It may be an axiom of criticism that we should allow the novelist his fiction, but in the case of Brideshead and Waugh’s later Sword of Honour, that kind of acceptance has proved impossible for most of his academic critics. They leave the fiction alone and spend their time inventing fictions of their own which turn the books into a kind of autobiographical dossier to be used for the indictment of Evelyn Waugh and his many faults, personal and political. When Ms. Berberich tells us what she thinks the “crux” of Brideshead is, the crux is not in the book: it is an idea in her head.
I read Brideshead during the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college. Perhaps you have to be a person of faith to get it, but it is a remarkable look at how the imperfect practitioners of faith come to know that faith, and their grievous imperfection.
I simply must return to and complete Brideshead Revisited. There have been too many stumbling blocks in life. But I persist like Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. BTW, Beyond Eastrod (again) is alive, and Crime Classics continues. All the best from the foggy Gulf coast; 'tis less about the weather than about my clouded mind. Onward! And back to Waugh!
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