A little order: A selection from his journalism

By Evelyn Waugh

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316926337
• ISBN13: 9780316926331
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

As You Would Expect....

If I had to describe the essays in this book in one word, that word would be "delicious." This is an excellent anthology of Waugh's journalism covering a wide variety of topics, including Hollywood, painting, literature, Marxism, Catholocism, and the state of what was then "modern" society. The editor has grouped the articles into five chapters: "Myself," "Aesthete," "Man of Letters," "Conservative," and "Catholic." As those familiar with Waugh would expect (and most would probably hope), the writings, for the most part, exude Waugh's acerbic wit and unrepentent snobbery. I was especially interested to read his response to a questionnaire sent by a Louis Aragon-led leftist group to writers in the British Isles. The inquiry asked: "Are you for or against the legal Government and the People of Republican Spain? Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism? For it is impossible any longer to take no side." The writers' responses were published in a 1937 issue of "Left Review." I was aware of the episode and that Waugh was one of only two or three writers who did not express their support for "the People" of Republican Spain, but this anthology is the only place where I have been able to actually see his response: "...I am no more impressed by the 'legality' of the Valencia Government than are English Communists by the legality of the Crown, Lords and Commons...If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco. As an Englishman I am not in the predicament of choosing between two evils. I am not a Fascist nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that such a choice is imminent."