Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder by Evelyn Waugh
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Book Reviews of Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Book Review: A great if flawed masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Evelyn Waugh's BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a flawed masterpiece. It is his only major novel that is not fundamentally a comic novel, as well as his most clearly religious one. In the opinion of many readers - for instance, the great British novelist Henry Green wrote his friend Waugh that he loved the book but did not care for the ending. Famed critic Edmund Wilson felt the same way, as have many, many readers. Charles Ryder's conversion and the not terribly breakup of his and Julia's engagement are not very compelling or convincing. First his intense hostility to Lord Marchmain's taking Last Rites seems to come out of nowhere - at least in its strength and intensity - and then his conversion is even more out of the blue. Waugh had intended the novel to be about Divine Grace, but most readers, including most Christians, find the religious aspects of the book off putting, not least because his theology is unpalatable. Most Catholics that I have talked to find his religious views harsh and un-Christian and Protestants care for them even less. This was my third time to read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and all three times the ending of the book struck me as hollow and unconvincing.
Yet, this is one of my favorite books. How can I love a book so deeply that ends so poorly? There are three reasons. First, Charles Ryder's narrative voice is one of the most splendid in all of literature. His world-weary and defeated telling of the tale is poetic and beautiful, though heartbreaking and unspeakably sad. I would place Charles among the four or five most haunting narrators in all of literature. Second, Waugh's dialogues are exceptionally fine. On a first reading there are dozens of conversations that stick with the reader and get replayed in one's mind over and over. The best in the book are actually not dialogues but monologues by Anthony Blunt, one of the most entrancing supporting characters in fiction. Third, Waugh has created in this book some of the most vividly conceived characters in English literature. All three of these factors merge to create many of the most perfect moments one could hope to experience.
All of which makes the ending of the novel even more heartbreaking. As a Catholic convert Waugh wanted to write the Great Catholic Novel for his age. I don't think he succeeded. He made nothing even remotely resembling a case for Catholic belief. Waugh's God - or at least the God projected by the Brideshead set - is hard and implacable and unyielding. But Waugh did manage to created an unforgettable novel of frustrated dreams of youth and self-destruction. Oddly enough, despite the novel beings set among the last days of the English aristocracy and its supplanting by business tycoons - though both feature in the novel as background - it isn't too much about changing class in Britain. But focusing on those elements would have made the book about something other than it was. It was about the individuals belonging to the class rather than the class itself, though the knowledge of what was happening to the class lies like a shadow in the background.
The book is also structured around the two romances that Charles has with two members of the Flyte family. It isn't made clear whether Sebastian and Charles have a physical relationship, but their friendship, even if platonic, is clearly romantic. In one way Charles's affair with Julia is merely the consummation of what had started with Sebastian, something that Charles says explicitly to Julia.
Had the ending of this book been up to the level of the rest of the book, this might well have been one of the finest English novels ever written. Even as it is, it is a very fine book. I don't think it is Waugh's best novel, even though it contains some of the best things he ever wrote (my vote for his most perfect books would be the Sword of Honour Trilogy, SCOOP, and A HANDFUL OF DUST). And the novel is one of the reasons that Waugh is among my favorite writers. I look forward to reading it for a fourth time.
I additionally strongly recommend the exceptionally find BBC miniseries based upon the novel, starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as Sebastian and Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain. I honestly believe that it is the single finest production ever made for television and it is pretty much a scene for scene recreation of the novel. It is also the finest version of a novel that I believe has ever been done either for television or film.
Book Review: Brideshead Revisited in a complex and beautifully written tale of nostalgia for a faith and aristocratic way of life
Summary: 5 Stars
Brideshead Revisited was published in 1944 and has won its place as the most famous and beloved work of its prolific author Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966). Waugh was a British aristocrat, alcoholic and a devout Roman Catholic. He was a conservative and a snob. The man could, however, write with power, passion and keen skills of observation.
The 300 page novel is narrated by Charles Ryder. Ryder is a middle class chap who aspires to be a painter. His father is distant and dull; his mother was killed during World War I. Charles enters Oxford quickly becoming acquainted with a bohemian set. Homoeroticism is normative in this group led by the outre Anthony Patch. Charles becomes acquainted with Sebastian Flyte wealthy and spoiled son of Lord and Lady Marchmain
During a summer recess Ryder and Sebastian visit the latter's ancestral home Brideshead. The Marchmains are Roman Catholics who have had the faith instilled deeply into their psyches by the formidable Lady Marchmain.
