/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18107097]

What does /lit/ think of this book? discuss

[Anonymous No.18107101]

a

[Anonymous No.18107318]

>>18107097
People who prefer the first half to the second are pseuds.

[Anonymous No.18107641]

Comfy as fuck. and not gay at all.

[Anonymous No.18108106]

>>18107641
I was surprised to learn that people thought their relationship was gay. I always thought they were really close friends.

[Anonymous No.18108209]

just one of the best books ever

>>18107318
this is facts too (although the first half is insanely beautiful)

[Anonymous No.18108765]

>>18107097
It's a wonderful book. Waugh really is something of a patron saint for /lit/ - a horribly elitist and reactionary conservative author, who started as a fag (as all OPs do) before changing into a hardcore trad-cath who hated Vatican-2.

Brisdehead is fun. The first half is 100% comfy, and was the precursor to lighter fare like "A Separate Peace," "The Scret History," etc. Very well well written. The second half, which is also essential (though unlike >>18107318 I won't say it's a crime to like the first half more), helps show the cost of the light degeneracy and selfishness of the first, and how religion can nevertheless absolve sin. Wonderful stuff.

Waugh is in general well worth reading - I'm less keen on "Vile Bodies" than I perhaps should be, but his other novels and his travel writing really are top notch stuff.

[Anonymous No.18109682]

If I didn't know this was released in the 1940s I'd think Waugh created Sebastian specifically for the Tumblr teenage girls' enjoyment:
>charming pretty boy
>gay
>very quirky, likes to talk to a teddy bear
>also a sad boy who has to face his inner demons, including his relationship his family and religion
>for some reason Tumblr girls love the name 'Sebastian'

[Anonymous No.18109759]

>>18107097
Sorry, I don't read book by women

[Anonymous No.18111034]

>>18109759
Low quality bait desu senpai.

[Anonymous No.18111840]

>>18108765
good summary. do you think Charles is made out to seem immoral/"the bad guy" at the end of the book with his aversion to lord marchmain taking last rites?

[Anonymous No.18111940]

>>18111840
Yes, I think it's clear that Charles isn't a particularly good guy, though I think that point gets made much earlier than the part with the last rights, really starting first with his abandonment of his wife and family to take pictures in South America, and then with his affair that starts on the cruise back. Despite that it's important that Waugh ends the book with Ryder dropping to his knees in prayer; even his sins are not so great that they cannot be absolved. It's especially touching, I think, when you also consider Waugh's own youthful immorality and later return to the Church. Really though I don't think that any character is portrayed as especially upstanding or moral, except perhaps Cordelia.

[Anonymous No.18112361]

bruh u gotta be crazy thinkin imma be reading a femoid lmaoo

[Anonymous No.18112764]

>>18109759
>>18112361
Idiots. Pic related is Waugh.

[Anonymous No.18113378]

>>18107318
literally the other way round

[Anonymous No.18113531]

>>18111840
He's the bad guy in that scene, whichever way you look at it, but I think we can understand that he behaves that way out of other motivations. Much like Sebastian, on a less dramatic scale, he feels oppressed by other people's attachment to virtue.

[Anonymous No.18114219]

>>18109682
what a cutie

[Anonymous No.18114246]

>>18107097
I watched a miniseries of it when I was a kid and it's stuck with me for some reason. I'll read it eventually.

[Anonymous No.18114262]

is good yeah

[Anonymous No.18114314]

Had a great thread on this the other day. It's terrific. Here's the opening to chapter 1.

[Anonymous No.18114369]

>>18114314
i think i was in that thread too. to me this doesn't seem necessarily excessive or ornate at all. each word choice seems very deliberate. i think waugh toes the line on being poetic and economical with his prose. so yes i would agree that it is indeed terrific

[Anonymous No.18114395]

To the anon in the other, since deceased, Waugh thread asking about Spark: of course Muriel, she was off her nut on speed, which is why Waugh wanted to read her first book about her amphetamine psychosis when she came over all Catholic. He was writing his book about the psychosis he had on the boat from malaria tablets at the same time she was finishing up The Comforters. There's some serious drug use going on in the religious conservative Brits of the era: Auden had a drugs schedule before Hunter S Thompson made that cool.

[Anonymous No.18114407]

kingsley amis' take

[Anonymous No.18114429]

>>18111840
That's a he doesn't get it scene. It's a bit like the American's papal infallibility understanding. He's indecisive to the point he'd prefer to be damned for inaction rather than a positive action. The other big he doesn't get it scene around then is Cordelia flat out telling him she's living the life she chose and that's only a bad thing because he figured she should grow up to be a flapper or whatever. Cordelia's bit also links into his misunderstanding of Sebastian: he really doesn't get why "needy" Sebastian would take care of anyone, in the same way he thinks that becoming a nurse would be too boring and hard for her.

[Anonymous No.18114437]

>>18114407
>not pornographic enough
based coomer amis

[Anonymous No.18114495]

>>18114407