
Horrors of Waugh - lermontov
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/horrors-of-waugh/
======
scandox
Waugh is one of the great writers of all time and one of the worst documented
humans, who didn't go to jail or commit genocide. This article does little
justice to what a stinker he was.

His parenting was abusive and bizarre. I remember reading one of his letters
in which he writes (I've checked the reference - letter to Ann Fleming 1952):

"My sexual passion for my ten year old daughter is obsessive..."

Later in another letter he writes (can't find ref):

"My unhealthy interest in my daughter has abated. I now detest her as much as
the rest of my children"

Edit: took out the part about him being mad - no evidence of that really. I
just find recordings of him horrible to listen to.

~~~
savanaly
For another case of a great writer who is an awful human being, check out V.S.
Naipaul. A beast to his wife, and not in the least ashamed of it. Here is his
wife:

"Last night I spoke of him letting me know the morning, nay the afternoon
after our marriage, that he didn’t really want to be married to me. Yes, he
said, he wanted to ask my permission to write about that … Would anyone, I
asked, enjoy reading about that? I put in my usual plea: fiction & comedy … I
am very low. But then perhaps it is my own fault."

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/cruel-a...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/cruel-
and-unusual/307073/)

~~~
nl
Here's Hitchens (who wrote the piece you linked) quoting Orwell (yes, _that_
Orwell) on Waugh:

 _In 1895, when Oscar Wilde was jailed, it must have needed very considerable
moral courage to defend homosexuality. Today it would need no courage at all:
today the equivalent action would be, perhaps, to defend antisemitism. But
this example that I have chosen immediately reminds one of something
else—namely, that one cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the
amount of courage that is required in holding it..... Waugh is about as good a
novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable
opinions._

Then Hitchens himself:

 _I have already mentioned that the gross pedophilia of "Decline and Fall" is
so artfully suggested that an adolescent might read it unawares._

and

 _But toying with his innocents, and showing how cleverly and suddenly their
creator could bring them low, was for Waugh part of a serious mandate. He
wanted to bring the Book of Job to life for those who had never read, or who
feared, it._

(If you haven't read the biblical book of Job then the eviliness of this may
miss you)

 _During his wartime service—which, it must be said, was often conspicuous for
its gallantry—he almost had to be protected from assassination at the hands of
the soldiers under his command._

While it is well known that Waugh was a fascist sympathizer Hitchens makes it
pretty clear that this persisted throughout WW2:

 _Guy Crouchback [in one of Waugh 's books] regards the Yugoslav partisans as
mere cyphers for Stalin, sympathizes with the local Fascists, and admires the
discipline of the German occupiers. We know from many published memoirs that
Waugh himself was eventually removed from this theater of operations for
precisely that sort of insubordination._

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-
per...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-permanent-
adolescent/302717/)

------
savanaly
I read Decline and Fall by Waugh, and it was delightful. It recounts the
continuous comic misfortunes of the main character throughout his life, and
ends with an extremely memorable metaphor. I assume if you're reading this
comment thread you're at least somewhat interested in Evelyn Waugh's writing,
so I'll just paste the passage here even though it's not quite on topic:

“Life is like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a
room with tiers of seats all around, and in the centre the floor is made of a
great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and
watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep
getting flung off, and that makes them laugh too. It's great fun.

You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is
moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally someone in the
centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by
the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at
the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it;
I'm not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the
way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and
scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others,
like Margot, who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and
enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it
at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that
makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it.
It doesn't suit everyone."

~~~
mikestew
You should have added an Amazon affiliate link with that quote, I would have
clicked it. :-) Ordered the Kindle copy based that quote alone. That, and I
knew she wrote _Brideshead Revisited_ , though haven't read it or seen the
mini series.

~~~
blackbagboys
A point of pedantry: Evelyn Waugh was male (and, briefly, married to a woman
who was also named Evelyn).

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vangale
I lived in Ethiopia at the end of the reign of Haile Selassie and left there
right at the start of the revolution, which is why Waugh's writing on Ethiopia
just horrifies me: [https://www.historytoday.com/jeffrey-meyers/abyssinia-out-
sh...](https://www.historytoday.com/jeffrey-meyers/abyssinia-out-shadows)

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ocschwar
Waugh's book The Loved One made me want to rinse my hands in holy water after
reading it.

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ams6110
Bad memories of forcing myself to slog through his writings in high school.

