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The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh (2000)

The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh (2000)

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Rating
3.98 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0316926604 (ISBN13: 9780316926607)
Language
English
Publisher
back bay books

About book The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh (2000)

"It seems to me sometimes that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel."So writes Evelyn Waugh at the start of part 4 of "A House of Gentlefolks", one of many short stories in this wonderful book that do just that, finishing the story but leaving the reader knowing there could be much much more. Clearly Waugh had many many ideas and as this is the first writing of his that I've read I've no experience to say if he was as successful in those he chose to expand as it seems from these stories and sketches that he would have been in the longer form. However, as he was apparently highly regarded in English Literature I'm sure I would love his books as much as I loved many of these stories.Unlike my complaint to more modern short stories, these are not on the whole about terrible people and terrible circumstances though some, of course, are. I enjoyed the different glimpses into different types of English life and to personalities in general that this book shows. I didn't love every story, but some I really really enjoyed and at the worst of it I found some to be quite tolerable.Overall I'd recommend this book to any who like short stories, who like history, who like studies in humanity, etc.... A nice companion to Roald Dahl's short stories in that they examine the little quirks of humanity but these are not quite as morbid as Dahl's on the whole.Funny to de-romanticize history a bit and realize once again that the all the faults of human character we today say are representative of the degradation of youth are actually the same faults that have existed for as long as stories have been written, and therefore probably forever. People are people, no matter what age they live in.

It was recommended to me that I read Vile Bodies, but it wasn't immediately available at my library so I opted for Waugh's collection of short stories. Having not done any research, I was really surprised to find that a man would be called Evelyn. That's really neither here nor there though. I loved several of those short stories, liked others, and detested a handful. Some were just too long and the language was irritating to me, especially the few written in a 19th century vernacular. However, I LOVED Bella Fleace Gave a Party, Scott King's Modern Europe, The Man Who Liked Dickens, My Father's House, Conspiracy to Murder, and Lucy Simmonds. In most stories, Waugh had a way of ending them in a humorous and poetic way. This is over 900 pages and took me a long time to get through, especially the longer stories, which turned out to be my least favorites. Yet as whole, I would recommend this collection.

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This volume contains not only all the pieces of fiction of less than book length that Evelyn Waugh published commercially but also those that he wrote as a boy in school and those that he published as a young man at the University of Oxford. The commercially published pieces include such grim gems as "Bella Fleace Gave a Party," "Winner Takes All," the horrifying "The Man Who Loved Dickens," and the late pieces "Scott-King's Modern Europe" and "Basil Seal Rides Again." The juvenilia begin with "The Curse of the Horse Race," an amusingly misspelled narrative in nine chapters on three pages, which Waugh wrote (scrawled, one imagines) as a small boy. By the time that Waugh is a senior boy in school, writing the apparently autobiographical "Fragment of a Novel," he has learned how to turn a sentence and how to write credible dialogue. The satirical artist first emerges in "Portrait of Young Man with Career," the earliest of the "Oxford Stories," though it is not until "A House of Gentlefolks," the second story that he published commercially (in 1927), that he appears to have worked out what sort of writer he is.
—Miles Rind

There’s certainly no need for me to expound upon Evelyn Waugh’s greatness as a writer here. The reputation of the author of “Brideshead Revisited”, “Put Out More Flags” and “The Loved One” is quite secure—for the moment. And who else would be drawn to a book of his short stories but a fan? Still, there’s plenty to recommend “The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh.” His original take on the short story (“The Balance”), his jarring surprises (“The Man Who Liked Dickens”, Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing”, “The Sympathetic Passenger”), and even Science Fiction (“Love Among The Ruins”) are represented here. I especially liked the 1st two chapters (“My Father’s House” and “Lucy Simmonds”) of an unfinished novel. The book also includes stories from Waugh’s formative years, which are interesting in that they have all the elements that would later characterize a Waugh story, no matter what the length. Never have 607 pages flown by so quickly—or enjoyably.
—Michael

Waugh's work is shocking and hilarious. I only wish he could return briefly and leave us something on the politically correct. But as that will surely not come to pass, I must say, that this volume is a great footnote, to the god of caustic disdain, to be read in bits and pieces – and again and again. I began reading these short stories months and months ago, then the book got packed for moving and I just recently unpacked it and began reading it again. Of course, I had to reread the stories I had already read so long ago!For anyone who enjoys the taste of elegant prose laced with sparkling wit, "The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh" deserves a place that is both prominent and permanent in one's well-stocked storehouse of vintage literature – this coming from someone whose library does not particularly “like” short stories!
—Carol

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