Giant Despair, Vanity Fair - oh how that last one captured my life in academia!

As an idealised portrait of upper-class undergraduate life @ Oxford in that long leisurely summer vacation between the wars, BR surely has established itself as a cultural icon: Back in the ‘80s we aesthetes watched the British televised version for the same reason the populace watched Dallas - for the clothes & the cars! (Now of course it’s Downton Abbey.) Waugh himself was writing under the wartime privations of strict rationing & a huge double helping of nostalgia went into the receipts for food & drink. (Ironically, EW’s own addiction to high-living was to finish him off @ what is now a comparatively early age.) But that is not the aspect of BR that mattered to Waugh. It is supposed to be account of how God acts in our lives, & it is here where the values of the book seem most to have gone off - like a old wine of excellent vintage that is now only a ghost of its former self.

Ironically, it was this aspect that Waugh expected to be most lasting - the doctrine & discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. Whilst officially those have not changed (which is why I am now an Anglican BTW), I find it very hard to imagine many contemporary RC English women thinking quite like Julia Flyte. Tho’ there’s lots of about religion in BR, there’s practically no spirituality. (Indeed, as in the case of Sebastian, the characters‘ only contact with the spirit seems to be of the kind that comes conveniently in bottled form, & I suspect that may have been true with EW as well.) There was a recent article in The Spectator by a Roman Catholic woman - who interestingly is also the author of a number of romantic novels - whose marital situation parallels closely what Julia’s would have been had she married Charles. Louise Mensch says she attends Sunday Mass with her children but she doesn’t take Holy Communion. But unlike Julia, there doesn’t seem to be any sign that she’s wracked by guilt. Rather that it’s a case of simply playing by the rules. In today’s RC culture, Julia’s Charles previous marriages would be prime candidates for annulment by the church court & I doubt most RC couples today would be much troubled in conscience living together till they were permitted to marry in their Church.

From my own experience growing up with a rather toxic form of pre-Vat-II Roman Catholicism, when I read BR as an undergraduate it was easy to identify with the characters in BR. But @ this stage in my journey,they almost seem like members of a strange cult. In an odd kind of way, a cult may have been what EW was really looking for. Although he aped out-of-date upper-class manners, he seems to have been profoundly dissatisfied with contemporary England. In his day for an Englishman to convert to Roman Catholicism had similar class implications to joining the Communist Party - the RC Church was very much an Irish immigrant church. (Ironically, now in England more RCs are in church on Sunday than are members of the CofE but it’s quite a low percentage for both.)

Tho’ I can’t quite accept Brideshead Revisited as a true classic, I believe that for its idealised portrait of its period it remains well worth reading once - hence the four stars. Evelyn Waugh I still believe to have been a great writer, but in the same vein as Jonathan Swift or Kingsley Amis, a great comic satirist. Decline & Fall remains for me one of the funniest school stories (“I wouldn’t try to teach them anything @ all; just keep them quiet.”) ever, Put Out More Flags a screech & Scoop still the best antidote to journalists who take themselves too seriously. Have fun!