Monday, August 16, 2010

Lovely Ideas

I'm finally reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh because Catholics seem to mention it quite a bit. I must say, I hope the second half is better than the first, it really had better be building up to something, even if something subtle.

I mean, I guess it's well written and absorbing in its way, but...I just am really coming to hate these decadent European aristocrats with all their weird little social cues and detached ennui and bizarre arrogant ways of interacting. It's charming but also really depressing. Though, perhaps that's the point Waugh was trying to make?

As much as I may hate American politics and its exploitative global capitalist hegemony, I must say that reading this has made me so grateful for the American down-to-earth, straight-talking, no-nonsense pragmatism and relative openness and optimism among people. That other way was so affected.

I suppose living in the 21st century helps too. There may be a lot of phoniness and quiet desperation here now still, but it seems to me to pale in comparison to the empty, cynical, drifting, jaded lives of these upper class Europeans from the Victorian era to roughly World War II. Trads who romanticize that era (and America's brief attempt at a populist version in the 1950's) are nuts.


Nevertheless, this passage discussing Sebastian Flyte's Catholicism stuck out as rather relevant to me:
We never discussed the matter until on the second Sunday at Brideshead, when Father Phipps had left us and we sat in the colonnade with the papers, he surprised me by saying: "Oh dear, it's very difficult being a Catholic."

"Does it make much difference to you?"

"Of course. All the time."

"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."

"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.

"Well then?"

"Who was it that used to pray, 'Oh God, make me good, but not yet'?"

"I don't know. You, I should think."

"Why, yes, I do, every day. But it isn't that." He turned back to the pages of the News of the World and said, "Another naughty scout-master."

"I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?"

"Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me."

"But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all."

"Can't I?"

"I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass."

"Oh, yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe."

"And in prayers? You think you can kneel down in front of a statue and say a few words, not even out loud, just in your mind, and change the weather; or that some saints are more influential than others, and you must get hold of the right one to help you on the right problem?"

"Oh yes. Don't you remember last term when I took Aloysius [his teddy bear] and left him behind I didn't know where? I prayed like mad to St. Anthony of Padua that morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr. Nichols at Canterbury Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I'd left him in his cab."

"Well," I said, "if you can believe all that and you don't want to be good, where's the difficulty about your religion?"

"If you can't see, you can't."

9 comments:

sortacatholic said...

You think that Waugh's book is boring? Watch the bazillion part TV dramatization of Brideshead Revisited. I heard that they use this for enhanced interrogation in countries that can't afford waterboards. Also good for dental hypnosis.

You're completely right that this book is a favorite of the set that thinks that any day but today is an era of moral certitude. BR can feed this illusion only if one is willing to play some mind games.

Though many will gnash and howl, many have suggested that the plot contains a veiled homosocial/homoerotic relationship. I don't doubt that Waugh intended a chaste relationship for Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte. Certainly Waugh intentionally crafted a profound Catholic conversion story. I would never discredit literary criticism that focuses entirely on the latter point. Still, I've found that many conservatrad Catholics steadfastly deny the possibility of a homosocioerotic context for Ryder and Sebastian. This denial reinforces the "socio-moral nirvana" subtext that some wish to read into the novel. The suppression of "subversive" "secular" criticism cannot be ignored even if this criticism does not suit personal ideology.

A Sinner said...

I don't find it boring, per se. I'm actually reading it at a very fast clip and it is rather absorbing in its way. But it just isn't grabbing me as a compelling story, yet.

I mean, that can be fine in a book. Some books are just character sketches or try to just evoke a particular mood.

Like I said...maybe it's building up to its big redemption message with all this or whatever. But it's certainly taking its time getting there.

A Sinner said...

"You're completely right that this book is a favorite of the set that thinks that any day but today is an era of moral certitude. BR can feed this illusion only if one is willing to play some mind games."

Yes. Given what I've read of the book so far, I would agree it is an illusion. There is a ton of ambiguity in it, not moral certitude.

"Though many will gnash and howl, many have suggested that the plot contains a veiled homosocial/homoerotic relationship."

"Veiled"!?!? I just assumed.

"I don't doubt that Waugh intended a chaste relationship for Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte."

I'm not even sure of that, early on.

"I've found that many conservatrad Catholics steadfastly deny the possibility of a homosocioerotic context for Ryder and Sebastian."

Seems to me to be willful naivitee on their part, then.

Leah said...

Sexually charged friendships between men were common in the sort of all-male upper-class milleu depicted in Brideshead Revisted. Waugh himself is known to have had several such relationships when he was at Oxford.

A Sinner said...

Oh, certainly. Though, whatever one thinks of these relationships...I'll say that whole upper-class Oxford all-male milieu is very foreign and off-putting to me as a 21st century American. I don't really understand what these people are "doing with" their lives, and something about it all seems rather unwholesome and decadent. Like, they're always having to ask their lawyers for their own money, somehow they all bump into each other when traveling around the world (I suppose it indicates that expats visited the same spots when abroad) and have all this snitty little judgmentalism and all these passive aggressive battles with each other. I don't see how anyone could romanticize that society.

Leah said...

The answer is that these people didn't do anything. Some of the lower noblemen might have been lawyers or something like that, but most simply got money from their land rents and spent their days hunting and doing nothing. It's odd considering how these men went to Eton and other private schools, but didn't use their education to actually do anything. The women received no formal education at all, aside from reading, writing, basic math, and a little French, although you do hear about self-educated women like the Mitford sisters and Agatha Christie. Princess Diana has sometimes been referred to as "the last uneducated British girl" because her slipshod education reflected the old opinion that upper class women should be reasonably attractive, but not too bright. From this American perspective, this seems insane, since we lionize the story of self-made sucesses. Given this, I can't imagine why some Catholics idolize a system where people received land, money, and education none of which was used for anyone's benefit. In any case, almost all English nobles have to work nowadays and some have even sold their lands or have to give tours to pay taxes.

sortacatholic said...

A Sinner: I'll say that whole upper-class Oxford all-male milieu is very foreign and off-putting to me as a 21st century American. I don't really understand what these people are "doing with" their lives, and something about it all seems rather unwholesome and decadent.

Yep. This "weird" aftertaste presents many challenges to 21st century readers. I suspect that many today inevitably evaluate the novel's relationships through contemporary social/sexual models. A Catholic focus on Waugh's apology should include a discussion of the complicated period relationships and their sexual import. Still, the sexual taboo within conservative Catholic culture often suppresses unflinching glances at human affectation and sexuality across literary works. A denial of the multifaceted and perhaps even salacious aspects of "Catholic novels" renders these works uni-dimensional playgrounds for ideological wish-fulfillment.

SusanF said...

I hope you enjoy BR a bit more as you slog along. While my head agrees completely with your analysis/disgust with the English culture depicted, I've always "related" to Sebastian.
Then again, I'm of English descent and can't help it?
Still, I greatly prefer The Power and The Glory as my 'big Catholic novel' of choice. I'll check the archives to see if you've discussed it.
As a new fan of your blog, I'm just happy being fairly sure there won't be a post on Sasha Obama's immodest dress...

Anonymous said...

Ah. I think you give Waugh too short shrift. He was a brilliant writer and satirist and did have a typically English camp personality which I personally find entertaining and interesting. I think there can be too much "blunt" and "in your face" spouting of opinion in the American manner especially these days . I think those decadent, golden-tongued Britishers and Continentals were onto something

I'm sorry for their passing