I fear that, if 'Vile Bodies' is typical of his work, I shall have to add Evelyn Waugh to the list of critically acclaimed and popular writers whom I simply can't get to grips with. (EM Forster and Charles Dickens are already on that list.) 'Vile Bodies' is a dull and very disappointing book. First published in 1930 (when Waugh was in his late 20s), it's one of the author's earliest novels. I've not read any of Waugh's other work. I can but hope that his writing improved considerably after this. Set primarily in London, 'Vile Bodies' is a dark, satirical comedy. Its principal character is Adam Fenwick-Symes, an impecunious writer. Adam returns to London after spending two months in Paris. He went there to complete his memoirs, the money from publication of which he needs so that he can support his wife to be, Nina Blount, and himself in the comfortable manner to which they are accustomed. However, customs officials take exception to some of the content of Adam's completed memoirs and, on his return to England, confiscate and destroy his copy of the manuscript, which is the only one that exists. Things move on from there as Adam tries to get enough money together to ensure that he and Nina can get married. It's fairly clear that Evelyn Waugh has in his sights the so-called 'Bright Young Things' of the inter-war years, i.e. the idle rich upper classes whose lives seemed to consist of one frivolous party after another. Perhaps more relevant to life as we know it today, he also has a dig at what we refer to as tabloid newspapers (and, by inference, their readers), at gossip columnists (some of whom are portrayed as resorting to fabrication when under pressure to deliver copy to their editors by a particular deadline) and at the vacuous concept of 'celebrity'. So, in many ways, 'Vile Bodies' is a topical and serious, as well as a humorous, novel. However, it just doesn't work for me. The characterisation is often facile and unconvincing. All kinds of incidents simply do not ring true. For example, Adam wins £1000(!) on a bet about a game, is immediately given the money in cash(!) and promptly hands it over to a complete stranger for it to be wagered on a racehorse(!). Utterly ridiculous. There are several other such improbabilities scattered throughout the story. Another problem for me is the preponderance of silly character names. We have: Fanny Throbbing, Miles Malpractice, Melrose Ape, Mary Mouse, Margot Metroland and Lady Circumference (to cite just some)! And Waugh's prose - while generally workmanlike and competent - fails to leap off the page, and can sometimes be stodgy and difficult to follow. There's an exchange, for example, between a character called Benfleet and two poets on pages 99 and 100 of the Penguin edition of the book that I read which is simply incomprehensible! I am also unconvinced by the intermittent references to characters speaking "Cockney". They seem to me to be forced and silly. There are some good comic moments. One character is described as being rigid "from wig to toe"! And I enjoyed the incident in which the youngest daughter of the Prime Minister invites some of her friends back to her home (10 Downing Street!) for a drink after an evening of partying and one of them stays there overnight. But for a supposed comedy, there just aren't enough laughs.I think that, for all his undoubted silliness and improbability of plot, PG Wodehouse satirises the idle upper classes rather more successfully (and in very much more stylish prose) than Waugh does here. When Wodehouse gives one of his characters a seemingly ridiculous name - e.g. Gussie Fink-Nottle - it is wholly convincing because it seems in keeping with the person being portrayed. And EF Benson pokes fun at the idle middle classes (in his Mapp and Lucia stories) much more effectively than Waugh does at his upper class characters. I think this is partly because the people in the Wodehouse and Benson books - Jeeves, Wooster, Emmeline Lucas, Georgie Pillson etc. - are essentially likeable. Most of those in 'Vile Bodies' are not. As a result, Wodehouse and Benson seem to have an affection for their characters that Waugh does not. The result is that their satire is ultimately more biting. I'll persevere with Waugh and try some of his other novels despite the fact that 'Vile Bodies' is a dreary and disappointing read and a largely forgettable book. 5/10.PS: I don't want to make too much of this but I should add that the word that begins with 'n' that is these days quite rightly regarded as racist appears a few times in the edition of 'Vile Bodies' that I have just read, a 1951 Penguin Books orange paperback reprint (see page 119). The words 'coloured' 'negress' and 'negro' also appear. There is, in fact, some casual racism in the story. I suppose it accurately reflects attitudes at the time. It's a moot point whether such references should be removed from more modern editions but, given the quality of sub-editing these days, I suspect the matter will have been given little or no consideration.
