Brideshead Revisited

[Gwaimir Windgem]

All right, I have no idea why there hasn't been a thread yet, but there is now.

1) Have you read it?

2) What do you think of it?

(NOTE: If the answer to #1 is "No", then do so post-haste! )

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

All right, I have no idea why there hasn't been a thread yet, but there is now.

1) Have you read it?

2) What do you think of it?

(NOTE: If the answer to #1 is "No", then do so post-haste! )

Yes, and loved it, but it must be approached with the right attitude i.e. think of it as a double-fudge hot fudge sundae, with extra whipped cream and maraschino cherries, topped with chocolate sprinkles. And another topping of fudge.

I like this quote:

"Waugh wrote Brideshead with great speed, unfamiliar excitement, and a deep conviction of its excellence," Martin Amis once remarked. "Lasting schlock, the really good bad book, cannot be written otherwise."

http://www.slate.com/id/2195923
How to watch Evelyn Waugh.

Though this doesn't sound promising:

...Brideshead Revisited, a misfit of a book, much loved, and often loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax's new film adaptation attests.....

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Are you going to see the movie?

[GrayMouser]

Not sure- the TV adaptation was so good that I'd hate to spoil the memory.
Sorry, it's been so long since I read it that I don't think I could even discuss it now- plus I'd get the book and the series mixed up.

But if you want to start, it might prod something loose..

I do remember Waugh saying later that if he'd written it again, he wouldn't have put the death-bed acceptance of the Last Rites in, though I don't see why not- I'm sure a lot of people who have doubts might change their mind at the last minute.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Don't. It's crap. So wrong on so many levels.

The miniseries, on the other hand, is superb. And not in the standard "true to the book but poor production and sub-par acting" way of BBC miniseries, but just all around spectacular. I loaned mine to my brother, and I was annoyed that I had done so; I needed something to purge my system after watching the movie. It really is the book on screen, effectively. They often bring the subtexts more to the forefront, but they are never making it up; everything in there has basis in the novel. It's really quite astounding that someone made such a great adaptation of a novel. Will it ever happen again, I wonder?

I'm rather surprised you and I are the only one's who've read it. This being a fairly literary crowd with a certain level of anglophilia floating around, and Brideshead being a well-known English novel, I'd have thought the two would have connected.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

How exactly would you characterise the homoerotic element to the relationship between Charles and Sebastian? Subconscious? Conscious, but chaste? Chaste and homosexual? Unrequited?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

How exactly would you characterise the homoerotic element to the relationship between Charles and Sebastian? Subconscious? Conscious, but chaste? Chaste and homosexual? Unrequited?

Start with an easy one, why don't you?

It's kind of hard to say, giving the conditions Waugh was writing under but...

I'd say definitely conscious on the part of Sebastian, but not necessarily overtly sexual, at least at first

IIRC, Charles was presented as coming from that middle/upper-middle English intellectual background that was associated with a rather dessicated empiricist/skeptical background- very J. S. Millish; all mind and no body.
(One always gets the feeling with these types that they engaged in adultery and sexually liberated behaviour more out of a sense of duty to 'epater le bourgeois' than any actual lust.)

While being at the same time rather scrumptious in a clean-cut innocent way; is that made clear in the book, or just in the mini-series?

So I think it was the seduction as such that appealed to Sebastian- awakening Charles's total sensuous being, as much through the aesthetic sense as the bodily. Charles is as affected by all the art and architecture as much as the pink champagne and strawberries of their private picnics.

Later, Sebastian may actually fall in love with Charles, but I think he is also pushing him away through his deliberate self-destructiveness, and deliberately rejecting any chance of such happiness as he might have obtained.

Charles himself?
Julia...I did a quick trip through some critical comments, and most people seem to see her as the culmination of the feelings that Charles has been first awakened to by Sebastian; I tend to see her as more of a consolation prize- that which is acceptable to society, and desirable in herself, but no substitute for the flame of her brother.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Start with an easy one, why don't you?

Well, it runs a close race with "Who is Lady Marchmain?" for the most interesting question.

It's kind of hard to say, giving the conditions Waugh was writing under but...

I'd say definitely conscious on the part of Sebastian, but not necessarily overtly sexual, at least at first

IIRC, Charles was presented as coming from that middle/upper-middle English intellectual background that was associated with a rather dessicated empiricist/skeptical background- very J. S. Millish; all mind and no body.
(One always gets the feeling with these types that they engaged in adultery and sexually liberated behaviour more out of a sense of duty to 'epater le bourgeois' than any actual lust.)

While being at the same time rather scrumptious in a clean-cut innocent way; is that made clear in the book, or just in the mini-series?

This is the way he is in the book, as well, as particularly drawn out by the character of his father (with his fifth-century terra cotta bulls, and his second-century parchments in Lombardic breviaries ).

So I think it was the seduction as such that appealed to Sebastian- awakening Charles's total sensuous being, as much through the aesthetic sense as the bodily. Charles is as affected by all the art and architecture as much as the pink champagne and strawberries of their private picnics.

That seems true. I'm not sure, however, that there is a concerted effort on Sebastian's part to seduce Charles. I am more inclined to read the relationship either as unconsciously homoerotic, or as "Platonic" in a sense more accurate than it is usually used, such that it approaches what is seen in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Charles himself?

Charles is a rather hard one to peg down, isn't he? That's often the way with narratorial characters, particularly when there is an autobiographical element to the novel. The author will, unless his ego is ridiculously over-sized, be much more concerned with describing or conveying what happens to him than he will with describing himself.

Julia...I did a quick trip through some critical comments, and most people seem to see her as the culmination of the feelings that Charles has been first awakened to by Sebastian;

As Charles himself says. When his relationship with her is on the verge of beginning, she says "You loved Sebastian, didn't you?" To which he replies, "He was the forerunner."

I tend to see her as more of a consolation prize- that which is acceptable to society, and desirable in herself, but no substitute for the flame of her brother.

She's not really "acceptable to society". In the first place, she's already married. As frequent as adultery happens, and however much it is acknowledged, it is rarely a staid "acceptable to society" sort of thing.
Even her marriage is rather disreputable. Remember the hole-in-the-wall wedding, boycotted by her family, in a seedy chapel?
A reading of his relationship with Julia as merely a respectable consolation prize also doesn't seem to be consonant with the fact that it is, in the end, rejected by her, and for purely respectable reasons. It seems strange to portray a relationship as ended by the very thing which constitutes it. Or am I misreading you? Or am I just wrong?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

She's not really "acceptable to society". In the first place, she's already married. As frequent as adultery happens, and however much it is acknowledged, it is rarely a staid "acceptable to society" sort of thing.
Even her marriage is rather disreputable. Remember the hole-in-the-wall wedding, boycotted by her family, in a seedy chapel?
A reading of his relationship with Julia as merely a respectable consolation prize also doesn't seem to be consonant with the fact that it is, in the end, rejected by her, and for purely respectable reasons. It seems strange to portray a relationship as ended by the very thing which constitutes it. Or am I misreading you? Or am I just wrong?

No, I just forgot the entire ending of the book

As related to Charles and Julia, anyway.

I still remember the prediction one of the monks gives to Charles about Sebastian's future- ending up as assistant gardener, with his own little rituals and now and then falling into temptation.