Handful of Dust

Rating:
Summary: Distinctly British and distinctly Waugh
Review: There is no better way to describe this book than "glacially sardonic," the words that appear in the review on the back cover. It is written with a sharp-biting wit that moves and builds ever-so-slowly yet ever-so-surely. While I don't agree with the majority of literary experts that this is Waugh's finest work (Brideshead Revisited was more ambitious in scope and crafted at a level of mastery equal to or better than this), A Handful of Dust is a remarkably intelligent book and a pleasure to read.

Waugh has found here the perfect blend of plot and prose. The story is engaging, entertaining, and quick-moving, thanks to the terse dialog and minimal narrative. Humor abounds in this novel, but not in the laugh-out-loud sort of way. I found myself on the verge of laughter throughout - I would call it a sustained crescendo of humor. It's a type of humor that I can't imagine finding in American literature; it's distinctly British, and distinctly Waugh.

But this book is more than just funny. It offers a somewhat profound commentary on the decadence of upper class life in 1930s Britain. One can't help laughing at the way Tony Last and Lady Brenda have named the bedrooms in their country estate after characters from the King Arthur stories. "Where will our weekend guests sleep? How about in Galahad?" Waugh has perhaps exaggerated the eccentricities of the people whom his characters represent, but his point is well taken.

Rating:
Summary: A note about those two endings...
Review: This odd, clever, scathingly bitter satire seems a patchwork of various pieces of fiction--and, as its history attests, it is. A little over halfway through the novel, "A Handful of Dust" veers, rather unexpectedly, from a bitter reflection on an unfaithful wife and her upper-crust coconspirators to a Conradian parody of explorers in the Brazilian wilderness.

To explain this incongruity, The Everyman's Library edition of this fascinating work features a must-read introduction by William Boyd, but (as such introductions often do), it contains so many "spoilers" that readers are warned to wait until afterwards to peruse it. Boyd's essay does, however, summarize two salient aspects of the novel that are prerequisite to understanding (and perhaps enjoying) it.

Waugh's first marriage to Evelyn Gardner ended acrimoniously in 1929; four years later (and the year before he wrote "A Handful of Dust") his heart was broken a second time when Teresa Jungman turned down his proposal of marriage. Knowing this, it's hard not to read the fictional account of Tony and Brenda's marriage, as Boyd does, as "Waugh's own exploration of betrayal and sexual humiliation and . . . a form of revenge against the damage inflicted on his psyche by Evelyn Gardner. . . . It is an unyieldingly cruel and vicious portrait of a worthless woman. . . . The novel is full of hate and scorn, not just for Brenda, but also for the society in which she moves." There is no denying that the novel reads like an act of vengeance, and this contempt takes many forms: Brenda, at first charming and innocent, quickly and inexplicably devolves into vapidity and selfishness; Tony's closest friends hide from him their knowledge that Brenda is having an affair; and--at the book's most memorable, pivotal, venomous moment--Brenda shows more concern for her lover than for her only son.

Waugh published two entirely different endings, both of which are included in many editions. (Make sure you get a copy that has both versions.) Boyd explains: after writing "the first two-thirds of this novel at great speed," Waugh was unsure how to end it, knowing only that he wanted "a sad end." For the British edition, he appended, with minor alterations, an earlier short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens," about an aristocrat trapped by a madman in Brazil. Yet he had to write a second ending for the serial publication for Harper's Bazaar in the United States, because he had previously published the "Dickens" story in a competing magazine. While the British ending is satisfying (and devious) on its own, it nevertheless seems out of place; readers who feel that they have suddenly picked up another story about a different character in the opposite hemisphere will feel some vindication learning that, in a sense, they have done exactly that.

I agree with Boyd that the American version, while simpler, is "truer to the novel's potent undercurrents than the short story Waugh recycled to finish off his sombre, disturbing tale of adultery." Other readers, obviously, disagree, and find the alternate ending too pat, too cynical, top predictable. (I, personally, enjoyed both endings for different reasons, but found both a little unsatisfying, each belying the book's claim to cohesiveness.) Yet the fact that Waugh could write two endings over which future readers and critics would war only attests to his brilliance.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Master's Best
Review: You know that when you see a passage from Eliot's THE WASTE LAND appearing before the title page that you are not headed for 300 pages of fun and games. Sure there is the usual stock of Waugh humor, wit, and snappy dialogue to be had here, but this ranks as amongst his darkest novels. It's tragicomedy at its finest. It's also one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read, perfect in pitch, cadence, wording, razor sharp characterization, mood, you name it.

Like a number of his novels, it is set primarily in England, between the wars, bouncing back and forth between London and an Estate in the country. The plot boils down to the break up of a marriage and the decline and fall of the central character, Lord of the manor and eventual "Explorer," Anthony (Tony) Mast.

Tony means well. He really does. It's just that he's so fixated on maintaining Hetton, his hereditary estate, that he doesn't even notice when his lovely wife Brenda engages in an affair with an inconsequential and boorish young society chap to whom Waugh assigns the inglorious name, John Beaver.

Waugh's customary drollery comes to the fore as he depicts the cavalier attitudes towards the affair on the part of Tony's and Brenda's social circle. They are rather like actors in a Restoration play, whose moral compasses have become entirely skewed. Though not as moralistic as some of Waugh's late novels, A HANDFUL OF DUST definitely offers a portrait of a very decadent society, indeed. These are not sympathetic characters. Even the two children who enter into the plot are hardly what one would call likeable.

This novel definitely takes some unexpected turns, leading us eventually to a denouement in the Amazon Jungle. The ending has to rank as one of the greatest in literature.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. The English are greatest satirists and Waugh was the master of the genre amongst 20th century writers. I've got a couple more Waugh books on my list, but will go with VILE BODIES next, as it's already on my shelf.

This edition has print large enough that I didn't need my reading glasses. It's the quickest 300 page novel I've ever read. It only took about 6 hrs cover to cover, and I am not a fast reader. I really was so transfixed that I had to read it straight through, which I don't usually do these days.
BEK