The subtitle of Dirty Snow should have been, Take That Camus! While not a specific counter-punch to Camus’ L’Étranger, Simenon’s dark story of a murderer with no regrets shares a similar bent, neither pulling any punches with the reader. Maybe that is why the book, along with Simenon’s The Widow, which was published in the 40s as well, is so often compared to Camus first masterwork. While L’Étranger is infused with Camus’ humanistic worldview and the influences of his Algerian upbringing, Dirty Snow one-ups the score with Simenon’s cold remove and stripping of existential underpinnings. There is no philosophy to be had here — the world is an ugly place and that’s the short of it.

To call Dirty Snow bleak would be an understatement. It makes Simenon’s own The Man Who Watched Trains Go By read like a Sophie Kinsella novel. You leave this book covered in a disgusting film of human degradation (and yet somehow, all credit to Simenon, eagerly along for the ride). This is a testament to Simenon’s skill at trapping us in the head of man we detest, unable to look away as he drags us through one vile act to the next. There is no letup. We are never given leave of his gaze, never allowed a moment to gasp for clean air. And when the tables are finally turned on this horrible creature, we see the downfall through the antagonist’s eyes, causing our perception of him to change.

Set in an unnamed country occupied by an unnamed aggressor post an unspecific war, the book introduces us to one Frank Friedmaier, a young man who would like nothing more than to make his mark by murdering one of his fellow human beings. And down the toilet of human emotions we go. Frank is in some ways the definitive Simenon antagonist and we’re stuck with him, because there is no protagonist for readers to cheer on. A thug and a petty thief, he is cold, self-centered, childish, and hell-bent on being the black hole in the lives of anyone he comes into contact with. From the moment in the opening chapter where he jams a blade into an officer from the occupying forces, there is no turning back. Having lost his “virginity,” Frank is unleashed. His ego inflates, leading to more emotionless acts of cruelty that he inflicts on anyone in his path.

Simenon’ genius — and what ultimately sets Dirty Snow above L’Étranger in my eyes — comes in the final third of the novel. It was only a matter of time before Frank butted heads with the occupying forces. And here we discover who the true bad guys are. That scumbag Frank, who we’ve grown to hate in the first 2/3 of the book, now seems small compared to these oppressors and what they do to their captives on a daily basis. Simenon is almost responding directly to Camus: sure, anyone can be a murderer, but there is always a bigger thug with a larger stick waiting in the wings. Having been written in the time of Gulags and Nazi camps, Simenon reminds us that there is murder and then there is Murder.

A slight spoiler warning here: At the end of the book, there is a weird note, which William T. Vollman points out in his afterword (and somewhat defends). While some may take this as a poor attempt at a silver lining, I think one could see another reading of it: Frank is out of his head. What he sees is not there, having been pushed to the limits by his aggressors, and knowing full well what fate awaits him. In those final moments, he is dreaming of the only positive future he can conjure. Whereas Meursault found happiness in the indifference of the world, Herr Friedmaier finds no such solace.

Pair with: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 2 by Earth – The perfect bleak soundtrack to Simenon’s stark, snow-bound nowhere Eastern-bloc country in occupied territory.

It is not surprising that readers, even if they are devout fans of Kōbō Abe, don’t take to The Face of Another in the same manner as The Woman in the Dunes or some of his other novels. It may be because of the uncomfortable feeling a reader gets being stuck in the narrator’s head for an entire novel (much like Camus’ The Stranger). The story is built on the premise of a wife finding her husband’s notebooks which are filled with solipsistic meanderings, repeated excursuses, counter-arguments directed at her, and endless musings about identity and self. But you can forgive the man — after all, he’s had his face horribly scarred and burned in a laboratory fire. He is isolated and alone, even from his wife. But he has a plan, a carefully schemed revenge, and it starts with getting a new face. Thus, Abe takes us into fascinating exploration of identity and self.

The scientist, who is as scarred psychologically as physically, has it in for his wife. The main charge being that she no longer is sexually attracted to him, in spite of her continued devotion. We find out his plans soon enough — to construct a new face for himself out of life-like artificial skin. So much of his journal is absorbed in the beginning with this quest for a new face. Like Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, we follow him step-by-step, the meticulous planning and experimenting until finally we have the entrance of The Mask. The novel then shifts into an identity tug-of-war, The Mask becoming a persona, a separate entity that wrestles with the narrator for control of the same body. And yet, and this is the genius of the book, in spite of the scientist’s new found freedom (no longer being forced to go about in bandages like Claude Rains), he struggles to act. There is an impotence, not dissimilar to his inability to provide sexual pleasure to his wife, that afflicts the narrator. So rather than running amok in his new identity, he struggles to even begin his plan. As his wife later states, “All you could manage was to wander through the streets and write long, never-ending confessions, like a snake with its tail in its mouth.” This leads to, I think, the frustration of some readers with the book. They often feel as if the novel loses its way during these chapters. But the point, perhaps, is that even with this new entity, The Mask, the narrator is still himself, still struggling inside his own skin. His identity can change, but it doesn’t give him the freedom he craves.

