http://theprettygoodgatsby.wordpress...."Can I help you in any way?""I came to arrange about a funeral.""Is it for yourself?"This is a year of firsts for me as far as literature goes. I've finally read a Goosebumps book, sat down with one of chick-lit's heavy hitters, and now I have an Evelyn Waugh novel under my belt. There's something a little - okay, a lot - intimidating about the classics. Although I read my share of them in school, classics are by and large considered to be rather daunting. I never fail to be amazed at how relatively short certain novels are once I do manage to pick one up and The Loved One is one of the shortest I've seen yet.Clocking in at a bite-size 164 pages, The Loved One tells of Dennis Barlow, poet and pet mortician. At this point in time there are only a tiny handful of Englishmen in Hollywood and the Cricket Club has decided Dennis' new position makes the rest of them look bad. When Sir Francis dies, they leave the funeral arrangements to Dennis ("to keep him busy" and take his mind off his newly deceased housemate).Times without number since he first came to Hollywood he had heard the name of that great necropolis on the lips of others; he had read it in the local news-sheets when some more than usually illustrious body was given more than usually splendid honours or some new acquisition was made to its collected masterpieces of contemporary art. Of recent weeks his interest had been livelier and more technical for it was in humble emulation of its great neighbour that the Happier Hunting Ground was planned. The language he daily spoke in his new trade was a patois derived from that high pure source. More than once Mr. Schultz had exultantly exclaimed after one of his performances: "It was worthy of Whispering Glades." As a missionary priest making his first pilgrimage to the Vatican, as a paramount chief of equatorial Africa mounting the Eiffel Tower, Dennis Barlow, poet and pets' mortician, drove through the Golden Gates.Whispering Glades is the funeral home Dennis wishes he had. The staff provides a ridiculous amount of options including wigs, outfits, and Zones where, for a fee, your Loved One (never referred to as the deceased) can rest eternally among statues of various poets, musicians, and other famous art pieces.It is at Whispering Glades that Dennis not only receives a rather sizable amount of new ideas to pass along to his boss, but he first meets Aimee. Aimee Thanatogenos is one of the cosmeticians and is considered to be one of the best. She and the embalmer, Mr. Joyboy, are toeing a romance (he passes along Loved Ones to her with radiant smiles) that turns complicated once Dennis arrives."I think it's a very, very wonderful thing to be a poet.""But you have a very poetic occupation here."He spoke lightly, teasing, but she answered with great gravity. "Yes, I know. I know I have really. Only sometimes at the end of a day when I'm tired I feel as if it was all rather ephemeral. I mean you and Sophie Dalmeyer Krump write a poem and it's printed and maybe read of the radio and millions of people hear it and maybe they'll still be reading it in hundreds of years' time. While my work is burned sometimes within a few hours. At best it's put in the mausoleum and even there it deteriorates, you know. I've seen painting there not ten years old that's completely lost tonality."Not wanting to soil his reputation further, Dennis avoids telling Aimee about his job and woos her with poetry. Unfortunately for Aimee, she doesn't realize the poems are actually written by famous poets from decades - and even centuries - ago, and consults a newspaper advice columnist for her next course of action. After numerous letters (resulting in much flip-flopping on her part and a disaster of a dinner with Mr. Joyboy's mother), Aimee finally makes up her mind and the truth comes to light.I've recently read a few reviews for The Loved One and each one praised its dark humor and witty commentary. Looking for a quick and entertaining read - not to mention an introduction to Waugh's works - I hunted this one down at my library and devoured it in an hour or two. Whenever I love a book, it's all I can do to force myself to stop rambling about it, but The Loved One is so short, that anything more I might say would give away the entire story.Not all his customers were as open-handed and tractable as the Heinkels. Some boggled at a ten-dollar burial, others had their pets embalmed and then went East and forgot them; one after filling half the ice-box for over a week with a dead she-bear changed her mind and called in the taxidermist. These were the dark days, to be set against the ritualistic, almost orgiastic cremation of a non-sectarian chimpanzee and the burial of a canary over whose tiny grave a squad of Marine buglers had sounded Taps. It is forbidden by Californian law to scatter human remains from an aeroplane, but the sky is free to the animal world, and on one occasion it fell to Dennis to commit the ashes of a tabby-cat to the slip-stream over Sunset Boulevard.The Loved One really is extremely funny, and I feel it's a perfect starting point in Waugh's catalog. From what I understand, his other works aren't nearly as humorous, but if the writing is anything like it was with this book (quick, direct, and SO easy to read), I have a feeling Mr. Waugh and I will get along very well.
