![\"Book](\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2014\/04\/Pinfold.jpg\")
<\/a>The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold: \u201cA Conversation Piece”<\/em> recounts a period of mental confusion and breakdown in the life of Gilbert Pinfold, an established novelist of mature years.<\/p>\nEvelyn Waugh’s last stand-alone novel was\u00a0published in 1957, nine years before his death. It\u00a0is an uncomfortable\u00a0book. It is significantly autobiographical, and many of us felt that the harrowing and distressing subject matter made this not \u201ca typical Evelyn Waugh novel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The group noted that Waugh had introduced characters who behaved oddly or displayed mental instabilities in a number of novels.<\/p>\n 1. The 1934 novel A Handful of Dust has Tony Last endlessly reading Dickens novels to the isolated Mr Todd in the South American Jungle.<\/p>\n 2. The 1928 novel Decline and Fall contains Professor Silenus, who entertains some dubious architectural ideas regards access to upper floors and poor old \u2018Prendy\u2019 who, filled with doubt, comes to a very sad end.<\/p>\n 3. Sword of Honour<\/em> has a trio of eccentric officers including the hapless Apthorpe and the \u2018King Kong\u2019 training officer on Mull, who manages to maim more men than the enemy plus Brigadier Ben Ritchie Hook who commandeers Apthorpe\u2019s mobile latrine, the\u00a0‘Thunder Box’.<\/p>\n There are a number of interesting naming choices in the novel. Firstly, the SS Caliban<\/em> which carries Pinfold on his voyage is named after the character in Shakespeare\u2019s Tempest<\/em>. Caliban is the only human native of an island that is otherwise “not honour’d with a human shape”.\u00a0Additionally, Pinfold nicknames one of the female voices \u2018Goneril\u2019; the eldest daughter of King Lear<\/em>, Shakespeare\u2019s Goneril was prepared to lie to her father to further her own ambitions.<\/p>\n Fyodor Paramonov as Caliban (Maly Theatre, Moscow, 1905)<\/p><\/div>\n Perhaps more disturbing is the use of Waugh\u2019s daughter’s name Margaret\u00a0 in the narrative. Pinfold hears his\u00a0tormentors offering their daughter Margaret sexually to him, and Margaret’s father regrets that he couldn\u2019t have been the one to \u201cteach her\u201d about sex. Waugh revealed in a letter to a friend\u00a0that his attraction to his own 10-year-old daughter Margaret receded after this episode in “Pinfold\u2019s” life\u2026Many of us were intrigued by the numerous references to the \u2018little dark man\u2019 who sits in splendid isolation in the ship\u2019s dining room. Waugh never explains or explores this character but could the author be pointing to his own exclusion from the \u2018top’ or ‘captain\u2019s table\u2019 in life? Perhaps the \u2018darkness\u2019 of this character refers not to pigmented skin or hair, but to an ‘alter ego’ experiencing inner turmoil.<\/p>\n Amy made a fascinating observation regarding the existence of the ship. Could the entire drug- and alcohol-fuelled episode aboard ship be hallucinatory? The steel walls of the ship and the sea could be a metaphor for institutional care, with no escape possible. This idea of claustrophobia is also present earlier in the novel, when Pinfold, confined to the library fire,\u00a0looks out of the windows of his family home onto a hostile winter landscape.<\/p>\n Pinfold states he envies painters, who are allowed to return to the same theme time and time again, clarifying and enriching until they have done all they can with it. The group commented that Waugh himself took the opportunity of book reprints to amend or remove text to reflect changes of his own and society\u2019s views. We also discussed Waugh’s readiness to write for money and produce a great deal of copy, and Tom wondered if Waugh sacrificed quality for quantity. Could he have written more ‘Grade A’ work if he had resisted the cash lure of Grades B and C? The group noted that Pinfold hoped his work as an author would still be being read and appreciated in the distant future.<\/p>\n The group discussed whether Waugh\u2019s \u2018self hatred\u2019 influenced Pinfold and his other novels. It seemed to some that despite his upper middle class upbringing and education, Waugh was not quite in the same social strata as the people he admired. Would his friends have thought him PLU (People Like Us)? His idolatrous reverence for birth and wealth may have influenced his actions throughout his life. Is it a coincidence that he spent whatever he earned immediately?Gilbert Pinfold in the novel has a small overdraft at the bank and never earned a penny of interest, which suggests that Waugh may not have been cash rich. Waugh left \u00a320,000 upon his death in 1966 (in today\u2019s money that equates to \u00a3315,000). This seems a lot of money, but not if it includes the value of the family home. Combe Florey House was offered for sale in 2008 at \u00a32,250,000<\/a> which, allowing for the alarming rise in house prices, would suggest that money was tight.<\/p>\n It seems somewhat ironic that a man so conscious of image and public perception is alleged to have died whilst sitting on the toilet (or more correctly, lavatory). A final failure to live up to his life long aspirations?<\/p>\n The next meeting will be May 17th to discuss Vile Bodies <\/em>(1930), Evelyn Waugh’s second novel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words by Ian Truslove. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold: \u201cA Conversation Piece” recounts a period of mental confusion and breakdown in the life of Gilbert Pinfold, an established novelist of mature years. Evelyn Waugh’s last stand-alone novel was\u00a0published in 1957, nine years before his death. It\u00a0is an uncomfortable\u00a0book. It is significantly autobiographical, and many of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":60,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-writers","category-waugh-book-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\n
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