can has pimms?
FOR MY OWN REFERENCE: FINISHED ON 3 AUGUST 2008
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
The Oxford novel, eh? That made me think of all the other Oxford-featuring books I've read: His Dark Materials, Oscar and Lucinda (ugh; that doesn't deserve to be The anything, unless it's The Shittiest Excuse for a Romance Ever Penned), To Say Nothing of the Dog. Then I compared them to the Oxford I remember from two flying visits. I'm sure most Oxfordians would consider their city to be pomp and circumstance, grandeur personified, but I thought it was damn cute. You don't get cute cities very often - towns, yes; villages, certainly; but not cities.
I devoured this book. It's longer than the last two I've read, but I tore through it in three days. I'd given up forever the idea that a book should grip me, should make me want to read further. Brideshead did, at least, restore my faith in that. It also made me laugh. Not just smile, or smirk, but actual, snorting, where's-the-donkey laughter. Mainly after the fact, because I'd squint at a line and think, 'Huh,' then, 'Hee' and then the laughter would burst out against the dam of my pursed lips. The two best examples - which I can remember off the top of my head, without even flicking through - are Anthony Blanche's 'I may be inverted but I'm not insatiable,' which I've been using in imaginary conversations ever since and am also determined to slot into a real one as soon as may be; and Brideshead knowing his wife because her late husband collected matchboxes. That one sent me off in fits, I swear. I went to the kitchen to get water at the paragraph break - I'm addicted to drinking water, so it's probably a good thing it's not wine; I'd be permanently squiffy. As I filled the empty bottle and got a cold one from the fridge and looked out at the fields, I kept mumbling, "Collected matchboxes" and loosing that sawtooth giggle. It was so, so - fitting, or contrasting, or I don't know what. MATCHBOXLOL FTW.
That being said, I was left very puzzled. I'm not sure I quite understand this book at all. I also felt a little taken in. It read rather as if it were tragedy for the sake of tragedy - like, Sebastian suddenly becoming an alcoholic (seriously! It came out of nowhere), the family rift - which I felt to be very poorly explained - and Julia breaking off the engagement. Anthony's little speech early on was clearly a prophesy of doom, but I can't for the life of me understand why he got the powers of divination (I smell a plot device) or why Charles should take it so much to heart. Also, he kept describing things as 'horrific' that weren't really, like old Brideshead telling Father Mackay that he wasn't interested in final rites, kthanx. He didn't rant and rave or throw a teapot, but was simply very polite and clear. Or the time Sebastian came down drunk and apologised to Charles but not to his mother - OH NOES! CALL THE GUARDS! He was a wee bit rude!
Charles himself was a total cad, and I mean total. I was not impressed with the 'forerunner' comment. Nor did I like the fact that he begot two children with Celia and didn't even bother to find out Caroline's name for a year -! As for the way he callously dumped Sebastian when he became too much to handle, well. Of course, I am biased. For me, the Charles/Sebastian was what this story was about. I was surprised halfway through, and I'm still surprised, that Waugh went to all the trouble in 1945 to write an obvious male romantic pairing and then just bailed on it. Did he think all would be forgiven because what Charles really wanted was a girl who looked exactly like his male lover? (Also: WHAT?) I don't think the disgusted conservatives would have bothered to even read that far.
Charles seemed to have no opinion on anything, but I personally put that down to the dreaded first-person POV. I'm becoming more and more disinclined towards it as times goes on. When Boy and Sebastian decide to go to the Old Hundredth and end up arrested, Charles doesn't think ANYTHING. Not 'maybe we oughtn't to bail out on this ball' - which I thought someone should have said - or 'oops, bad idea, chaps'. Julia tells him that he loved Sebastian; he never puts forward that idea himself.
