Conteporary Reviews Of Vile Bodies

L.P. Hartley in Saturday Review 25 January 1930 (reprinted in Stannard, p97)

If we read this high-spirited book between the lines and look its gift-horse humour in the mouth, we may find that the ground is not really solid beneath our feet; we are dancing on a precipice ... 'Posterity will laugh,' a distinguished contemporary poet bitterly observed, 'when it reads about the age in which I have had to live.' I have sometimes doubted whether it will; but if (as might easily happen) it has Mr Waugh's book to turn to, it may have its laugh after all.

This is rather the line I come at the book with but the reviews were not uniformly complimentary and some of the more caustic comments do highlight the novel's weaknesses.

Arnold Bennett Evening Standard 29 January 1930 (Stannard, 99)

Mr Waugh's subject is the silly set, more commonly known as the smart set - social, pseudo-artistic, pseudo-literary, and genuinely alcoholic, the set which is always trying to run away from the shadow of its own fundamental stupidity. An easy subject. None of the satire in this book is unjust, but some of it is extremely, wildly farcical, and bits of it would not induce laughter in Lord Brentford. I began Vile Bodies with great expectations, and found hard times in the middle of it.

(Lord Brentford was, as Sir William Joynson Hicks, an evangelist and teetotal Conservative Home Secretary) This is a fair critique of the lack of structure to the novel and of some scenes which are surplus even in this short book. Richard Aldington in The Sunday Referee of 9 February (Stannard, 102) said much the same but his conclusion does hint at why I think the text had value in its time and, rather paradoxically, still does now,

Above all I like Mr Waugh's unpretentiousness. There are so many people writing immortal works for posterity that it is very pleasant to find a writer of really superior gifts who is content to write about a little bit of his own time for his own time. And you never can tell - Candide and Dr Akakia were squibs.

Consider the list of the encumbrances Aldington admits Waugh's generation had to bear. Then read today's newspapers. Deafening echoes,

They were ushered into life during one of the meanest and most fraudulent decades staining the annals of history. And it's still going on - forgery, fraudulent bankruptcy, false banknotes [for which I suggest the modern reader should substitute 'quantitative easing' - DHR] intensive commercial warfare, lying conferences to deceive the nations' demand for peace ... No; I don't think we can blame the 'Young.' I certainly should not, even if they were all as silly and futile as the fantoches in Mr Waugh's satire. 

So, notwithstanding the impression I may give, no I don't blame the young. I'm just relieved they don't too violently blame me. All of which has rather wandered off my point. Which was? To hint (inarticulately) at why I'm doing this. I'm floundering today but here's a little pearl picked up by this little piggy,

There must be something to generate tension, something to create complication, without any conscious attempt on the playwright's part to do so. There must be a force which will unify all parts, a force out of which they will grow as naturally as limbs grow from the body. We think we know what that force is: human character, in all its infinite ramifications and dialectical contradictions. (Egri, xx)

All of which is rather marvellous but, on close analysis, does fall foul of the Sybil Fawlty test (see 21 February) - incidentally it is Sybil with an 'S' not a 'C', I checked.

So character, character, character. Having earlier said that many of Waugh's vast army of characters are interchangeable one might venture I have encountered a blind alley. Not so. I have already committed (at least until I change my mind) to a cull cum amalgamation of characters and I think there is enough there to compile a drama.

Evelyn Waugh 1930

In an earlier entry I likened this exercise to a commercial transaction - large piece of paper, coffee, bananas. The piece of paper is up on the wall (5' x 3' or 150 x 90 in new money) and already bears a brief summary of each chapter of the book. Tomorrow I will buy some new marker pens to add the headings of my three act structure (see below). Coffee - in Anglesey I had the luxury of Java (a gift from my eleven year old niece who has, I suspect, now reached an age where she no longer buys my eccentric guru act) but here (came home this afternoon) it is Sainsbury's Basic ground coffee. I guess this is the stuff they sweep up off the factory floor but it tastes ok to me and is not the dreaded instant. Bananas - one a day for the last three days. I cannot put off any longer the messy phase. The preliminary reading is done (I love and get stuck in that part) and now I need to create vast piles of paper, most importantly what I will mark 'WVi' (that is 'working version 1') and on which I will scrawl, delete, re-scrawl, delete, re-re-scrawl etc until I am ready for WVii. At the end of a nice tasty company sale I used to permit myself the luxury of scanning through the accumulated 'working versions' of the SPA (sorry, sale and purchase agreement) - from them I could reconstruct the history of the negotiations/arguments/vehement assertions/hubris/retractions/blind panic/elation/sheer bloody relief. Not sexy but illuminating if you know what you're looking for. I imagine this is why American universities are such assiduous buyers of literary archives. I hope modern authors are keeping copies of their discarded drafts. What else will their executors have to sell when the tax man calls?

Provisional headings for my three acts: Act I (the parties): Unconditional Surrender; Act II (hotels): Officers and Gentlemen; Act III (weapons of destruction): Men at War. Which for those who have been paying attention will eventually bring us on to intertextuality. But that is for another day. There are vast piles of paper to be created. I have marked particular passages which can be the basis of scenes and the continuing task is to reduce these to script. This uncollated, unconnected mass will be the WVi on which I scrawl. On the wall chart will go reminders/observations of a more general or structural nature.