Horizon

Don't know if this helps, but one of my few memories from reading *Scoop* years ago is of jolting changes in mood and perspective when the story moved from the comic to the serious. Maybe the reviewer had in mind something like that?

On the other hand, inconsistent levels of realism in fiction are a personal bugbear of mine lately so maybe I'm projecting that onto what you're saying.

Don't know if this helps, but one of my few memories from reading *Scoop* years ago is of jolting changes in mood and perspective when the story moved from the comic to the serious. Maybe the reviewer had in mind something like that?

Have you ever read Vile Bodies? It's worth it - it's short and funny, and worth the modest investment in time. But there is a noticeable darkening of the mood half way through, which according to Waugh's biographers is attributable to his discovery that he was being cuckolded (his first wife, confusingly enough, was also called Evelyn).

See my review at my blog of Stephen Fry's film version. Hey you print it here at Horizon!! Brideshead is overheated as Martha would say, in its American edition--they have never published Waugh's 1959 revision, which is now the only one available in England. He got grouchy as his liver swelled.

Brideshead is overheated in its American edition--they have never published Waugh's 1959 revision, which is now the only one available in England.

What are the differences between the two?

Waugh rhapsodizes big time. In his introduction to the revised version, he called the unrevised 1945 novel, 'a panygeric preached over an empty coffin' and 'with a full stomach' found his more indulgent patches 'distasteful'. His American publishers were having none of it, so if you bought Brideshead there, you will have his uncensored version. I guess which one prefers is mood; I generally prefer the revised and I suspect you have an austere protestant taste, like Maratha, you would prefer the revised version.

Waugh made some odd comments in his prefaces. At the beginning of Officers and Gentlemen he announced that the original three-book vision he had had for the project was being scrapped because, having written the second volume, he now believed that the story was finished; even though every reader could see plainly enough that the plot had loose ends everywhere and was in no sensible way complete.

Yeah I think he was having barmy patches by then, as Pinfold clearly shows. Do you think Trimmer is a cypher for his escalating snobbery/class hostility, carrying on from where he left off with Hooper? By the way, I proposed alt.books.waugh-powell and got a load of pedantry at alt.config; my idea for it was discuss Waugh and all the major English novelists of that period.

Why don't you write something about Powell here? I'd be interested, as his books on my eventual 'to do' list.

I will do just as soon as I get through 'Dance'. Anthony Powell's curry recipe, however, is here:

http://www.anthonypowell.org.uk/ap/apcurry.htm

I will say Alan, that if you haven't read his memoirs then you should, not least for his interesting war and pithy comments and meditations on his trade.