
What Evelyn Waugh saw in America - apollinaire
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2020/04/17/what-evelyn-waugh-saw-america-anglo-american-romance
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cpr
This is pretty weak sauce, poorly written, and giving only superficial insight
into Waugh's depth of character.

His diaries probably give the most insight, but if you only read _Brideshead
Revisited_ , you'll be a much richer person.

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kwoff
I guess I don't understand what I'm supposed to find in Evelyn Waugh.
Previously I've only ever heard the name in "Lost in Translation": "Evelyn
Waugh was a man." Skimming the article, I see a bunch of "blah blah" about a
rich Brit partying in America last century. The wikipedia page claims "He is
recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the
20th century". If you say so. What am I missing?

~~~
billfruit
There seems to be a lack of a large contingent of people in HN who are deeply
into literary fiction. If you are into that kind of an interest, his name
along with the likes of Arnold Bennett, Theodore Dressier, William Howard
Dean, Sinclair Lewis, Rebecca West, Thomas Berger, Wallace Stegner, John
Galsworthy, etc among many others would have instant recognition.

Waugh specially was an established novelist before world war 2. He
participated in various theaters in Europe, and later wrote about them. He may
have been one of the foremost chroniclers of the British Experience in WW2. I
doubt Americans have someone of similar achievement to compare. Herman Wouk
isn't of the same level as Waugh.

Of course there was even the episode of his name featuring in the 100 'Women'
novelists of 20th century list of Time magazine.

~~~
adventured
> Of course there was even the episode of his name featuring in the 100
> 'Women' novelists of 20th century list of Time magazine.

For those curious, it was in a small 2016 article about college textbooks [1]
("These Are the 100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes"). Not some
prominent 100 women novelists of the 20th century list that was their cover
story. At the bottom of the page it has a correction notice. People like to
say Time Magazine made the mistake, because it blows it out of proportion and
sounds better. If you say that one writer - David Johnson - made a mistake, it
entirely loses its punch.

[1] [https://time.com/4234719/college-textbooks-female-
writers/](https://time.com/4234719/college-textbooks-female-writers/)

~~~
wutbrodo
> People like to say Time Magazine made the mistake, because it blows it out
> of proportion and sounds better. If you say that one writer - David Johnson
> - made a mistake, it entirely loses its punch.

Publications have editors on staff to check what they publish, before they
print and distribute millions of copies of every sentence in the issue.
There's a longstanding and ubiquitous norm that publications are absolutely
responsible for what they publish, and for good reason. You may as well say
that Facebook isn't responsible for its norm violation du jour; just the PM
who thought of it and the couple engineers that implemented it.

(which isn't to say that this is anything more than mildly amusing, but
claiming that attributing the error to Time instead of one of its writers is
"blowing it out of proportion" couldn't be more wrong)