Charles is drawn closer to the Marchmains as time passes. In addition to Sebastian he meets and eventually has an adulterous relationship with Juia. Brideshead the oldest son is a snob and ninnyhead who collects matchbox boxes and weds a fat, fortyish and fatuous widow. The youngest child is Celia who enters a convent later emerging to do nursing work.
The glorious springtime of hope for the family comes a cropper. Sebastian drops out of school, becomes an alcoholic and lives out his life in a monastery in Tunisia. Julia weds the obtuse and greedy Rex Mottram but ditches him for Charles. After her mother dies her Catholic teaching keeps her from marrying Charles. Ryder is an agnostic who cannot persuade Julia to leave God for him. Ryder is a sad sack of a man despite his fame in the art world. He and all of the characters are lonely seekers for love which they find elusive.
Charles becomes a captain in the British army in World War II. It is in this capacity that he and his squad camp out at the deserted Brideshead estate. Memories flood his nostalgic soul for a lost dawn when life was just beginning and the drab life of wartime England was not even imaginable. At age 39 the divorced Charles pines for the love of Julia dreaming of a happiness which will never be fulfilled.
Waugh is adept at using symbolism. Sebastian was an early Christian martyr slain with arrows. Sebastian the Marchmain son is also slain by the slings and arrows in flight which destoy his fragile pesona. Sebastian clutching his teddybear Aloysius is also a fragile toy who cannot escape the Roman Catholicism faith. Sebastian is alwas in flight but never finds a perch in this world. Charles Ryder rides with the Roman Catholic aristocracy but never feels he is really a part of that close knitted group. Ryder becomes a famous artist but is unfaithful to his dull and amorous wife. Lady Marchmain marches forth carrying high the banner of Catholic orthodoxy. The death scene of the old roue Lord Marchmain finds him returning to the faith in a touching death scene. Waugh is a Christian writer in our secular age.
None of the characters are lovable and all are deeply flawed. They do live and breathe and become human for us as we are enveloped by the rich prose of Mr. Waugh.
Brideshead Revisited has had a big revival due to the new movie and the reissue of the series on DVD which was broadcast by the BBC years ago. The book is very British, slow moving and more character centered than plot driven. It is a novel which will make you think on everything from snobbery to social class to faith. No wonder it is a modern classic.
Book Review: Strangling roots in a changing world lead to flight or return.
Summary: 5 Stars
Originally published in 1944, and in spite of the military setting of the prologue, this novel has little to do with the World War, but is almost wholly about the estrangement of life among the upper British society as penetratingly portrayed and satirized by the antics of the Flyte and Ryder families during those years that paralleled the historical angst that lead into the Second World War.
One of the very greatest writers of the twentieth century, Waugh is a commanding painter with words: such brilliant, precise, well-planned and placed words, much like a great work by Beethoven, ordered so inevitably that one knows that no other combination could speak clearer or louder or softer - or with more encompassing wit. It is a delight to read - and then re-read, to savor many of its perfect passages. Like: "...their barn-yard daughters will snigger and think their father was quite a dog in his day..."
and: "Charm is the great English blight.... It kills love, it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."
Even the surnames are characterizations: Ryder - Charles, and even his unruffled father, smug in his mocking schemes, seemed content to just ride along with what the world subjects them to, sheltering an underlying laxness - or even care - with a smile of agreeableness and charm. The Flytes, all six of them, denizens of a countryside castle-like manor named Brideshead, have interesting ways of fleeing reality, acting at times like automatons grasping at or revolting against selected religious catechisms, or choosing the quiet death of a passionate alcoholic. Scenes change from Oxford, London, Venice, the Casbah or boat crossings of the Atlantic, but always, it seems, Brideshead calls. "...for we possess nothing certainly except the past..."
Brideshead Revisited is the culmination of years of masterful writing and perhaps his very best novel: the biting satire and broad-handed humor of A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall have been honed by experience and refined by humanity, as we come to respect and care for all the book's major characters, while along the way many subjects and ideas are presented on the reader's stage: faith and the role of God's Grace, independence, homosexuality, art, rights and responsibilities, and although a priest plays an important part, the reader will not be inveigled to find a confessional. Waugh gives us "...one of those needle-hooks of experience which catch the attention when larger matters are at stake, and remain in the mind when they are forgotten..."
