I've heard some grumpy mutterings about the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, supported by this review and remarks* from Slate writer Troy Patterson:
...do not, when attempting any course of reading aimed at appreciating Waugh's wit, give undue attention to 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.
There's a comic novel in there, but it is not, as the common expression goes, struggling to get out. It's lodged there quite contentedly; the book's acid portraits of dull dons and rich oafs are enmeshed with its affectingly tender peeks at lost youth and also with its eagerly overwrought splendor and its sincerely bogus religiosity.
This was the seventh novel Waugh published—the eighth he attempted—a grasp at grandeur written in a mere four months, during a leave from the British army in early 1944. "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."
I'm no longer surprised I didn't finish it, though I do remember the attempt, not something that always stays in my mind - books I don't finish sometimes end up leaving my mind altogether, reflecting Gerald Murnane's memorable phrase (from his essay of the same name) 'some books are to be dropped into wells'.
Come to think of it, I believe I missed early episodes of the famous 'eighties mini-series as well (yes, even with Jeremy at the height of his fame). I think I'd rather read The Forsyte Saga properly than revisit Waugh's hasty pudding, though I could certainly return to the miniseries.
*The link to that Slate review comes via The Complete Review, where you will also find this account of Ammon Shea's Reading the OED, from which the CR writer has extracted the following gem:
How perfect, for example, is it to learn, after reading Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, that one of the definitions of 'Bayard' is:
A person armed with the self-confidence of ignorance.
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