Wednesday, May 16, 2007

revisited



A postscript to my comments on Brideshead Revisited: it ought not to be forgotten that this is also a fundamentally very funny book. Humor is not used to assuage or apologize for the book's bite, but subtends every word so that, depending on your mood or general disposition, you might choose not to despair fully or indulge in righteous indignation - perfectly just reactions to the narrative:

"Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm."

This reminds me that I have always wanted to read Waugh's The Loved One, a satire on the funeral industry that was adapted to film in 1965 with genius performances by wildmen Jonathan Winters and Rod Steiger. I adored this film when I first saw it as a kid, partly because it has all these scenes that take place where I grew up but which, as shown, does not exist anymore. The one shot I can remember vividly (save for one of the players taking a swing from the cliff-side overhang of a Case Study House) was of the outside of a restaurant whose door was actually the gaping maw of a whale waiting to swallow customers whole. When I saw it, I remembered that restaurant, and in doing so, realized that I had not seen it for a long time. I was very startled at having this image trigger a memory of a place I did not yet know had disappeared.

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