It is safe to say that I did not shed a single tear for any of the assholes in Brideshead Revisited, although I was not without empathy. My salubrious contempt for people who bitch and moan when they have it all has been memorialized in several places, and I’m not likely to shake this quality anytime soon. It didn’t exactly enhance my reading experience when Charles Ryder, Waugh’s protagonist, was revealed to have the very exemplar of a free ride existence. Here is a Oxonian who lives beyond his means at school. Despite having a hearty coterie, a cushy spread, and a special friend named Sebastian Flyte (“we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs”), Charles feels “at heart that this was not all that Oxford had to offer.” He complains about his neighbors, treats his servant Lunt with some disgrace, and ingratiates himself with Sebastian’s family, the Marchmains, who are “rich in the way people who are who just let their money sit quiet.” First World problems all the way.
Perfectly valid points, and much the way many Brits seem to view this novel. But let me suggest another angle of approach, one that I came upon purely by accident during the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college. Brideshead was one of the books on the list of things to read before taking a course in the novel that fall. I had loved Decline and Fall and decided to start with Brideshead because I figured I could get the reading project off to a high-spirited start. I was maybe 50 or so pages into it, when I put the book down and said aloud to myself: "This is the saddest book I've ever read." I still think that, but I also think that you have to bring a Catholic sensibility to the book to feel that way. The characters' life of privilege seemed hollow to me from the start. Sebastian, I am sure, knows that. Charles Ryder comes to know that. Read from a sociological angle, Ed's criticism is spot on. But when I read Brideshead again a couple of years ago, it still struck me as it had when I was that college kid long ago.
Thanks very much for sharing the story, Frank. In hindsight, I probably should have written more about the Catholic sensibility which is at the heart of the book. I do note in the essay that Charles sees Catholicism as a "foible," as well as mildly noting how two marriages (Julia and Rex, Brideshead and Beryl) are altered by Catholicism. Perhaps my frustration, which doesn't negate some of the reasons why I also find the book interesting, has to do with why Charles would spend so much time constructing such self-deception at 39, while avoiding more truths than would seem likely at the age. Yes, he needs the past. Above all, he needs omission. To some degree, that's the only way to look it in the face. But if it's so porous, why cling to it? On the other hand, one inevitable question of life is why anybody, Catholic or not, gravitates to personal mythology or false notions of other people long after they know better.
ReplyDeleteBut Edward, our lives are endlessly self-deception, and it doesn't stop at 39 or 50 or 80. We peel it off slowly, like an onion, and it never seems to stop. (Do we ever, really, get to the bottom of anything, let alone another person?) That's one of the things that makes this book so good – kind of a rubic's cube – and the characters are so fascinating, even though none of them are particularly "likeable," with the possible exception of wigged-out Cordelia. And yet it ends with Charles Ryder's conversion.
ReplyDeleteFrank, I didn't find it all that sad at all – it has a kind of melancholic splendor, like Venice. It's a sadder-but-wiser story of a kind of graceful, hard-won triumph among the ruins. Doesn't look happy-happy, nor should it – it always has the clock ticking in the background, mindful that our lives are crumbling away, whatever we do or whatever choices we make.
Cynthia: I'm glad to see that you are somewhat more measured here than at my place, but I think you have profoundly misunderstand my essay and that you are not especially interested in a civil exchange of disagreeing views. I never claimed that self-deception stops anywhere in my piece, nor did I suggest, as you quite rudely implied at my place, that life or literature is something in which every subtlety must be spelled out. The sadness that I feel for Charles, and that I suspect Frank feels, involves why he would spend so much time basking in past splendors and clinging to memories rather than seeing the marvels before him (even in wartime!). Death and deterioration are inevitable, and that becomes increasingly clearer as we get closer to the Grim Reaper, who is so inconsiderate that he doesn't even allow us the munificence of a prescheduled appointment (unless, of course, we break the covenant through suicide). Because of this, my personal view is that one should enjoy life as much as possible, and encourage others to do likewise. Anything less than such an existence is unspeakably sad (kind of like your boorish move of coming to my website during the last hours of my birthday, implying that I'm some illiterate, and not even having the decency to articulate your tepid claims when I quite naturally push back at your trollish comments: what kind of a sad life do YOU lead?).
ReplyDeleteSorry if you took my comments amiss – you stated such strong and punchy opinions, I assumed you were used to hearing them back (also, you are welcome to delete my remarks). Perfectly happy to have a "civil exchange of disagreeing views."
ReplyDeleteI think Charles is probably a pretty melancholic person by nature, someone used to looking in from the sidelines in his own life, from a detached point of view. Look at the way he describes his marriage, as if he weren't in it. I've known many such people. (People refer to "carrying your cross" but in fact we ARE our crosses. Each of the characters in the book suffers from the consequences of his or her own nature.)
Ryder's pleasures tend to be quieter, more aesthetic. I'm not sure it's quite fair to him to say that he's "clinging to memories." It's wartime, he goes to an estate that evokes many memories and associations, and writes about them (or rather, Waugh writes about them from Ryder's perspective). And those memories contain the full range from mortality to transcendence.
There is much sadness in my life, too – as there is in any life. As Seneca the Elder said, "Death’s unavoidable, let’s have a drink."
Nice o see you two exchanging views. I am sure you would both like each other. I only want to add to Cynthia's observation that one reason I may react to this novel as I do is that Charles Ryder is one of those characters that I found myself — and still find myself — identifying with. He isn't the me most people know. He is rather the me that only I know and even then imperfectly. I would also note that any novel that can elicit such a wide variety of reactions must have something going for it.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm.... you? Charles Ryder? I'll have to take your word for it.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very private me.
ReplyDeleteCynthia: Thank you for your reply. I have no problem with strongly worded comments, provided they are rooted in a sense of trying to understand another perspective rather than the rash and unfounded charges you set down at my place (see my Sunday essay, "Why Being Nice Means Nothing," to get a fuller sense of my position on dialectic), but I am heartened to see you in better form here. I agree with you wholeheartedly about Charles looking at everything with a moribund sideways gaze, and have known similar people myself. Yes, we all carry some form of a cross in life -- even steadfast atheists like me -- but the question is whether that needs to be our raison d'etre. I would also agree with you that wartime has indeed forced Charles to look upon any possession he has -- in this case, memories. But even though he's wised up over the years, he's still clinging to superficiality through omission.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Frank is right to suggest that we all have this part of ourselves that we pack into a clandestine valise, although, speaking for myself, my temperament is to live a life not burdened with sad memories. I had a fairly unhappy childhood, but I have made up for it in adult life by pretty much doing what I like to do, and somehow surviving with some level of happiness even when the chips are down. But then I am fortunate to get sent all the books I want, live fairly modest so that I don't have to be burdened by an overtly soulless job, maintain a fairly independent presence (although I am a very hard worker), and have almost no material needs. I will say that the Modern Library project has encouraged certain unanticipated memories to bubble up to the surface. But I see them as intriguing associative fissures I can reckon with instantly rather than caves I need to hide in.
Frank is also right to note that a novel getting us talking like this should not be discounted.