Barlow has even managed to take up residence in the “only knight in Hollywood’s” home, despite the objections of the expatriate community represented by Ambrose Abercrombie.
Fortunately he has managed to befriend Sir Francis Hinsley, chief script-writer for Megalopolitan Pictures and a fellow Englishman. I feel terrible about that.ĭennis Barlow is a failed English poet who has been unsuccessful in breaking into the Hollywood film industry.
Sadly this edition, published in 1956 and having survived all the years in-between did not last one day with me.
The copy of The Loved One that I read was a gift from a friend back in Dublin to mark our leaving for Australia. It would seem the man himself was a thoroughly unpleasant character – if you are interested in reading about Waugh’s life I would recommend Selina Hastings’ biography – but I always find myself putting down a book of his with a big grin on my face. It was the louche pessimism of his writing that impressed me, equal parts self-aware and flavoured with schadenfreude, combined with a rapier-like wit. I think Vile Bodies was the first of his books that I read as a teenager, which was something of a revelation. And the face which inclined its blind eyes towards him – the face was entirely horrible as ageless as a tortoise and as inhuman a painted and smirking obscene travesty by comparison with which the devil-mask Dennis had found in the noose was a festive adornment, a thing an uncle might don at a Christmas party.Įvelyn Waugh is a writer I can return to again and again. The body looked altogether smaller than life-size now that it was, as it were, stripped of the thick pelt of mobility and intelligence. Waugh's treatment of his macabre material is uninhibited, and wickedly funny.as sadistic, playful, and decisive as a cat's paw on a mouse."- Alice S.The complete stillness was more startling than any violent action. Waugh takes in hand, but the American ethos.He finds a touchstone for the mass-mind of America, for the compulsion to 'package' everything, even love and death.Mr. "Although the locale of The Loved One is Hollywood, it is not filmdom that Mr. "You'd better buy The Loved One, because I can't imagine a purchase apt to corrupt and delight you more.Never before that I can remember has a talent of such austere and classic design been applie to such monstrous vulgarities never before have the majestic themes of love and death been so delicately perverted to absurdity.It is certainly a work of art, as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything its author has ever done."- Wolcott Gibbs, The New Yorker "As a piece of writing it is nearly faultless as satire it is an act of devastation."- John Woodburn, The New Republic "Fiendishly entertaining."- New York Times
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