BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh

[RainbowJude]

I've been taking a break from Blyton the past couple of months, partly just for a change of pace and partly because when I start reading one I tend to ignore most other things until I'm done with it, and just finished reading Brideshead Revisited after having watched the apparently vastly inferior (when compared with the television mini-series, which I've never seen) film that came out a couple of years ago on DVD.

I thought it was a brilliant book, infused with incredible wit but also with incredible sorrow. In Waugh's prose, there is such a brilliantly defined relationship between beauty and pain. I was completely swept away by it all.

I know the mini-series has been mentioned here before, but are there any fans of the book around here?

[Anita Bensoussane]

I thought it was a brilliant book, infused with incredible wit but also with incredible sorrow. In Waugh's prose, there is such a brilliantly defined relationship between beauty and pain. I was completely swept away by it all.

I know the mini-series has been mentioned here before, but are there any fans of the book around here?

Yes, I'm a fan of the book and have read it several times. A number of Evelyn Waugh's books are "infused with incredible wit" but Brideshead Revisited stands out for being laced with "incredible sorrow." Wistfulness runs through the story, through scenes of extravagance and indulgence as well as through scenes of restraint and sacrifice. I read somewhere that Waugh turned to Catholicism because he was seeking something stable in a world of impermanence, and it's interesting that even the troubled Sebastian, who spends years in an alcohol-induced stupor as if trying to numb himself so he doesn't have to deal with life, ends up in a Tunisian monastery. The whole tale is exquisitely told. Some of Waugh's other work is dazzlingly satirical and cynical (I'm thinking of novels like Vile Bodies, and I enjoy those too) but Brideshead Revisited appears to have been written from the heart.

I haven't seen the recent Brideshead Revisited film, though I loved the 1981 television mini-series which captures the essence of the book perfectly. I'm not sure I'd call it a mini-series though - it consists of about a dozen longish episodes and tells the story in a fittingly languorous way.

[un PC]

I like the book; but it reminds me of school because it was one of the books that I studied for my A Level English

[burlingtonbertram]

Moved from another thread.

“I have been here before,” I said. I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour...”

Just reading Waugh's “Brideshead Revisited” (1945). What a truly magnificent book. An epistle to youth and first love, written in a jaded middle age. Also, an elegy to the Upper-class and a way of life that World War Two seemed to have killed off. It's themes are Catholic guilt, an inability to grow up, the misery of growing up, the burden of expectation, fractured relationships and dependency.

Waugh was by no means Upper class (strictly middle) and yet he mourned what he thought was it's passing. Whereas, of course, it is in surprisingly rude health.

There is a wonderful use of similes; in the lighter parts very reminiscent of PG Wodehouse:

“There were three Etonian freshmen, mild, elegant, detached young men who had all been to a dance in London the night before, and spoke of it as though it had been the funeral of a near but unloved kinsman.”

It is hard for me to separate the book and the sumptuous 80's production with it's perfect casting. The first three episodes in particular are, for me, some of the most exquisite television ever made. The protagonist, Charles Ryder, is something of a cold fish and relates his internal monologue in a manner that I envy very much. Jeremy Irons' (Ryder) narration of the series was almost hypnotic to listen to. So faithful to the text too. Reflective, joyous initially, and yet struck through with that seam of melancholy.

[Anita Bensoussane]

That's exactly how I feel about the book and the 1981 TV serial, BurlingtonBertram. I've read/watched both a number of times. If I were asked to pick just one TV serial that did justice to the original book, that's the serial I would choose.

Talking of Evelyn Waugh reminds me that I'd like to read Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust again in the near future.

[burlingtonbertram]

I must agree that of all the TV serials based on books, Brideshead is the one that does most justice. Didn't think much to the more recent film version although they did well to compress the story into a single movie.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the more recent film version yet, in case anything from it lingers and intrudes upon the images already in my mind! I suppose I'll take the plunge one of these days!

Jeremy Irons' (Charles Ryder's) narration for the TV series is indeed mesmerising.