Evelyn Waugh

Everyone knows how funny Evelyn Waugh is. One of his finest comic creations was his own increasingly rebarbative public persona a self-confessed front of pomposity mitigated by indiscretion, that was as hard, bright and antiquated as a cuirass. No wonder new biographies of Waugh are popular. The life and work cannot be separated. Gathered productively at the writers desk are the chaotic and often bizarre details of Waughs own life, what he called the adroit jigsaw of his unobtrusively elegant aesthetic structures, and his moral coherence. This study shows how Waugh transformed his own experiences into painfully comic, brilliantly constructed novels. They are works, in his own words, of elegance and variety of contrivance. Ann Pasternak Slater has written an ingenious and engaging study of the relationship between Waughs life and work, between his sharp moral vision and Dionysiac comic genius. She focuses on Waughs entire fictional oeuvre in a book notable for its intelligent sympathy.