My appreciation of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One is authentic, sure, but at the same time a little reserved because, try as I might, I can't convincingly revise my initial impression of it as a cheap shot at American life and values -- which isn't to say that it isn't funny or compelling or entertaining, but rather that in the considerable chunk of time separating us from the initial publication of The Loved One (this time marking the ascendancy of the United States on the global stage both politically and culturally) these satiric portrayals of the American ethos -- and particularly that of 'Hollywood'/Southern California -- have become somewhat rote and reflexive. True, it isn't Waugh's fault that he belonged to an early generation of such satirists, but likewise it isn't my fault that I was born too late to appreciate The Loved One for the freshness of its satirical takes on American life (specifically, golden age 'Hollywood life').But never mind all that. I'm quite prepared to commit a grave sin of literary criticism; I am going to medically separate the conjoined twins of content and style and chuck my minor qualms with the content of The Loved One into an incubator while I maternally coo over the very much healthy and appealing style of Evelyn Waugh's prose. I realize I have birthed an atrocious natal analogy here, but it's too early in the morning and my self-criticism is too insufficiently roused to correct it. Live with it. Please.Back to the point. Waugh's writing is so graceful and entertaining that I'll very likely forgive him anything -- even his characterization of Americans as cultureless semi-morons.In discussing this book with a friend, it was brought to my attention that umbrage at Waugh's treatment of Americans might be inappropriate when one considers that his main character Dennis Barlow, an Englishman, is a fairly loathsome human being. This led me to recall a previous discussion I had many years ago (and have repeated with alterations many times since) about the nature of men and women. Before anyone rises up in wrathful indignation at what I am about to say, please also read the clarification which follows the initial statement. Thank you.In my late teens and early twenties, I was fond of saying that men were evil and that women were stupid. Of course, this was only a shorthand (and foolish) way of expressing a more complex idea. In the politics of gender, that is, men obviously still enjoy greater power (socially), and power, as we know, corrupts. Thus, there is a tendency for men at their weakest to approach 'evil' in their relationships with women because they retain some semblance of power. Meanwhile, there is a tendency among women at their weakest to 'put up with' the evil of men -- sometimes even to encourage it. If we were to characterize this behavior glibly and overly simplistically, we might call it stupidity. Of course this evil/stupid dichotomy isn't limited to gender politics. It can be reasserted in almost any dual-variable relationship in which one term exerts power or precedence over the other. In other words, Israelis are evil, and Palestinians are stupid. The Catholic leadership is evil, and the Catholic rank-and-file is stupid. Heterosexuals are evil, and homosexuals are stupid. Written in black-and-white, these statements may seem unfortunately provocative and categorical, but if set aside our desire to be outraged, we will easily comprehend their meaning.In Waugh's The Loved One, I think it's pretty clear that the British are evil and the Americans are stupid. Realizing this then, we might be tempted so say, 'Well... that's good then. There's no (or at least less) moral culpability in being stupid, and being evil is most definitely a far worse judgment.' Yes, but... evil, since it concerns morality, is a choice, and stupidity may not be. Or if stupidity is a choice (and is more correctly understood as ignorance), it's a far more difficult choice to decipher. (Can one be too stupid to realize that one chooses stupidity?) Therefore, while the moral judgment might be in favor of the Americans, the British retain their superior understanding of the world and their ability to 'choose' other than what they are. Am I overstating this? Yes, very much so. Am I inventing the terms of debate (evil/stupid) and then arriving at conclusions on that basis, as if the terms were already universally conceded? Oh, yeah, definitely. Am I making unfair intimations about Waugh's intentions? Yup, yup, yup. I make no claims for fairness or validity... I just wanted to follow this line of thought wherever it might lead me.But yes. Read this book. If you have qualms about the satirical 'content' (and you probably don't), compartmentalize them and just enjoy the wry prose. The story itself concerns an Englishman living in Hollywood with little success (in the sense of 'success' usually defined by Hollywood). He works at a pet funeral home but becomes involved with a cosmetician at a cultish, new-agey (human) funeral home -- which, in its bombastic artifice, seems to represent everything peculiar about the local culture and spirit. Aimee (the cosmetician) is torn, romantically, between the cynical, duplicitous Englishman and an earnest, masterful mortician (Mr. Joyboy) she works with. And thereafter, as they say, hijinks ensue.
What do You think about The Loved One (2010)?
