Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh
List Price:
Our Price: $6.25
You Save: $8.74 (58%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.17 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Evelyn WaughEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-09
ISBN: 0316926078
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Decline and Fall
Book Review: School ties
Summary: 5 Stars
Evelyn Waugh's first novel "Decline and Fall" pops like a cork from a bottle of champagne. While many authors take years and volumes to find just the right tone, the 25-year-old Waugh, who had just published a biography of Dante Rossetti, seems to have had his literary concept perfectly in mind from the start and hit the ground running with this raucously funny yet astonishingly mature debut.
The hero (although Waugh would disagree with the term) is Paul Pennyfeather, a divinity student at Scone College, Oxford, who as the book begins is expelled for "indecent behavior" of which he is actually innocent, and is promptly disowned by his guardian over the shame educed by this incident. Now, in need of money, he searches for a job, and the only one he can get is a teaching position at a small boys' school located in a Welsh castle called Llanabba.
Llanabba, while not quite rivaling Dotheboys Hall of "Nicholas Nickleby," is a woefully undignified educational facility, an institution of incompetence. The headmaster is a crafty curmudgeon named Dr. Fagan, the butler Philbrick is a criminal who prospers by constantly falsifying his identity, and the boys are an undisciplined and ungifted lot. The other instructors seem to have been deposited there for having failed elsewhere: Mr. Prendergast, a clergyman who has left the Church because of "Doubts," and Captain Grimes, a maimed ex-soldier ("Think I lost it in the war," he tells Pennyfeather about his missing leg) who is continually "in the soup" but always manages to extricate himself.
Romance, or rather that badinage between the sexes that passes for romance in Waugh's world, turns out to be Pennyfeather's bane, initiating his misadventures in the second half of the novel. His engagement to marry the voluptuous Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, the widowed mother of one of the Llanabba boys, is interrupted by his incarceration for unwittingly assisting her business of procuring prostitutes, one of whom is Grimes's wife; in prison he unsurprisingly encounters some old friends who can help him break free, and by the author's grace everything comes full circle in the end.
One of Waugh's many strengths is his ability to create a multitude of humorous characters out of completely original cloth. There is a family whose names are inspired by geometry: a Llanabba boy named Tangent and his mother, the globular Lady Circumference, whose boorish manners belie her title. The indirect cause of Pennyfeather's predicament, and his eventual savior, is the young dandy Sir Alistair Trumpington, who makes a major appearance in Waugh's later novel "Put Out More Flags." And the brainiest character in the novel is Otto Silenus, a young German architect with a philosophical outlook and a radical style who is hired by Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde to renovate her celebrated country house called King's Thursday.
Silenus's concluding metaphor about life--a spinning wheel on which some people are meant to be riders and the rest spectators--is not as silly as it sounds; it seems as if Waugh's authorial impulse is to exhibit the contrast between the two types of people and observe the comical results when the boundary is crossed.
Summary of Decline and Fall
Subtitled "A Novel of Many Manners, " Evelyn Waugh's notorious first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportsmanship, the cultured perfection of Oxford, and the inviolable honor codes of the English gentleman.Humor Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Humor Books
Snuffby Chuck Palahniuk
Anchor; Published: 2009-04-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Don't Eat This Bookby Morgan Spurlock
Penguin Audio; Published: 2005-05-19; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $5.77
Price in other shops:
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hellby Tucker Max
Penguin; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
The Saber-Tooth Curriculumby J.Abner Peddiwell
Mcgraw-Hill; Published: 1959-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.00
Miss Americaby Howard Stern
It Books; Published: 2010-08-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.71
Price in other shops:
101 Places Not to See Before You Dieby Catherine Price
Harper Perennial; Published: 2010-06-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
My Life and Hard Times (Perennial Classics)by James Thurber
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 1999-10-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.72
Price in other shops:
Equal Rites: A Discworld Novel (Discworld Novels)by Terry Pratchett
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-09-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.18
Price in other shops:
Mirth of a Nation: Audio Companion, Fellow Traveler and Friend for Life--Laff Tracks From America's Most Trusted Humor Anthologyby Michael J. Rosen
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-11-12; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $4.51
Price in other shops:
Red, White & Liberalby Alan Colmes
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-10-28; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Black Mischiefby Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books; Published: 2002-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.90
Price in other shops:
Coming Up for Airby George Orwell
Mariner Books; Published: 1969-10-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics)by Ford Madox Ford
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2008-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.48
Price in other shops:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel (P.S.)by Muriel Spark
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2009-02-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops:
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waughby Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books; Published: 2000-09-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Vile Bodiesby Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Scoopby Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.48
Price in other shops:
The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)by Evelyn Waugh
Everyman's Library; Published: 1994-05-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.40
Price in other shops:
Brideshead Revisitedby Evelyn Waugh
Spring Arbor/Ingram; Back Bay Books; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.98
Price in other shops:
A Handful of Dustby Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.24
Price in other shops: