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Title: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0-316-92607-8 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (23 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Biting satire of the British class system
Comment: _Decline And Fall_ is a biting satire of the British class system. According to "the rules of the game" the British aristocracy not only own all wealth and property, but also have a licence to control and manipulate the lower classes for their own selfish needs. For instance, Margot Beste-Chetwynde, a wealthy and attractive widow deeply involved in the international prostitution trade, manipulates poor Paul Pennyfeather into travelling to Marseilles to assist several of Mrs. B-C's "ladies" detained there. For his part, Paul is arrested and forced to take the rap for Mrs. B-C. Mr. Waugh makes it quite clear that Paul is not the novel's hero. He is too light-weight and inconsequential to assume that role as the name Pennyfeather implies. Paul encounters one mishap after another, including disinheritence by his guardian, having been unjustly blamed for a prank that was played on him at Scone College, where Paul had been enrolled.
_Decline And Fall_ contains a bevy of colorful and picaresque characters: the shadowy butler, Philbrick, who recounts to anyone who will listen myriad versions of his background, none of them true; the drunken fool of a school-master, Prendergast, who later becomes a chaplain at the jail where Paul becomes incarcerated; the bigamist and very elusive Captain Grimes; and Mr. Sebastien (Chokey) Chotmondley, who is Mrs. B-C's constant companion, a sensitive and erudite black man, who is the subject of gossip of Mrs. B-C's aristocratic friends.
Mr. Waugh's novel of class and culture clash is extraordinarily droll and full of dark humor. One character aptly sums up the author's highly cynical and critical philosophy when he puts to Paul Pennyfeather the query if he could ever imagine Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde spending time in prison? Of course not--it is the job of the lower classes to go to prison and to suffer for the pecadillos of the upper classes.
Rating: 1
Summary: Heavy-handed.
Comment: I loved Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and I have enjoyed some of his satires in the past. I didn't finish this book, and I am writing this only because I couldn't find a negative review to agree with. It is heavy handed satire with dull characters.
Rating: 3
Summary: A must-read, but the product itself?
Comment: I think the cover of this book is very well drawn - the look of all the Waugh books put out by "Back Bay," actually, is interesting, with those funny-looking illustrations and garish orange color. Still, I'm not sure about the quality of the binding. My copy has held up well, but I was in a bookstore, reading a copy of "Scoop" (also by Waugh, also put out by Back Bay, also a paperback) and the glue that bound the pages and the cover didn't do its job properly, and you can guess the rest.
So it might be worth your while to get a brand new copy of this book, or find a hardcover. I should make clear that if you don't own a copy of this book, you are missing out on a potential reference for how to create an effective writing style. Waugh's style is magnificent, especially for a satire like this. His sometimes pretentious prose fits the ironic occassion perfectly. But usually his style is more restrained, and the book, as a consequence, reads quickly and is remembered easily.
The novel concerns one Paul Pennyfeather, a former Oxford student kicked out (of Oxford) shortly after the First World War for "indecent behavior." As the story goes on, he becomes a schoolmaster in Wales, engaged to a noblewoman who may have murdered her husband, and thrown into prison. The series of misadventures Paul undergoes is purposeful: at every level of '20's English society some group of people or some set of mores is castigated.
Now you might be asking yourself whether or not you want to read this book. I think it is safe to say that no matter who you are, you should read it. It reads too quickly to be dismissed as "not worth my time," but it is too important in terms of those large questions like "Why is life so rotten? Could it be particular attitudes we have inherited from our ancestors?" to be left alone.
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Title: A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926051 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926116 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926108 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316917338 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926345 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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