Put Out More Flags – Evelyn Waugh, 1942 ★★

Mind You There's a War on

In September 1939 a 21-year British holiday from history came to a sharp end. War was declared and Poland carved up by Germany and Russia as the rest of the world looked on. It was time to strike back.

Only it wasn’t, not right away. First came something called the “Phoney War,” eight months of waiting and hoping. Just two years later, Evelyn Waugh set about mocking that time of simmering conflict and self-rationalization was as experienced by London’s smart set.

Put Out More Flags is a satire written in the anything-goes spirit of Waugh’s earlier, peacetime works. Government ministries set about planning ridiculous strategies, seeing the enemy everywhere but where they actually are, getting men killed by sheer lack of imagination.

Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson – Evelyn Waugh, 1939 ★★

Taking Oil, Dumping God

Marxism is one of the most profound political movements in the history of mankind. Love it or hate it, the rise of the “workers’ revolution” has left few neutral observers in its wake.

Evelyn Waugh was one of the haters. He condemned Marxism for its negative impact on national economies, its removal of public liberties to serve a nebulous public good, and most especially its avowed atheism. In Mexico in the late 1930s, he called out this “object-lesson” for what he describes as its ruinous effects.

Waugh writes: “Just as the United States earned the gratitude of the world by ‘trying out’ prohibition, so the Mexicans may be said to be trying out Marxism.”

Scoop – Evelyn Waugh, 1938 ★★

Fleet Street Follies

When it came to media bashing, Evelyn Waugh got his licks in early and often. Scoop is his acid take on the artful folly of foreign correspondents competing for the big story, not really caring if they have to invent it.

Based on his recent experience as a war correspondent covering the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), Waugh presents Ishmaelia, an East African land of no cultural or material importance. Here is sent, completely by accident, one William Boot, nature correspondent for the Beast.

Can this gormless rustic bumpkin accustomed to writing about great-crested grebes possibly land the big story? To quote Mr. Salter, a toady to the Beast’s overbearing publisher Lord Copper, “Up to a point.”

Waugh In Abyssinia – Evelyn Waugh, 1936 ★★

Hooray for Fascism

Evelyn Waugh’s most famous travel book is celebrated more than it is actually read, a good thing for the writer’s reputation as actually reading Waugh In Abyssinia exposes his worst traits: indifference to human suffering, a tendency to boredom, and a badly blinkered mindset.

It’s not only how he comes out strongly in favor of the Italian occupation of the land known today as Ethiopia, but the bland, superficial way he makes his points. As fascist apologia, it’s rather wan.

Reading it today does sting, as he justifies Mussolini’s broadly condemned 1935 invasion as the natural result of Abyssinian truculence and lassitude. Waugh exposes here a disdain for non-European people he did better to conceal in other writings, even if his main target is the European liberal elite who condemned the invasion after their own countries enriched themselves the same way decades before.

A Handful Of Dust – Evelyn Waugh, 1934 ★★★★★

Achieving Perfection Imperfectly

There may be no such thing as a completely perfect novel. Yet few achieve greatness despite missing perfection quite like this one. What makes A Handful Of Dust a classic are the same things that catch readers like me short on a first read. It’s the grittiness that grabs you.

Take a set of cold, seemingly unknowable characters. A radical tone shift from comedy to drama. A dire third act with an O. Henry twist out of nowhere. An abrupt finale that can’t be anything but anticlimactic.

If I was a book publisher in the 1930s with this manuscript in my hands, I would have sent Evelyn Waugh back for a rewrite, probably grumbling at him on his way out. Thus the world might have missed out on one of the century’s greatest literary works.

Ninety-Two Days – Evelyn Waugh, 1934 ★★★½

Postcards from the Edge

Evelyn Waugh’s travel writings offer such a litany of complaint that by his third expedition one suspects he was just in it for the grousing. But despite a characteristic whinging tone, Ninety-Two Days evolves into a delightful if somewhat broody trudge through the tropics. Waugh’s gift for word portraiture was never better.

The lands being visited here were the most distant yet for Waugh, the colony of British Guiana and a vast neighboring section of northern Brazil. Hot weather, bad roads, awful food, leaky roofs, frenzied insects, and an ever-present sense of torpor were just some of the tortures Waugh endured for his readers.

