Evelyn Waugh, er, Hugh Bonneville. Dammit, will someone please let me make this movie?
“I know I’m not a wordsmith,” Bushnell said, the afternoon sun shining on her face through a wall of glass doors. “And I don’t write poetry. Sometimes I think I should, because it’s really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels. I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.’ ”
– from Edith Zimmerman’s “Candace Bushnell’s Fantasy World, Starring Candace Bushnell” in The New York Times Magazine
Waugh’s masterpiece, “A Handful of Dust,” is one of the finest English novels of the last century, both hilarious and catastrophically sad. And it contains a climactic scene that I just don’t buy at all, a scene I detest, a horrible scene that bowls me over with the beauty and skill of its telling every time.
I thought Waugh was good myself, but now that I know that a vulgar, common American woman like Miss Bushnell admires him, I am not so sure.
Read my essay on Brideshead Revisited on my “Other Writings” page: http://www.michaelhoran.net/other-writings.html.
Also, hear my poetry recitations at the same site.
A UD man like JOB, and reciting at Windhover to boot! I shoulda gotten myself onto the program. Phooey.
Wait, JOB went to UD? I thought you had met him at Thomas Aquinas College.
Yep and yep. He dipped his toe in the undergrad waters there, and liked it so much he stayed on for his grad work.
Your ‘Et in Arcadia Ego‘ is uncanny. Thank you very much for sharing this work, Mr Horan.
Thanks very much! I’ll be updating the website with new content periodically. Stop by and let others know if you would.
Good luck, sir!
I may revisit your newest poem after inspecting a Selectric in person. But I intend to revisit your site more than once before then.
And of course, we’re always happy for you to stop by Korrektiv, too.