This book has been sitting around for quite a while. I leave bookmarks in books, and the one I was using for this was a bus ticket dated October 2004. That was quite a big year for me - finishing school, taking a year out to do art, having fullblown access to books and music and the run of the city for the first time in my life. That was the year I bought a Terry Pratchett book every week, until I'd read them all. That was the year I found Green Day and Weezer and Blink 182. That was the year I discovered fandom. That was the year I discovered slash.
I remember reading the beginning of this, standing on a windy edge of pavement that constituted my bus stop while the terminal was being redecorated (read: torn to pieces). I also remember being disappointed that there was no overt boylove action. That was the main reason why I abandoned it, and the main reason I didn't pick it up again till now, because the impression stuck. I'm not sure now why I thought that, because it seemed bloody overt this time around. Maybe my skills at penetrating subtext have become that much more honed; who knows? I mean: they sunbathed naked? 'We thought you were fairies'? A whole year where they spent every evening together, alone? The endless references to gardens of love? They weren't exactly rocking out with their cocks out, but jesus. The coughs of amazement and 'did I really just read that?' were good enough.
The Catholic-bashing - what now? Catholics seem to come in for a lot of stick over the oil and the genuflection and the incense, but it's just as daft as any other religion, not moreso. Is that what drove Lord and Lady Brideshead apart? I could buy that explanation better than the dippy one Cara proffered. Is that what drove Charles and Julia apart? It seemed so, but the overarching pressure of the tragic imperative definitely had the upper hand. Plus, what had Julia to recommend her? She was beautiful - but so was Celia, and Charles ended up hating her. At least Sebastian was whimsical, although for some reason the whimsy had to be butchered. Tragic imperative, blame the Catholics - one or the other. I've seen the things Catholicism can do to families. This high-flown debate about the state of your eternal soul doesn't really come into it; it's more about looking holier-than-thou and trimming off what doesn't fit - divorce, adultery, illegimate children, homosexuality, promiscuity, short skirts, not going to Mass every week. The shit the Bridesheads (or is it the Marchmains?) threw down just wouldn't fly, not in Holy Catholic Ireland, probably not in Holy Catholic Italy or Poland or anywhere it's prevalent. Marrying a divorced man was enough to damn Julia forever, yet she was ready to do it all again. Except. She randomly got holy? No, what the fuck, I still don't get it.
I sort of felt the dialogue was out of keeping, sometimes, with the overall tone of the book - it was like reading Nancy Mitford. Of course, I have to admit that Mitford's themes aren't all that different, but here there was a lugubrious determination to keep smashing in the fact that all the loves were doomed to fail. And how. I certainly liked Julia better when she was scathingly dismissive of her fey brother and his pretty little friend. If Charles was that in love with the family, why didn't he have an interlude with Brideshead and marry Cordelia?
In conclusion, I suppose I just don't see why it had to end the way it did. The impression you get from the beginning is that Charles left Brideshead many a moon ago, when in fact it was just before the war - late thirties sometime, I imagine. Four or five years isn't quite the tragic distance I imagined. I felt more moved about the manor house getting trashed than about any of the people who used to live in it. Anytime I hear about - idek, antique gates being appropriated for bullets, it makes my blood boil. I hate war; I think antique gates have more right to exist than bullets. To me the twenties and thirties are a sad time, because they were about to lose everything, and none of beauty and grace survived. Instead they got fucking Le Corbusier.
Lalala. So I enjoyed it, but I don't think I loved it. Nor do I think I'd read it again, because it didn't spark in me the same warm thrills that Love in a Cold Climate did. I'm sorry to harp on, but it does seem that Waugh and Mitford are essentially interchangeable. But I certainly appreciated it more than I did before I had to suffer Eliot and Hardy and Woolf - and I did suffer Woolf, no matter how much I sort-of-nearly dug her. (No seriously, Kerouac, get outta my brain.)
Previously, on Book Glomp 2008:
Middlemarch
Invisible Monsters (this I did not hate!)
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Love in the Time of Cholera
Oscar and Lucinda
Kim
Breakfast at Tiffany's (this I even mildly liked!)
