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""Brideshead Revisited""

9 Comments -

1 – 9 of 9
Anonymous anony-mouse said...

I know people (well at least Wikipedia) say that Mottram was based on Bracken, but Beaverbrook matches him better.

Beaverbrook, like Mottram, was a Canadian (and a former employer of Waugh's).

By contrast Mottram is ignorant of Catholic ways, an unlikely description of Bracken who was born and raised a Catholic.

BTW I liked the Mottram and Bridey characters.

1/24/09, 4:17 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I haven't read "Brideshead Revisited", but I've read Waugh's "Decline and Fall", "Vile Bodies", "Scoop" and "Black Mischief". All four were incredibly funny and smart. I recommend them highly. The last two treat the same theme (black self-rule) in a mind-bogglingly politically incorrect manner. While reading them I often wandered how such works could be re-printed in our times.

I've heard before that Waugh turned sentimental in "Brideshead Revisited". He was anything but in his earlier novels. They are full of dry wit, elegance, snobbery and insight. The snobbery was strictly heterosexual and was a part of his comedic genius, so it doesn't grate.

1/24/09, 4:20 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

I always thought Lord Copper in "Scoop" was based on Lord Beaverbrook?

1/24/09, 6:21 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

it's often more satisfying for all concerned to expand a 20 page [short story] than to eviscerate a 350 page novel.

Hear, hear!

Many of the great movies began life as short stories, including one of my old favorites, "Rear Window."

The assault on plot by the literary tastemakers in New York in the middle of the XXth Century resulted in an open sewer of "mood pieces" and the kind of junk that's published in magazines today. Unfilmable. Undisgestible. And unreadable.

1/24/09, 9:27 PM

Anonymous Henry Canaday said...

I fell out of the later episodes of the TV Brideshead not because the pace was slow, but because that which was being paced, the story, was either boring or unreal. The picture of the ordinary unhappy first marriage of Ryder bored me, I think, because it bored the author. And the adult romance with Julia seemed fake even to the first readers of the novel. It was Waugh wearing his religion, not his heart, on his sleeve. (Only the caricature or Mottram/Bracken seems to have interested Waugh much.)

The early episodes of Brideshead were, I think, the most sincere things Waugh ever wrote. Scoop was perfect of its kind, hilarious, beautifully-constructed nastiness. But true memories, even if they make you squirm, are better than clever carapaces. Waugh's memory of his university and immediate post-university days was fascinating because of the pain. No one minds reading the Portrait of the Artist as a young bleeding man. Readers love bloodshed, and there was plenty of emotional blood in those early episodes. I didn't know whether to run out of the room laughing or screaming during some of those early scenes.

1/25/09, 4:05 AM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

Waugh's first wife cuckolded him and the imprint of that experience is all over Brideshead Revisited.

1/25/09, 11:36 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

As usual, I defer to Henry Canaday's superior judgment.

1/25/09, 5:08 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The first half of Brideshead Revisited was a rivetting, witty delight to the senses. Evocative of another era. Quite charming.

The second half was a long drawn-out slog about the apparent instrinsic benefits of adhering to the Catholic faith.

1/25/09, 8:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Catholicism is the entire point of Brideshead - that' why it so awesome.

11/5/09, 8:30 AM

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