A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Evelyn WaughEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-09
ISBN: 0316926051
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of A Handful of Dust
Book Review: "A Pocketful of Wry"
Summary: 5 Stars
Listen Attentively, Former Colonials!
Yes, it's you I mean, Americans! Certain misconceptions need to be addressed before you are primed to read "A Handful of Dust".
1) "Waugh" is not the sound a laborer makes when he swings a sledge hammer; it's a respectable British surname. Use your browser and investigate "The Waugh family name in history."
2) "Evelyn" is a name borne proudly by many males in the United Kingdom. It's not an automatic provocation of playground dust-ups among public school boys.
3) The characters protrayed in this novel are only moderately exaggerated. All of them would have been recognizable to readers in 1934, the year of this book's publication, and acceptable as dining companions. Such readers might have been perplexed, had they been informed that Mr. Waugh was widely perceived to be satirical.
4) In fact, Evelyn Waugh was a fervent Catholic, a staunch conservative, and a man of retiring habits. Some scoffers have rudely attempted to paint him as a religious troglodyte, a hide-bound reactionary, an overt racist, and an abuser of chemical substances, but even those who disdained his notions relished his stylistic grace. George Orwell declared that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be while holding untenable opinions." One critic declared him "the supreme writer of English prose in the twentieth century, even though so many of the wrong people said so."
5) There is a persistent urban legend that Waugh (1903-1966) was the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). An undeniable similarity of literary manner might make such a supposition plausible, but note that the three-year lapse between Wilde's death and Waugh's birth would be inexplicable under any known rubric of the transmigration of souls. Besides, Oscar Wilde was a man of unpardonable skepticism and scorn for all things sacred.
6) The adulteries portrayed in A Handful of Dust are in no way prurient or titillating. They are referenced in the narrative merely because of Waugh's meticulous concern for and commitment to accurate commemoration of the manners and morays of the British upper classes, whose cultural hegemony seemed in his time perilously threatened by vulgar change.
7) The dashing adventures of Sir Tony Last, the protagonist of A Handful of Dust, in the headwaters of the Amazon River are indeed based on the memoirs of the American President Theodore Roosevelt, but any further resemblance must be discounted. Mr. Roosevelt had a notoriously unpleasant speaking voice - twangy and nasal, after the general manner of his countrymen - and it would have been quite out of keeping for him to have read aloud from the works of Charles Dickens to the satisfaction of even the most barbarous auditor.
With those caveats in mind, I should think that most readers of an intellectual bent will derive not a little satisfaction from the title under review herewith.
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