Vile Bodies, distasteful, if not vile

[MsAmerica]

I just read my first Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies, and was startled to find that not only was it not "hilarious," as advertised on the cover, it was tedious. I figure that maybe it was unusual at the time, but for me at present, I found it devoid of plot, character development, or real humor.

Could you tell me what I'm missing? Should I try something else, like Scoop, or should I give up?

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.

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

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".

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

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

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)

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.

Hmm it’s a while since I read any Waugh. Maybe it has aged really badly? The joke in VB is that the hero keeps having money to marry his girl and then suddenly loses it all again.

D and F is a bit sad for the main character but if you don’t mind that I think it’s very funny. Or I did. Might revisit to see. Scoop I loved but again, maybe it has not worn well.

I think Decline & Fall and Scoop would be better options than Vile Bodies, but they are all very black comedy, to the point of being simply bleak in VB’s case. The bigotry is part of the satire imo, but I don’t think I would enjoy re-reading them now.

I did A Handful of Dust for A level...a bleak book

Of its time, of this time….

Decline and Fall is still funny.

I think it is of its time as others have said. I wrote a dissertation on the English Novel in the 1930s as part of my degree (way back in the late 1980s) and I very much admired Waugh, but rereading it last year on holiday, maybe without the academic framework or maybe just because I’m older and enjoy different things, I really disliked it and found it mean spirited…

I doubt there are many novels published nearly 100 years ago that wouldn’t be offensive by today’s standards.
It would be interesting to know in what way novels published today will be offensive in 100 - or even 50 years time.

I agree many novels from the past have outdated attitudes. This was offensive because the racism and misogyny was offered up as being hilarious.

I think Waugh is the funniest writer in the English language (above even P G Wodehouse).. He is superb. He’s also a first class stylist who wrote exquisite prose. In fact, I’d be tempted to nominate him as the greatest British novelist of the 20th-century, above D H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. But as a human being he was awful. Weirdly, though, that’s part of the attraction. We live in an age of endless hand-ringing and political correctness and mawkish sentimentality. It is refreshing to read a writer who has none of that.

He’s writing about awful people… it’s black comedy, and satire. Have you read The Loved One? Even darker!

I’d be tempted to nominate him as the greatest British novelist of the 20th-century

This is very very interesting. I asked DD (Eng lit grad) and she said "ugh I prefer the 19th century" [lol - that’s easier, Austen, Eliot, Bronte, Conan Doyle, ok i guess Dickens) but 20th is tough!

I refuse to have Lawrence or Woolf as the best; but then all the novelists I love from the 20th cent turn out to be not British haha. Scott Fitzgerald, Tartt, DD even offered Atwood, er nope, Canadian!

Tolkien? I am not really a fan. CS Lewis? hmmm. Orwell? maybe. Agatha Christie? that's my best suggestion which is ridiculous surely (tho a novel of hers is on the A level syllabus).

Definitely Orwell. He was a brilliant essayist as well as novelist, and his ideas and his lexicon have infiltrated British culture and vocabulary to the point where people who have never read the book and don’t know who Orwell is will refer to ‘Big Brother’ and ‘The Thought Police.’

Yes this is very valid.

My only reason to pause (and DD tbh was pretty happy to say Orwell) is that I have only read the two most obvious novels. Guess I need to give the others a try.

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

But why not? I think that's a short sighted view. And how would people decide if they thought it was a work of genius or not if they never read it?

Just because I read Waugh and enjoy the black humour (and not forgetting the terrible sadness of a lot of his work) doesn't mean I'm racist and misogynistic - I'm able to cope with the cultural and historical differences. I'm not thinking "ooh that's what's funny - the racism and misogyny" . I'm not interested in only reading stuff that fits with my current world view. It's so limiting. It's a bit of dim-witted way to think. It's rather pompous too.

I'm not going to bother to engage in discussion with someone who's called me dimwitted and pompous. If you genuinely want to know what someone you disagree with thinks, next time I'd suggest don't throw insults around.

A lack of development. A lack of point.

As @Frannyisreadingput it, I didn't find it offensive, but weak and unfunny.

Funny, that doesn't bother me. In fact, I often appreciate that, because it's showing our past history.

I hate to say it, but I think I chuckled quietly twice. And found nothing I'd term "brilliant."