From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 20:56:19 +1000
Subject: Book Review - Helena ++++Decline and Fall ++++Work Suspended and Other Pieces

     title: Helena
        by: Evelyn Waugh
 publisher: Penguin 1963 [1950]
  subjects: historical fiction
     other: 159 pages
 
     title: Decline and Fall
        by: Evelyn Waugh
 publisher: Penguin 1937 [1928]
  subjects: fiction
     other: 216 pages
 
     title: Work Suspended and Other Pieces
        by: Evelyn Waugh
 publisher: Penguin 1967
  subjects: short fiction
     other: 284 pages

When I read _The Loved One_ at school I absolutely loathed it and,
while I did enjoy _Brideshead Revisited_, it was not enough to induce
further exploration.  Recently, however, I have read three more of
Waugh's books.

_Helena_, a "biography" of Constantine's mother, is a failure as
a historical novel.  For one thing, it is tendentiously Christian
(Catholic), pushing twentieth century parodies of Arianism and
gnosticism back into the fourth century as straw-men.  More tellingly,
it never really conveys any feel for the period and doesn't offer
much in the way of humour to compensate.

Parts of _Decline and Fall_ (Waugh's first novel) and some of the
stories in _Work Suspended_ are funny, but much of the humour involved
seems highly artificial to me, and it has certainly dated (this became
very clear when I discussed the works with an English native from my
parents' generation).  Perhaps this kind of humour just doesn't age
well, and it's interesting to speculate as to how well Douglas Adams
(say) will survive the next fifty years.

--

%T	Helena
%A	Evelyn Waugh
%I	Penguin
%C	Harmondsworth
%D	1963 [1950]
%O	paperback
%P	159pp
%K	historical fiction

%T	Work Suspended
%S	and Other Pieces
%A	Evelyn Waugh
%I	Penguin
%C	Harmondsworth
%D	1967
%O	paperback
%P	284pp
%K	short fiction

%T	Decline and Fall
%A	Evelyn Waugh
%I	Penguin
%C	Harmondsworth
%D	1937 [1928]
%O	paperback
%P	216pp
%K	fiction

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
18 May 1995

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 Copyright (C) Danny Yee 1995 : Comments and criticism welcome
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