What a peculiar book. I hadn't read an Evelyn Waugh for the first time since I was at school: was his humour usually quite this dark, sick even? Bits of Decline and Fall would have been distinctly dubious these days, I remember thinking, (schoolmasters and schoolboys) but it was par for the course of class and time etc, rather than bizarre (morticians in LA isn't usual Waugh-world). Though in my late teens the delicacy of my reading sensibilities was at an all-time low, so perhaps I missed things before. Anyway, I found a lot of The Loved One very funny, including at least one comment which another GR reviewer objected to. The ridiculousness of the names tops his other work too: Aimee Thanatogenos, Mr Joyboy - and these people are as weird as they sound. Those who might be upset by the mere idea of callousness or poor practice at pet crematoria probably shouldn't read this. (Really, I do know what it's like to be very upset by the death of a pet, and I wouldn't conscion simply binning a deceased animal, but I've always found the idea of pet undertakers quite absurd. A fine way to satirize the fixed-grin plastic decadence of nearly-1950s America.) Nor should those who might mind characters' blase attitude and one-liners about other characters' deaths, including those self-inflicted. We shouldn't think too ill of them, after all, they have been hardened by recent service in the war: Others in gentler ages had had their lives changed by such a revelation; to Dennis it was the kind of thing he expected in the world he knew. There's undoubtedly something here about the demise of the Empire, and it's very amusing to see tweedy old colonial gentlemen talking about the U.S. (and the standards expected of Brits out here) much as they would about India in other books. Most characters were sympathetic some of the time, and not at all at others, and needless to say, everyone is skewered at some point. Even the sort of character one absently thinks of as his own kind: Sir Ambrose Abercrombie wore tweeds, cape and deerstalker cap, the costume in which he had portrayed many travesties of English rural life. I particularly liked the way he makes embalmers and corpse-beauticians creepy; that whole related business of ceremonially viewing corpses is so undignified and medieval.I considered docking half a star for a plot device copied from a very well-known source (there's also a rather less-hackneyed reference to Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts), and the ending was a tad unsatisfying* and may or may not veer off the trajectory of the rest of the book. But I was so pleased with the weirdness of it all - weird in a way I'd never expected from Waugh, and very welcome after becoming exasperated with serious realist fiction in general - that I haven't. * (view spoiler)[Aimee's death seems rather out of character, even if it does fit her name. She was so calmly calculating and determined to get ahead. She could have, say, climbed out of a ground floor window, to chime with a satirical theme of "these idiots do anything the press tells them to" - and that's literally closer to Slump's advice. But then I'm not sure what I'd have done to end the story. Maybe she could have gone back East after faking her death? (hide spoiler)]
—Antonomasia
Um enredo formado por personagens que vivem situações bizarras, mas extremamente divertidas. O livro é centrado no jovem poeta inglês Denis Barlow, que trabalha num cemitério de animais chamado Campo de Caça Mais Feliz. Encarregado de organizar o enterro de um amigo, o "ente querido" Denis apaixona-se pela americana Aimée Thanatogenos, maquilhadora de defuntos no " Os Prados Sussurantes", que era uma jovem muito insegura nos seus sentimentos que se correspondia com o Guru Brahmin, autor de famosa coluna sentimental. Tendo Denis como rival o americano Joyboy, sendo ele um superior (exumador de cadáveres) de Aimé no seu trabalho e admirado pela dedicação a um trabalho tão peculiar e filho extremamente devotado. Nesse triângulo, Aimée, indecisa entre o "amor inglês" de Denis e do "amor americano" de Joyboy, o que determina o destino totalmente inesperado dos três protagonistas, numa seqüência de situações inositadas e cheias de humor negro. Muito bom mesmo!!!
—Licinia Cardoso
My fourth experience of Waugh and once more I was not disappointed. This fun little novella is filled with Waugh staples; mean Brits abroad and parodies of the natives. Only this time it is a people and a place we have all come to be too familiar with over the last 70 years, Los Angeles, USA.He writes quite beautifully, filling paragraphs with sentences of exquisite composition that always achieve their aim; whether that be to make you laugh, shock or create a credible absurdity in your mind. These characters are not heroes, they are not likable, they are just real people slightly accentuated and as such they are all highly disturbing individuals. If you feel the need to identify with the characters in the books you read then I think you should consider avoiding Evelyn Waugh, you might miss the point of his work entirely.Interestingly I think I enjoyed the movie adaptation more as it heightened the quite surreal elements of this story, managing to become a cross between Waugh and Dr Strangelove and it is in that aspect that I found the novel lacking. The perils of watching the movie before reading the book.
—Tfitoby
