Revisiting Brideshead

Brideshead Revisited revisited

A book of wonderful complexity, I find myself headed back for it again and again to see if any of the screen adaptations, any of the talk of it, any of the swirl of ideas and nonfacts about it hold weight.  And I always find myself wondering in the wake of revisiting.  I don't know what to make of it still--in some ways the most enigmatic and inscrutable of Waugh's work and the most unlike the rest of the opus.  Give me the relative simplicity of Vile Bodies or A Handful of Dust, or even Scoop over this troubling and haunting spectre.  Or not.  I love the entire opus from Decline and Fall through Scott-King's Modern Europe, through to the Posthumous collections.  A master of laser-like intensity and, one would suppose, perhaps not the most pleasant of persons to spend time in a room with.

Comments

  1. R/TMarch 8, 2010 at 12:06 PM

    You've talked me into it. I have not read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (which is something of a moral sin of omission given my profession), but you've motivated me to go now to the library and find a copy. Thanks!

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