Vile Bodies, distasteful, if not vile

Oh, this is sad – Vile Bodies is one of my favourite books and Evelyn Waugh definitely one of my favourite writers! Have you read Decline & Fall? If not, give that a go. It’s his first book.

He’s brilliant but not always funny ha-ha. The jokes aren’t always very literal but in the telling or in the naming of someone or somewhere, quite in-jokey which you pick up the more of him you read and the more you know about his life and surroundings.

I am a writer and have written a lot about Waugh over the years – would find it easy to bore on about him here! He is basically all of his protagonists and in the middle of writing Vile Bodies his wife left him and devastated him. You probably noticed the point at which the book takes a turn and that’s when she left him. He uses a lot of real people in his books, albeit in (slight) disguise.

And they are of their time. I don’t find them offensive or miserable – though Brideshead is for me, too Catholic. He is a stylistic genius as far as I’m concerned, and really genuinely funny if you like that kind of unemotional, quite staccato literature, which I do.

Oh blimey! I read it in my early 20s (over 20 years ago) and laughed so much I was almost sick, I remember my flatmate coming in to see what on earth I was doing!
I'm a bit scared to go back to it now as I’m definitely more disengaged by the classism, ableism and racism and misogyny now than I used to be, although I do still enjoy a lot of literature from that period (eg I’m a huge Anthony Powell fan)

Racist and misogynistic. I know it's "of its time" but unless it's a work of genius I really don't need to read bigoted stuff presented as humour

@Frannyisreading what was it you found offensive? I’m going to have a reread.
I liked the saga of the drunk Major.

I didn't enjoy Vile Bodies but can't remember much about it. Reminding myself of the plot by reading the Wikipedia entry on it, I discovered two interesting snippets:

The book shifts in tone from light-hearted romp to bleak desolation (Waugh himself later attributed it to the breakdown of his first marriage halfway through the book's composition).

David Bowie cited the novel as the primary influence in writing his song "Aladdin Sane".

I thought I loved Evelyn Waugh but recently read Vile Bodies and found it weak, offensive and unfunny

What is it particularly that you are finding tedious? I loved it but I read it about 40 years ago - maybe it hasn’t aged well.
Scoop is brilliant, but it was written when attitudes and what was acceptable were very different to today.