Vile Bodies was Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, first published in 1930 it is dedicated to Bryan and Diana Guinness –the sister and brother-in-law of Nancy Mitford, Diana of course later becoming the infamous Diana Moseley. "Ooooh what's that shiny thing, it's hurting my eyes.""Sorry, that'd be me, I'm a bright young thing. Avert your eyes lest they be burned from their sockets.""Wow, so what is a bright young thing then? Forgive my ignorance but I'm just not that cultured."Vile Bodies is a wonderfully biting satire of London society in the years following World War I. At the centre of the story is Adam Fenwick Symes and Nina Blount who would quite like to be married to one another but neither of whom have the funds to carry it out. Nina’s father Colonel Blount is a shambling sly old duffer, marvellously vague and often confused – he is just one of number of comic creations in this novel. Adam and Nina are part of a set of Bright Young People, led by the hilariously dotty Agatha Runcible- when a seriously hung-over Agatha discovers she is breakfasting in Hawaiian costume at number 10 Downing Street – I nearly snorted all over the bus I was travelling on. The lives of these Bright Young People as they have been named -are a continuing round of parties and gossip, their antics frequently shocking traditional society through the colourful accounts that appear in the newspapers. We are introduced to a host of highly amusing characters, including gossip Columnist Lord Simon Balcairn, who early on in the novel decides to stick his head in a gas oven, American evangelist Mrs Ape, and her troupe of angels, a drunken Major who may or may not owe Adam thirty five thousand pounds, and a young man named Ginger. The way these characters speak to one another is sublimely hilarious, their antics and adventures reminiscent slightly of P G Wodehouse – but with added spite."Who's that awful looking woman?""She's no one. Mrs. Panrast she's called now.""She seems to know you.""Yes. I've known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she's my mother.""My dear, how too shaming."As the novel progresses, Adam’s fortunes fluctuate continually, and his relationship with Nina waxes and wanes as Adam chases after money – and has a couple of hilarious interviews with Nina’s wily old father. On the surface perhaps, Vile Bodies seems much lighter in tone than Brideshead Revisited and other later works. However there is an unmistakable sharpness in it too, there is a dark bitterness at the heart of all the froth and frivolity which is fascinating. Waugh was obviously a consummate imitator and satirist of the society in which he must himself had begun to move.
What do You think about Vile Bodies (1977)?
Vile Bodies is no Brideshead Revisited, but then, if you read my (much) earlier post on Brideshead, you'll know that even Brideshead itself didn't quite live up to it's own first 100 pages for me. What I'd really like to do is just read the beginnings of Evelyn Waugh novels from now on. From the first pages of Vile Bodies I was filled with the delicious anticipation of forthcoming satirical wit, but just as I experienced with Brideshead, Handful of Ashes, and even Decline and Fall, the rest of the book left me still wanting. Vile Bodies opens grandly on a ship in a storm, and bounces around from character to character - Father Rothschild, bearing someone else's suitcase containing a false beard; Evangelical Mrs. Ape and her seven children (named Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, Divine Discontent... etc.) who sing hymns and wear wings; Prime Minister Outrage (only in office a week) and on and on... all of whom seem bursting with potential for scandalous, lovely satirical hijinks... and yet... while they reappear throughout the book in various little episodes, never feel skeweringly sharp or nearly as clever as they were going to be in my imagination, back on page 5.The vignette that is clearly central and by far the most entertaining, was that of Adam, a young writer who has just finished his first novel, for which he's been paid a hefty advance. Upon getting off the boat, Adam encounters a customs officer who confiscates most of his books and then burns his manuscript, due to its supposed indecency. Adam meets with his publisher and concludes that he'll have to write a novel every month for a year to meet his newfound debt, and that he won't be able to marry the lovely Nina Blount as planned. Throughout the rest of the book, Adam resurfaces on and off, always suddenly falling into some small fortune, telling Nina the wedding is back on, and then losing everything and cancelling the wedding again. The best of these episodes surrounds Adam's breif stint as a gossip writer named Mr. Chatterbox, and he writes a weekly "Page 6"-ish column about the "bright