Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh

Is it enough to say that reading Waugh is terribly diverting? Enough that Vile Bodies is good enough for lit class but also devilish enough for beach reading? Is it enough to simply dismiss it as a glorious, tawdry gossip novel and leave it at that? If I hadn't broken into Waugh with Brideshead Revisited, I think it might be. I could praise Vile Bodies' snappy prose and its sharp wit and then go have a cup of tea without a second thought; however, after Brideshead (tremendous novel), it's hard to let Vile Bodies get along on its own (considerable) merits without evaluating its place in Waugh's catalogue.

The plot, so to speak, involves the partying set of London society in the 1920's and features an array of characters of all ages with amusing names (Malpractice, Outrage, etc.) who bump into each other now and again and have amusing, hedonistic adventures when they do. The central character is Adam Fenwick-Symes, one of the Younger Set, an aspiring novelist engaged to be married who finds himself with money troubles when his manuscript is burned by an overzealous customs clerk. Adam is useful as a point of view character, as he stumbles into a job as a gossip writer for one of the daily papers and happens to know most of the partying folks rather well. Through him, we meet and interact with Miles Malpractice, Agatha Runcible, Simon Balcairn, Lottie who owns a hotel, Nina with the aged father, and a host of others whose names flip past with all the wit and staying power (which is to say, none) of a well-timed pun. The adventures are amusing, the repartee snappy, and the pace blisteringly fast... but I finished the book with a distinct sense of longing, rather than of satisfaction.

I suppose I shouldn't slight Vile Bodies, as this is really the kind of work for which Waugh is known: sharp satire of 1920's British society, juxtaposing the carefree mores of the younger generation with the posh aristocratic ridiculousness of the old guard. One might say that Waugh is Britain's Fitzgerald, in that both chose to deal with the follies of the idle upper class, yet Waugh's treatment is almost purely farce and lacks Fitzgerald's melancholy wistfulness. In Waugh's portrayal of the generation wars, neither youth nor age escapes with decorum; in fact, all characters come off as boobs. They're either happy, youthful, wanton boobs or callous, forgetful aged boobs, but they're boobs all the same.

All this is terribly entertaining to read, given Waugh's controlled, biting prose, his gift for sharp dialogue, and his dry turn of phrase. Throughout Vile Bodies, he delights in recurring jokes such as Adam's on-again, off-again engagement to Nina, Adam's continual quest for the "drunk major" who owes him $1,000 and then $30,000 pounds, and Nina's dotty old father who can't keep anything straight; or he pulls out all the stops for gorgeous set pieces of wickedness, such as the intrepid Miss Runcible's walk of shame from No. 10 Downing Street the morning after a party. The novel does contain its tragic moments - the downfall of Simon, the banishment of Miles, the fate of Agatha - but they are treated with such characteristic dryness that they contain no resonance, brushing lightly against the main farce and then fading into the background. All we know is that these characters are no longer a part of the story and instead of feeling sad about this, we adopt Adam and Nina's bland acceptance and go on with our lives.

Vile Bodies is undoubtedly the work of a clever genius, but without the contrast of a more serious tone (of which Waugh is most certainly capable) to ground it, the novel floats away on its own lightness.