Put Out More Flags
by Evelyn Waugh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Evelyn WaughEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-08-15
ISBN: 0316916056
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Put Out More Flags
Book Review: Fun in the Phony War
Summary: 5 Stars
The eight months between the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939 and the German invasion of France in May 1940 were referred to, even at the time, in Britain as "the phony war." Military conscription began, blackouts and food rationing were imposed, and many families with children were evacuated from the cities, but there were no air raids and no major deployments of British forces overseas. So many wealthier people who had shut up their London houses in the autumn returned there for the winter season. Evelyn Waugh's satirical account of the period, written only a couple of years later, deals with a group of upper-class Englishmen and women for whom the whole period was mainly a matter of dressing up as soldiers, and "doing one's duty" was an opportune antidote to boredom.
This is a very funny book, but it may not be accessible to everyone. Here, as a kind of litmus test, is a passage from the beginning of the book. One of the characters, a society hostess, has just heard the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announce the declaration of war over the radio:
"It was quite true, thought Lady Seal; Neville Chamberlain had spoken surprisingly well. She had never liked him very much, neither him nor his brother -- if anything she had preferred the brother -- but they were uncomfortable, drab fellows both of them. However, he had spoken very creditably that morning, as though at last he were fully alive to his responsibilities. She would ask him to luncheon. But perhaps he would be busy; the most improbable people were busy in wartime, she remembered."
That "most improbable" made me laugh loud enough to disturb several neighboring diners, but I recognize that the patronizing understatement is a very British sort of humor. If you find this passage funny, then by all means read the book; it is a masterpiece. Otherwise, be warned. It is not just the humor that may be impenetrable, but the large cast of characters, whose social status and interconnections are indicated in the most subtle ways, by the kinds of names they are given or the addresses at which they live. This is a book that really cries out for an annotated edition, giving lists of characters and family trees, explanations of the historical events taking place offstage, and notes on the numerous cultural matters that are referenced obliquely; the leftist poets Parsnip and Pimpernell who have emigrated to America, for instance, must surely be a sly dig at Auden and Isherwood. And yet the novel would sink under the weight of such an apparatus criticus; it is a soufflé of frivolity topped with meringue.
But not quite a soufflé. Reviewing Waugh's A HANDFUL OF DUST (1934) a year or so ago, I remarked that a book which began with the farcical doings of a group of upper-class drones who might have come straight out of P. G. Wodehouse changed half-way to develop something of the moral weight of Graham Greene. Hearing PUT OUT MORE FLAGS talked about, I expected a similar tragicomic trajectory. The book does indeed get more serious as it goes on, but in a less obvious way which I think makes it the greater novel. The reader knows that the war will not remain phony for long, and this makes the melodramatic events that produced the climax in the earlier book quite unnecessary here. Secondly, even in its frivolous early stages, the book shows a breadth of cultural awareness, nicely balanced between real-world events and dinner-table conversation, that gives it dimension from the start. Thirdly, there is the moral element; Waugh, another Catholic, is as much of a moralist as Greene, only with a lighter touch. As they are affected by the war, many of the characters take surprising turns which reveal them as moral individuals, sometimes weaker than we had thought, but often stronger, and always more sympathetic. Or almost always; Waugh maintains a rather disturbing sense of moral ambiguity. Basil Seal, the cheerful sponger antihero of the novel, is as much fun as Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, and the war gives him opportunity for increasingly audacious schemes. But by the end, real people are getting hurt by them. You root for him, you laugh at his successes, but then you wonder if you should be laughing.... I am still working that one out.
Summary of Put Out More Flags
Put Out More Flags is Waugh's superb send-up of "smart" England, the bohemian crowd, as World War II approaches. Making a return appearance, Basil Seal this time insinuates himself into an odd but profitable role in the country's mobilization.Literary Books
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