Atonement
To the Lighthouse (this I 28% appreciated!)
On the Road
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
The Oxford novel, eh? That made me think of all the other Oxford-featuring books I've read: His Dark Materials, Oscar and Lucinda (ugh; that doesn't deserve to be The anything, unless it's The Shittiest Excuse for a Romance Ever Penned), To Say Nothing of the Dog. Then I compared them to the Oxford I remember from two flying visits. I'm sure most Oxfordians would consider their city to be pomp and circumstance, grandeur personified, but I thought it was damn cute. You don't get cute cities very often - towns, yes; villages, certainly; but not cities.
I devoured this book. It's longer than the last two I've read, but I tore through it in three days. I'd given up forever the idea that a book should grip me, should make me want to read further. Brideshead did, at least, restore my faith in that. It also made me laugh. Not just smile, or smirk, but actual, snorting, where's-the-donkey laughter. Mainly after the fact, because I'd squint at a line and think, 'Huh,' then, 'Hee' and then the laughter would burst out against the dam of my pursed lips. The two best examples - which I can remember off the top of my head, without even flicking through - are Anthony Blanche's 'I may be inverted but I'm not insatiable,' which I've been using in imaginary conversations ever since and am also determined to slot into a real one as soon as may be; and Brideshead knowing his wife because her late husband collected matchboxes. That one sent me off in fits, I swear. I went to the kitchen to get water at the paragraph break - I'm addicted to drinking water, so it's probably a good thing it's not wine; I'd be permanently squiffy. As I filled the empty bottle and got a cold one from the fridge and looked out at the fields, I kept mumbling, "Collected matchboxes" and loosing that sawtooth giggle. It was so, so - fitting, or contrasting, or I don't know what. MATCHBOXLOL FTW.
That being said, I was left very puzzled. I'm not sure I quite understand this book at all. I also felt a little taken in. It read rather as if it were tragedy for the sake of tragedy - like, Sebastian suddenly becoming an alcoholic (seriously! It came out of nowhere), the family rift - which I felt to be very poorly explained - and Julia breaking off the engagement. Anthony's little speech early on was clearly a prophesy of doom, but I can't for the life of me understand why he got the powers of divination (I smell a plot device) or why Charles should take it so much to heart. Also, he kept describing things as 'horrific' that weren't really, like old Brideshead telling Father Mackay that he wasn't interested in final rites, kthanx. He didn't rant and rave or throw a teapot, but was simply very polite and clear. Or the time Sebastian came down drunk and apologised to Charles but not to his mother - OH NOES! CALL THE GUARDS! He was a wee bit rude!
Charles himself was a total cad, and I mean total. I was not impressed with the 'forerunner' comment. Nor did I like the fact that he begot two children with Celia and didn't even bother to find out Caroline's name for a year -! As for the way he callously dumped Sebastian when he became too much to handle, well. Of course, I am biased. For me, the Charles/Sebastian was what this story was about. I was surprised halfway through, and I'm still surprised, that Waugh went to all the trouble in 1945 to write an obvious male romantic pairing and then just bailed on it. Did he think all would be forgiven because what Charles really wanted was a girl who looked exactly like his male lover? (Also: WHAT?) I don't think the disgusted conservatives would have bothered to even read that far.
Charles seemed to have no opinion on anything, but I personally put that down to the dreaded first-person POV. I'm becoming more and more disinclined towards it as times goes on. When Boy and Sebastian decide to go to the Old Hundredth and end up arrested, Charles doesn't think ANYTHING. Not 'maybe we oughtn't to bail out on this ball' - which I thought someone should have said - or 'oops, bad idea, chaps'. Julia tells him that he loved Sebastian; he never puts forward that idea himself.
This book has been sitting around for quite a while. I leave bookmarks in books, and the one I was using for this was a bus ticket dated October 2004. That was quite a big year for me - finishing school, taking a year out to do art, having fullblown access to books and music and the run of the city for the first time in my life. That was the year I bought a Terry Pratchett book every week, until I'd read them all. That was the year I found Green Day and Weezer and Blink 182. That was the year I discovered fandom. That was the year I discovered slash.
