{"id":199,"date":"2014-05-27T08:20:03","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T08:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/?p=199"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","slug":"may-book-group-vile-bodies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/2014\/05\/27\/may-book-group-vile-bodies-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Group: Vile Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

On Saturday the 17th, taking refuge from the glorious May sunshine, the Evelyn Waugh Book Group met at Leicester Central Library to discuss Vile Bodies<\/em>, Waugh\u2019s second novel, published in 1930, and significantly, the last novel he wrote before his conversion to Catholicism. Part way through writing Vile Bodies<\/em>, Waugh\u2019s first wife, Evelyn Gardner, left him for John Heygate, and this \u2018sharp disturbance\u2019 had a noticeable effect on the tone of the novel. Waugh notes in his preface to the 1965 edition that it \u2018was finished in a very different mood from that in which it was begun. The reader may, perhaps, notice the transition from gaiety to bitterness\u2019. Despite its unhappy ending (something which Stephen Fry alters in his adaptation of the novel in his 2003 film Bright Young Things<\/em>), Vile Bodies<\/em> is regarded as one of Waugh\u2019s best novels, but a letter sent to Henry Yorke in December 1930 betrays his apprehension of its reception, writing that he was \u2018dreading [Yorke\u2019s] verdict very much because now when anyone says they liked Decline and Fall<\/em> I think oh how bored they will be by Vile Bodie<\/em>s.\u2019 In another letter to his agent, A.D. Peters, Waugh asks \u2018If Harpers Bazaar<\/em> won\u2019t publish Vile Bodies<\/em> I\u2019m afraid no one will, will they?\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Vile<\/a>

Cover image for the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Vile Bodies<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The group were certainly not bored by Vile Bodies<\/em>, and it garnered a much more positive response than last month\u2019s choice, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold<\/em>. Indeed, the overarching impression of the novel was its humour. The scene where Agatha Runcible unwittingly finds herself at No. 10 Downing Street the morning after an outrageous party thrown by the \u2018Bright Young People\u2019 was highly praised for its dialogue and pacing – though it was noted that the introduction of the Prime Minister earlier in the novel seemed constructed solely for the moment Agatha walks in on him and exclaims, like a true Bright Young Person, \u201cOh, how shy-making\u201d. The group also felt that Father Rothschild might also be another of these sorts of characters that Waugh introduces but who do not make a significant impact on the plot. Yet Rothschild gives a poignant speech on the morality of the younger generation who think \u2018If a thing\u2019s not worth doing well, it\u2019s not worth doing at all\u2019 and is of the opinion that they might have the \u2018right end of the stick\u2019 in approaching life in this manner. He generally seems sympathetic to their difficulties as a wayward generation with little sense of direction in the confused interwar years. Thus the Bright Young People cannot be blamed for their disinterest in permanence because they are a product of an unstable society suffering from the \u2018missing generation\u2019 of father figures caused by the First World War.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a>

Members of the Evelyn Waugh Book Group<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

There was some discussion as to Waugh\u2019s repeated use of seemingly \u2018throwaway\u2019 characters, particularly those with amusing names (of which there are many in Vile Bodies<\/em>). It was mentioned that Dickens was also fond of this technique \u2013 matching names to personality traits \u2013 but this may be one of the few links to the Realist form in Vile Bodies<\/em>. Waugh uses the technique satirically and not as social commentary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The group also enjoyed Adam\u2019s brief stint as Mr Chatterbox. Chapter seven begins \u2018Then Adam became Mr Chatterbox\u2019, a line with an air of detachment and offhandedness which sums up Waugh\u2019s approach as narrator in Vile Bodies<\/em>. This line is mirrored at the end of chapter nine: \u2018So Miles Malpractice became Mr Chatterbox\u2019, the punchline to the extended joke of the intervening two chapters about the absurdity of fictional gossip, and to some extent a comment on the disposability of characters in the novel (\u201cdoes Adam really matter\u201d was a question which came up a few times in our discussion). Adam, in the guise of Mr Chatterbox, invents various characters to write about in order to avoid the libel cases of his predecessor. These include an artist named Provna who constructed most of his work in \u2018cork, vulcanite and steel\u2019. The Metropolitan Museum of Art attempts to purchase Provna\u2019s work but finds it cannot \u2018out-bid the collectors\u2019, whilst Mrs Hoop maintains the artist is busy sculpting a bust of her son which she intends to \u2018present to the nation\u2019 upon completion. It was mentioned that this amusing episode has its roots in a real life practical joke concocted in 1929 by Brian Howard and Bryan Guinness. The \u2018Bruno Hat\u2019 hoax involved an exhibition of various pieces of modern art ostensibly produced by an unknown German artist named Bruno Hat. Waugh wrote in the exhibition\u2019s catalogue that Hat was \u2018the first English abstract painter\u2019 and it seems the event caused much amusement amongst the Bright Young People \u2013 especially when the newspapers reported the hoax as a serious attempt to fool the art world, rather than a few evenings of entertainment at the expense of the establishment. D. J. Taylor\u2019s excellent book Bright Young People goes into some detail about this event and is definitely worth reading to see more of the heady yet ultimately doomed generation Waugh fictionalises so wonderfully in Vile Bodies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There were more serious aspects to our discussion of Vile Bodies<\/em>. As previously mentioned, the tragedy of the First World War and the inevitability of the Second are inescapable in the novel and the group wondered whether all the partying of the Bright Young People was in fact \u201cpainfully jolly\u201d, that they were enjoying life in a fatalistic way before \u2018like a circling typhoon, the sounds of battle began to return\u2019. As such Vile Bodies<\/em> is a peculiar novel in many respects \u2013 it certainly ranks amongst Waugh\u2019s funniest and at times farcical works, but the echoes of war throughout and the ultimate tragedy of its characters give it a pathos that is not immediately apparent at the beginning of the novel. They might be \u2018vile bodies\u2019 but they are vulnerable too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  On Saturday the 17th, taking refuge from the glorious May sunshine, the Evelyn Waugh Book Group met at Leicester Central Library to discuss Vile Bodies, Waugh\u2019s second novel, published in 1930, and significantly, the last novel he wrote before his conversion to Catholicism. Part way through writing Vile Bodies, Waugh\u2019s first wife, Evelyn Gardner, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-waugh-book-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","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\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}