He is not shy about his suffering. “There are a hundred excellent reasons for rough travelling, but good living is not one of them,” he writes.

Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh, 1932 ★★★★

Perils of Western Civilization

Nothing prepares one for the spritely acid bath of Evelyn Waugh’s third novel less than reading it after his first two novels. Yes, those are black comedies, too, but there’s something extra-chilling about the whimsical savagery found here, where life is cheap and violence constant.

Off the coast of northeastern Africa, the island nation of Azania stands athwart the march of progress, its people enmeshed in bloody feuds and quick scams. Seth, the new emperor, seeks to change that by looking to Europe for inspiration. He happens upon a mash-up of Marxism and family planning that blows up sooner than you can say: “THROUGH STERILITY TO CULTURE.”

Counting on the help of an opportunistic Brit, Basil Seal, Seth’s road to nowhere implicates both Africans and Europeans as well as the hope they might have anything to learn from each other.

Remote People – Evelyn Waugh, 1931 ★★★

Ramblings of a Homesick Traveler

Early on, Evelyn Waugh’s travel notes did double duty providing material for novels while also sourcing his journalism. For that reason, his travelogues often feel like afterthoughts.

For lauded travel writers like Paul Theroux or William Least Heat-Moon, the book is the focus. However brilliant at dishing and dunking as Waugh was, his road accounts often feel unformed by comparison.

In Remote People, the World of Waugh is an exciting, amusing, often cantankerous place to explore. Still, at the end of the day the only road that matters may as well be the one that takes you back home.

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh, 1930 ★★★½

Aiming for the Gut

So much of what made Evelyn Waugh great, including the decade he blossomed in and the smart set he dished so ruthlessly about, is on display in this, his second novel, a triumph of form over substance.

No doubt Waugh intended it just so.

In many important ways, Vile Bodies marks a turning point in the author’s career. He already had his signature voice worked out. Here he aims for scope and bite, casting a wide net on the social antics of the jaded aristocratic scions dubbed the “Bright Young Things.” These were people he knew and loved best. And they loved him back, even more after he pilloried them in print with this mordant, often acid book.

Rossetti: His Life And Works – Evelyn Waugh, 1928 ★★½

Making a Splash

In his own lifetime, Evelyn Waugh tells us, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was “the bogey of many Victorian drawing-rooms,” scandalizing society with his splashy, vibrant paintings. Few then were ready to appreciate a true romantic who brought a new way of thinking about art and life.

His Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists blended hyper-realistic detail with medieval-inspired treatments, resulting in a highly individualized style which remains unique and widely admired. While often messy when came to personal matters like money and women, Rossetti was the right artist to challenge a stale period for British culture.

Waugh found this still true nearly a half-century after Rossetti’s death: “By no means the least of the advantages to be gained from a study of Rossetti is the stimulus it gives to one’s restiveness in an era of competent stultification,” he writes.

Decline And Fall – Evelyn Waugh, 1928 ★★★★

A Devilishly Delicious Debut

A famous first novel that holds up on its own merits as well as a signpost for a stellar career, Decline And Fall introduces readers to the scathing satire of Evelyn Waugh, where hope is folly, life is a joke, and people regularly suffer for the sin of being alive.

All that, and it manages to be a lot of fun, too.

Often the pleasure of reading first novels by noted authors is twigging onto themes and motifs developed with greater success in their later, more mature works. But Waugh’s debut has no youthful awkwardness to shed. It is fully accomplished fiction, somewhat facile in places and heavy-handedly abrupt in its ending, but masterful in terms of dialogue, description, and mordant observation.

Labels: A Mediterranean Journal – Evelyn Waugh, 1930 ★★★

Voyage of a Misspent Wife

While still a young man, Evelyn Waugh struck upon his method for success: it pays not only to be witty when writing, but shocking, too.

That Waugh was, not right away, but early out of the gate. Part of a celebrated circle of upper-class wastrels known as “the Bright Young Things,” he was recognized while still a student for his talent and rapier wit. After launching himself with a ruthless satire about British society, Decline And Fall, that offended many and made his name, he was left with the problem of what to do next.