I remember reading the beginning of this, standing on a windy edge of pavement that constituted my bus stop while the terminal was being redecorated (read: torn to pieces). I also remember being disappointed that there was no overt boylove action. That was the main reason why I abandoned it, and the main reason I didn't pick it up again till now, because the impression stuck. I'm not sure now why I thought that, because it seemed bloody overt this time around. Maybe my skills at penetrating subtext have become that much more honed; who knows? I mean: they sunbathed naked? 'We thought you were fairies'? A whole year where they spent every evening together, alone? The endless references to gardens of love? They weren't exactly rocking out with their cocks out, but jesus. The coughs of amazement and 'did I really just read that?' were good enough.
The Catholic-bashing - what now? Catholics seem to come in for a lot of stick over the oil and the genuflection and the incense, but it's just as daft as any other religion, not moreso. Is that what drove Lord and Lady Brideshead apart? I could buy that explanation better than the dippy one Cara proffered. Is that what drove Charles and Julia apart? It seemed so, but the overarching pressure of the tragic imperative definitely had the upper hand. Plus, what had Julia to recommend her? She was beautiful - but so was Celia, and Charles ended up hating her. At least Sebastian was whimsical, although for some reason the whimsy had to be butchered. Tragic imperative, blame the Catholics - one or the other. I've seen the things Catholicism can do to families. This high-flown debate about the state of your eternal soul doesn't really come into it; it's more about looking holier-than-thou and trimming off what doesn't fit - divorce, adultery, illegimate children, homosexuality, promiscuity, short skirts, not going to Mass every week. The shit the Bridesheads (or is it the Marchmains?) threw down just wouldn't fly, not in Holy Catholic Ireland, probably not in Holy Catholic Italy or Poland or anywhere it's prevalent. Marrying a divorced man was enough to damn Julia forever, yet she was ready to do it all again. Except. She randomly got holy? No, what the fuck, I still don't get it.
I sort of felt the dialogue was out of keeping, sometimes, with the overall tone of the book - it was like reading Nancy Mitford. Of course, I have to admit that Mitford's themes aren't all that different, but here there was a lugubrious determination to keep smashing in the fact that all the loves were doomed to fail. And how. I certainly liked Julia better when she was scathingly dismissive of her fey brother and his pretty little friend. If Charles was that in love with the family, why didn't he have an interlude with Brideshead and marry Cordelia?
In conclusion, I suppose I just don't see why it had to end the way it did. The impression you get from the beginning is that Charles left Brideshead many a moon ago, when in fact it was just before the war - late thirties sometime, I imagine. Four or five years isn't quite the tragic distance I imagined. I felt more moved about the manor house getting trashed than about any of the people who used to live in it. Anytime I hear about - idek, antique gates being appropriated for bullets, it makes my blood boil. I hate war; I think antique gates have more right to exist than bullets. To me the twenties and thirties are a sad time, because they were about to lose everything, and none of beauty and grace survived. Instead they got fucking Le Corbusier.
Lalala. So I enjoyed it, but I don't think I loved it. Nor do I think I'd read it again, because it didn't spark in me the same warm thrills that Love in a Cold Climate did. I'm sorry to harp on, but it does seem that Waugh and Mitford are essentially interchangeable. But I certainly appreciated it more than I did before I had to suffer Eliot and Hardy and Woolf - and I did suffer Woolf, no matter how much I sort-of-nearly dug her. (No seriously, Kerouac, get outta my brain.)
Previously, on Book Glomp 2008:
Middlemarch
Invisible Monsters (this I did not hate!)
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Love in the Time of Cholera
Oscar and Lucinda
Kim
Breakfast at Tiffany's (this I even mildly liked!)
Atonement
To the Lighthouse (this I 28% appreciated!)
On the Road