November 15, 2008

It is fair to label Brideshead puzzling. It is beautifully written, amusing and dry, but what is Evelyn Waugh trying to say?

Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism and was steadfast in his defence of his faith, but Brideshead seems to make a mockery of the religion. It is possible to read the novel and conclude that the author was warning us of the perils of devotion to the Church. Sebastian's family is weighed down by Lady Marchmain's views. Her husband flees the marriage, her eldest son is withdrawn and eccentric, Julia, her daughter, is unhappily married and then unable to marry for love and Sebastian, her younger son, becomes an alcoholic.

The narrator, Charles Ryder, is agnostic and perhaps the voice of the younger Waugh who briefly rejected religion. Charles visits the chapel at Brideshead when he is billeted there during the war and he emerges cheerful. This implies that Charles has succumbed to Catholicism, but it hardly balances the mistrust that he feels earlier in the book. Or perhaps Brideshead is really one long confession from a man who needed the Church all along.

November 1, 2008

There was something familiar about Brideshead Revisited that nagged away at me and had nothing to do with the famous Granada television adaptation. And then, as I reached the point where Lady Marchmain expressed her disappointment with the narrator, Charles Ryder, I realised I was reading a version of The Line of Beauty, the Booker prize- winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

The parallels between Sebastian's mother and that of the matriarch in The Line of Beauty seemed so obvious. Both women use a young man, besotted by their son, to do their parenting for them. Both seem gracious and both reveal themselves to be selfish and vitriolic when their plans go awry. I wondered, briefly, if Hollinghurst had been influenced by Evelyn Waugh and left it at that.

A fortnight ago, at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, two of the live Books group sessions I hosted were devoted to Brideshead. I made a mental note to raise the Hollinghurst question if the conversation flagged, but I did not need to. One of the guests volunteered not only that he saw the matriarchs as similar but felt the novels as complete works followed the same patterns and dealt with the same themes. Both books centre on a student seduced by the power, wealth and beauty of a young man from a higher social class. If I was a professor of literature I would be sorely tempted to set a paper asking my undergraduates to find all the parallels and decide if Beauty is a reworking of a classic or sufficiently original to be worthy of all the accolades it received.

The Cheltenham Literature Festival would not be mother of all book festivals, however, if it did not, as if by sorcery, place in my line of sight, a few minutes after the Books group sessions had ended, the figure of Hollinghurst. I told him what had just happened and asked him if he had been influenced by Waugh. Hollinghurst sighed. It was not the first time the question had been put to him, he said. A review by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times had pointed to all manner of similarities from beginning to end, but he felt that theory did not work because in Brideshead Roman Catholicism remained unchallenged but Thatcherism was undermined in his novel. Hollinghurst admitted that he was a huge fan of Waugh but that Brideshead was his least favourite of his works. It was though, he said, possible that he was influenced by it on a subconscious level.

All credit to Hollinghurst. I cornered him and he could have scuttled away, but instead he dealt with what amounts to an accusation of sorts. Brideshead remains, I think, the better book and the verdict of those who attended the Books groups was that if Brideshead was not a truly great novel, it at least came close.

Key questions

Is the novel predominantly about Roman Catholicism or class?

In the recent film of the book Sebastian is arguably far from impressive. How does Waugh make him mesmeric?

There are few sympathetic characters, so why do people so love this novel?

The story is framed by Charles Ryder's war experiences. Would the novel have worked without them?

October 18, 2008

The new film of Evelyn Waugh's classic leaves Alyson Rudd longing for the subtleties of the original novel

IF YOU READ Evelyn Waugh's 1959 preface to Brideshead Revisited, you might be tempted not to bother with the novel at all. Waugh warns us of glaring defects and ornamental language and more or less apologises for the whole project, offering the circumstances he wrote in - the Second World War - as explanation or, perhaps, excuse. But despite his misgivings, the novel has become famous. It is on that list of books that must be read and probably on that list of books that were more enjoyable than anticipated - and more complex.

Part of the novel's fame is as a result of the televised version first aired in 1981 starring Jeremy Irons. That prompted new readers in their millions and perhaps more will be tempted to buy a copy after the recent release of the movie, directed by Julian Jarrold. In fact I would be astonished if the new version did not prompt book sales. The film is so starved of dialogue that you need to have the novel to hand to understand the characters.

It used to be that all great novels were murdered by the big screen and then, gradually, films began to do them justice. But for some curious reason, all that is quirky, droll and outlandish about Waugh's novel is left out of the film. I went to see it with members of my own book club and as the credits rolled we all looked at each other, perplexed. Where were all the memorable scenes and stand-out set pieces? We enjoyed staring at Matthew Goode, who plays Charles Ryder beautifully, but were mystified why Sebastian was portrayed as possessing not one spark of the allure Waugh gave him.

Brideshead is the Big Read at this year's Cheltenham Literature Festival. The festival's theme is families, and to some degree this is a novel that has the family as a central theme. But it is, above all, about Roman Catholicism. At least the film gets that right with its regular close-ups of crucifixes and lingering shots of paintings of the Virgin Mary. A rosary lands on the floor with a thud so loud it is almost comical.

It is more subtle in the book. Ryder, an atheist, is an outsider. At first he is simply an outcast because of his class. Sebastian has the aura of someone who has been spoilt and knows little of the real world and he is amused by Ryder, who acts as our narrator. When Sebastian says, “Oh Charles, what a lot you have to learn”, he means only that Ryder has to learn to be indulgent, as comes naturally to the aristocracy.

Ryder is smitten by Sebastian but bowled over by Brideshead, his ancestral home. Sebastian knows he should keep his new friend away from his family but inevitably they meet and Ryder becomes obsessed by the whole Brideshead package, which helps to turn Sebastian from a carefree Oxford undergraduate to a sulky, jealous and mistrustful alcoholic.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Penguin Classics £8.99; 336pp Buy the book

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