Rather than shed fresh light on the writer’s life,this biography ignores the literature in favour of titillating whispersIn the life of a great, perhaps the greatest, or 20th-century English novelist such as Evelyn Waugh,his books and his biography are so tightly braided together that, to the outside observer, and it’s nearly impossible to distinguish where fact ends and fiction begins.
Waugh’s genius,from Decline and descend to A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited, but not forgetting his Sword of Honour trilogy, and the finest fiction from the moment world war,was to make the painful absurdity of existence both brilliant and real at the same time. Somewhere in the satirical space presided over by the moralist’s imagination was where his art began.
Without a literary dimension, Waugh the writer becomes Waugh the posturing bisexual Related: Brideshead Revisited review – Waugh's charming men hit the stage in style Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com