young things" of society and all their crazy night lives. He soon gets bored and just begins inventing important people, or hyping restaurants and clubs that are not nice at all and thus tricking everyone else into flocking there. He is promptly fired, of course, but not because his bosses care that he's making things up (they seem to expect this) but because he wrote that someone was wearing a bottle-green bowler hat and no one could conceive of such nonsense. So he's fired and the wedding is off... at least until the next escapade.While predictable, this manages to be very funny for the most part and keeps the novel humming along. Adam encounters many of the odd characters from the introduction as he goes along, but they never seem very important, or interesting, and are gone before long.In a move reminiscent of Brideshead, the novel concludes with a surprise flash-forward to Adam in the midst of "the biggest battlefield in the history of the world" wherein he reads a letter from Nina, now happily married to someone else and very much still flighty and out-of-touch. Now in a warzone, the silliness of all the preceding chapters is thrown into sharp contrast and here, but really only here, the irony is deliciously sharp. However, it didn't quite feel like the payoff I wanted from the previous 300 pages. I did appreciate one thing, though - the book came out in 1930 and in the forward, Waugh writes that the book is set in "the near future, when existing social tendencies have become more marked" - all of which makes this final chapter, in the "biggest battlefield in the history of the world" eerily pre-escient.
—Kristopher Jansma
Somewhat annoying style; in that he openly is writing in 'gag' fashion. This is indicated by a flurry of characters with names which are patently a put-on: 'Mrs. Ape', 'Lady Metroland', 'Lady Circumference'. Also the protagonist repeatedly allows himself to fall victim to a money-scam in a way which no one would ever do in real life. A stumbling block, that. Poignant at the finale, however--unexpected and welcome. Waugh's talent had yet to ripen, though--this is clearly an 'early' novel of his ..and it shows. The story is mostly dialog-driven humor. You wouldn't credit Waugh with the rich inventiveness he shows later on. Still; this is a swift and amusing read. Charming in its way. A few laugh-out-loud moments.
—Feliks
"Who's that awful looking woman?""She's no one. Mrs. Panrast she's called now.""She seems to know you.""Yes. I've known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she's my mother.""My dear, how too shaming."If you've got a taste for Ronald Firbank's prose and you enjoy seeing Thomas Hardy getting skewered, I think you'll gleefully sink your teeth into Waugh's Vile Bodies (1930). The book's a nice slab of satire that hasn't lost its humor, though now its bite may resemble more a vicious gumming than a threatening snap and snarl. At its heart there's only a whiff of a plot: Adam and Nina may want to get married to one another, though neither has the money to pull it off. Adam's fortunes rise and fall through a madcap series of comic episodes that read best as a miscellany of Dickensian character sketches drawn from London's high society during the waning years of 1920s. You'll meet the American evangelist, Mrs. Ape and her choir of trampish "angels"; the absentminded and well lubricated Edwardian hostess, Lottie Crump; the scatterbrained but ever so sly Col. Blount; and a host of Bright Young Things partying around the clock, led by one of Waugh's most precious creations, the dithering, drunken, dissipated Agatha Runcible. Vile Bodies is the British version of Hemingway's lost generation eulogy, but told, thankfully, with wit and flawless timing. You won't burst out laughing too often, but it's hard to read many pages without snickering or smirking with that luscious feeling of self-righteous condescension that really good satire gives you. My only grievance is that the book carries on far too long. Keeping a dark joke going for over 300 pages calls for a little more skill than Waugh had at this point in his long career. I enjoyed the first hundred pages, got a little weary with the middle, but found the last hundred the best of all since by then I'd met all the characters and the plot had at last begun to boil. If you ever think of reading Waugh's best known book Brideshead Revisted, you may want to set the table for it first by reading some of his satires. Their vast casts, wispy plots, and period jokes will take a little patience, but in the end you may better enjoy Waugh's style and essentially moral outlook by first playing with him while he's young and nipping. I think you'll find that the flash and fizz of these early books will deepen the nostalgia, poignancy, and somber tones that color his later work.
—Scott