His answer: Mock the rest of Europe by way of a travel book.

The Loved One – Evelyn Waugh, 1948 ★★★½

Death Be Not Cheap

A novel easy to enjoy but hard to love, The Loved One demonstrates how able a novelist Evelyn Waugh was when he didn’t give a hoot about any of the characters in his book.

It may well be the bleakest satire Waugh ever crafted, plunging his readers into an utterly alien and forlorn land known as California. There celebrity reigns supreme, death is the ultimate arbiter of social status, and empty chatter replaces serious conversation. This is a point in its favor, our English protagonist Dennis Barlow is told:

“They are a very decent, generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It’s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.”

Helena – Evelyn Waugh, 1950 ★★★½

Something Better than History

History stops for no one, but occasionally makes detours. Helena tells of one such detour brought on by an old woman which changed the world.

Helena was the ex-wife of one emperor and the mother of another. More to the point, as Evelyn Waugh presents her, she crystalized the dawn of the Christian era in Europe with an act of faith that magnified the role of religion in the future of the West.

Imbued by the spirit of the Magi, Helena offers up a simple prayer: “For his sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.”

Edmund Campion: A Life – Evelyn Waugh, 1935 ★★½

A Saint in Shackles

Evelyn Waugh doesn’t exactly exude humble piety. His fiction sneers with acid contempt at the foibles of his fellow man. So a serious, earnest, ever-so-respectful biography from this famous cynic about a saint martyred over 350 years before is a bit of a detour.

Waugh was Catholic; it is part of his legend. But mostly his faith is a matter of being against things: modern architecture, sex outside marriage, loud parties, and so on. Edmund Campion: A Life is a rare occasion for seeing Waugh putting forward faith as positive action.

As a book, it is minor Waugh. But as a glimpse at what made Waugh tick, Edmund Campion engages and reveals between its lulls.

The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh – Evelyn Waugh, 1998 ★★★

Novelist Keeps it Short

Being a bad guy has its uses. In fiction, Evelyn Waugh dished out cruelty in a way that kept readers both delighted and coming back for more.

No wonder he was so cynical.

The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh collects everything fictional Waugh ever published short of novels. The result is a train wreck of dangerous travels, bad marriages, family insanity, and death which showcases the range of one of the last century’s literary masters.

Work Suspended – Evelyn Waugh, 1942 ★½

Not Ready for Prime Time

When I gravitate to a particular author, I can find something worthwhile in nearly anything they have written. The more obscure, the more potential to surprise or even flatter me by revealing something I can briefly fancy no one else ever noticed or appreciated.

Even a work that is boring or unpleasant to read, or obviously flawed, may reveal aspects of the author a better book will not, like stylistic quirks or habitual framing devices you don’t notice as much when a ripping yarn or brilliant descriptions soak up all your attention.

Scott-King's Modern Europe – Evelyn Waugh, 1947 ★★

Not Taking the Scenic Route

Brevity is the soul of wit, but the same can’t be said of satire. One needs to toy with the target like a spider with her prey. So what to say about a satire when its approach is as over-and-out as this?

Evelyn Waugh was in the habit of producing short novels during the second half of his career, beginning with Work Suspended (1942) and concluding with Basil Seal Rides Again (1962). All have charm; none play out as thin and desultory as this.

Basil Seal Rides Again – Evelyn Waugh, 1963 ★★★

Last Laugh

Evelyn Waugh’s final published fiction is utterly free of ambition, a recycling of familiar characters in service of amusing dialogue and a diverting if meandering plot.

Even the way in which it was originally published, as an ornately bound, personally-signed limited edition, suggests more a celebrity cash grab than anything creative. As a final word from Waugh the author, it isn’t much of a signpost, yet taking time to read it hardly damages the fellow’s legacy, either.

Love Among The Ruins: A Romance Of The Near Future – Evelyn Waugh, 1953 ★★½

The Future is on Fire

World War II ended in Allied victory, but in its aftermath Evelyn Waugh still heard the toll of doom. Love Among The Ruins presents a future without faith, hope, or love, only the State.

Even 1984 gave readers a rooting interest. Here you get an arsonist.