Word: auberon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Piqued by the sort of obituary notices his father, Novelist Evelyn Waugh, had received, young Auberon Waugh, 26, displayed some of the malicious wit that he inherited, writing a series of parody obits for London's Daily Mirror, in which he buried some of the "dead" who are still quite quick. He took special delight in his "scabrous epitaph" for Critic Malcolm Muggeridge, 63, who had done one of the obits offensive to Auberon. "In an unsavoury and fashion-obsessed period of history," wrote Evelyn's lad, himself a novelist and journalist, "he taught us all how disgusting...
PATH OF DALLIANCE by Auberon Waugh. 284 pages. Simon & Schuster...
...Auberon Waugh wrote his first novel, he explained, because it was what was expected of him in a literary family: Father Evelyn wrote Decline and Fall at 25, and Uncle Alec wrote The Loom of Youth at 19. Having produced The Foxglove Saga at 21 ("My boy," his father had told him, "it is time you wrote your first book"), Auberon announced his retirement from literature. It is a shame he changed his mind. Foxglove Saga was modeled rather too closely after Decline and Fall-but at least it was funny. Path of Dalliance is modeled on the same book...
Other literary sons-John Phillips Marquand, Nathaniel Benchley, Klaus Mann -have tried with indifferent success to write like Dad. Auberon Waugh conies closer than any of them to pulling it off: at first glance, The Foxglove Saga could pass for a sequel to Decline and Fall. Like Evelyn's first novel, The Saga opens in an English boys' school and is a picaresque, loosely jointed account of several old school chums as they lurch through a succession of army camps, prisons, hospitals and asylums. The characters are often almost the same as in Decline and Fall...
...Welfare State England. Moreover, there is something lacking-the figure of the innocent but virtuous hero (Paul Penny feather of Decline and Fall, Adam Fenwick-Symes of Vile Bodies) whose reasoned view of an unreasoning world gave a special cutting edge to the elder Waugh's comedy. Auberon says he has no interest in being a professional novelist. He wrote The Foxglove Saga because it was what was expected of him in a literary family (his father wrote Decline and Fall at 25, and his Uncle Alec wrote Loom of Youth at 19). So "when Father told...