To paraphrase a Joni Mitchell song, Waugh has looked at love and life from not just both sides now, but countless sides, up and down, and given us the finest illusions to recall.
This is a masterpiece of English literature: this classic cries out for reading!
Book Review: A genuine 20th-century classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Brideshead Revisited is in many ways an anomalous work in the oeuvre of Evelyn Waugh. Better known for his scathingly funny satires, Waugh, in writing this novel, turned his freewheeling wit and awe-inspiring command of the English language toward writing what is perhaps his most serious work. The book is nonetheless, in many places, hilarious--but more so, from start to finish, Brideshead Revisited is charming, convincing, and infinitely compelling in providing a timeless panorama of English youth and high society whose power and beauty transcends all cultural barriers.
I've heard all the criticisms of this book--I've heard Martin Amis accuse it of snobbery for its defense of English nobility; George Orwell ridicule the conservative sentiments of Waugh that sometimes seep into the novel; and many a critic denounce the novel's attempts to unite the story with theology as a failure. But none of that matters to me, because Brideshead Revisited was one of the few books I've read that I sincerely regretted finishing, for the sole reason that I'd rarely read a book that so thoroughly engrossed, entertained, and enlightened me.
Well nigh all of the characters, minor and major alike, attract the reader's unwavering interest, often accompanied by a strong sense of sympathy, scorn, or even both. The book centers on the relationship of the protagonist, Charles Ryder, with the entire Flyte family, an aristocratic clan of Catholics who fascinate Ryder. Without giving away too many specifics, Brideshead Revisited, before its duration is spent, will relate one of the most authentic accounts of male friendship in literature, as well as what is, in my view, one of few literary love affairs whose ultimate success I found myself passionately rooting for all the way. From the witty and eminently likable Sebastian, to the sometimes endearingly maladroit Bridey, to the tragic Lady Marchmain, to the radiant and resolute Julia, the Flytes are one of the best-developed and most intriguing families you'll ever read about. As their stories, and Charles', unfold and interwine, the novel marches toward its inevitable and all-too-human conclusion, while drawing the reader closer and closer with every turn of the page--with some help from a stellar supporting cast.
Perhaps the aspect of the book that fascinates me the most is, although all of the characters an events therein are figments of Waugh's imagination, one gets the irrepressible sense that the story could have played out no other way. The novel, of course, is rife with Waugh's choice themes and motifs--but to me those, and their alleged flaws, are all secondary concerns, because Brideshead Revisited is masterly storytelling at its pinnacle.
Book Review: Passion Thwarted
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not THE FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW, but it is close. An outsider, Charles Ryder, (a near orphan), is befriended by a family, Lord and Lady Marchmain and their children, Bridey, Julia, Sebastian, and Cordelia. Of particular importance to the progression of the story are Sebastian and Julia.
Published in the United States in 1945, the novel has enduring interest as witnessed by the television mini-series and the movie. A contemporary reviewer noted that Waugh was writing at the top of his form, that the book was mature Waugh. The description of the art noveau style decoration of the chapel at Brideshead Castle is priceless.
Waugh uses a bundle of qualities to typify the major characters. That is to say, they stand for this and that, and may be visualised in such and such a way. And, as in so much of Waugh, the reader is shown the characters in action, they speak at great length, exhaustively. There are embedded first-person narratives, that of Charles Ryder in the outer ring, addressing the reader, and Anthony Blanche speaking to Charles at length, for example.
The reader need not be concerned that there is nothing funny in the volume under review, because there is. The portrait of Charles Ryder's father endeavoring to diversify Charles's evenings at home during the vacation is one of many instances of merriment. When Charles spends part of the same vacation with Sebastian Flyte, the author describes youth as langorous, generous.
Unfortunately the golden days of Charles and Sebastian don't last. Sebastian is sent down from Oxford and Charles goes to seek preparation for his career in the visual arts. When Charles is dismissed from Brideshead by Sebastian's mother he feels that he is entering reality. Charles leaves with an understanding the banishment is to last forever.
When his mother, Lady Marchmain, is dying, Charles sets out for Morocco in search of Sebastian. Sebastian is withered by drink. Charles arranges for Sebastian's brother Bridey to give him an allowance. Charles receives a commission to paint the house at Brideshead, his first.
Both Sebastian and Julia return to the practice of religion, Catholicism. The return has many consequences to their own lives and the life of Charles.
The book is both witty and good.