Hmm …

… ‘Brideshead Revisited’ changed my life. Can it work its magic on the ‘Downton Abbey’ generation? | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We have somehow hurtled past the supposed end of history into a volatile new order, where diversity surges alongside inequality, old alliances have been alternately reformed and fractured, technology both connects and divides us, and even war has been decentralized, disaggregated and outsourced. Were he alive now, Waugh would find a surfeit of black-comic grist for his satirical mill.

I first read Brideshead during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. It was on a list of books we were required to read in preparation for a course in the novel. I chose it because I had recently read Waugh's Decline and Fall, which I found hilarious. I figured Brideshead would be a fun read. But not long into it, I paused, and said to myself, "I think this is the saddest book I have ever read." That sadness, I think, it the key to its power. It is the sadness born of the absence of faith.