The pace picks up in the final third of the book and rewards the steadfast readers who stuck with the story. When the Mask finally puts the scheme into action, things only get worse for the narrator. His struggle to regain himself, absurdly through the actions of the Mask, becomes a folly. In the end, the tables are turned on the scientist. Abe does this cleverly, even turning the narrator into a witness to his own defeat, watching the Mask carry out the scheme that leads to a less-than-desired result. The point Abe leaves us with is that while our faces are an important part of our identity, they are not all.

One note: if you’re even intrigued by the story, do check out the excellent film adaptation by Hiroshi Teshigahara with Tatsuya Nakadai doing a stellar job as the scientist.

Having already been a fan of Caleb J. Ross from his short story collection, Charactered Pieces, it was nice to see him make a big leap with his first novel, Stranger Will. In fact, he jumped himself right into Ira Levin territory with this macabre tale of evil that lives right next door (if not right inside the protagonist). It’s been a while since I have read a solid, eerie tale of actual human depravity — let’s face it, most writers are too zombie and vampire obsessed these days — but Stranger Will hits the mark perfectly. As Levin did with Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, Ross sets Stranger Will in a our world, one too familiar, where a slight twist, a nudge in the wrong direction send’s the protagonist Will into the presence of secret movement that exists just beneath the surface. Their plans… well, without giving anything away, are as nefarious as the old folks in Levin’s satanic opus.

In terms of mood, Ross hits it perfectly. There is a dark grime to the story, similar to the fluids that Will cleans up as part of his job as a crime-scene janitor. The author is daring enough to never let the slack off the line, dragging us further and further into the bleak plot. As you read, you come away with the impression that the sun never shines in Will’s hometown of Brackenwood. Picture rain soaked pictures such as David Fincher’s Se7en and you get the atmosphere. If I seem light on plot details, it’s because I don’t want to give away the main hook, the nefarious deeds Will suddenly finds himself involved in courtesy of one Mrs. Rose, an elementary school principal with a tight grip on Brackenwood. But it involves a bit of “correcting” by strangers in the guise of homeless men. The plot, is taught, well-crafted, and 2/3 of the way in hits you with the right-hook to the head where you suddenly realize everything that came before was just a warm-up for the real action. And Ross, never winks, never let’s down his guard — very important for this kind of tale. He could have tried to temper the darkness with humor, but that would’ve undercut the atmosphere. As written, there is no letup for the reader.

If I had one wish for the book, it would be that in parts the author didn’t overwrite. Ross is a good writer, he doesn’t need to oversell the story or the mood. Certain parts, in dialogue or description, felt as if the author really wanted us to respect his writing (which we already do) rather than serving the story as they should. The only blackmark I could level against the book goes to the publisher who didn’t serve their author well by doing a crap job on the copyediting. Too many damn typos that after a while do start to distract from the story. To their credit however, they did a great job on the cover.

Regardless, Ross has outdone himself on this one. So much so, I think the next book will be another bar raiser for him. And I hope it is a dark, sinister, and eerie tale to top Stranger Will. Ross writes the macabre better than most.

Jesuachristo, the prose! More than any other writer I have read, Salter could do so much with so little. He has a scalpel-like precision with his prose — it is always just enough, nothing more. Quite a few writers should read Salter if for no other reason than studying how a few simply crafted sentences can say more than endless flowery paragraphs that serve more as literary gymnastics than good writing. The opening chapters of A Sport and a Pastime, where the narrator is travelling via train through the French countryside, read like a Van Gogh painting.

“Canals, rich as jade, pass beneath us, canals in which wide barges lie. The water is green with scum. One could almost write on the surface.

Hayfields in long, rectangular patterns. There are hills now, not very high. Poplars. Empty soccer fields. Montereau — a boy on a bicycle waiting near the station. There are churches with weathervanes. Smalls streams with rowboats moored beneath the trees…. The pattern of fields is passing, some pale as bread, others sea-dark.”

You can see the canvas in those lines, but also get that sense of velocity. And Salter never falters in his precision throughout the length of the novel. Some may grow weary of his delivery, but even at moments where it feels as if the train is going off the tracks a bit, Salter will deliver a single paragraph, so perfectly crafted and beautiful, you’re reeled right back into the story.

As for that story, A Sport and a Pastime could almost be read as Henry Miller trying to rewrite The Great Gatsby. Sex abounds in a lurid tale of a young upper-crust American dropout who falls for a simple French country girl as his mistress — “the real France,” which is more his obsession than the girl herself. Salter, however, is better in his depiction of sex than Miller ever could be. Miller was obsessed with every gritty detail, whereas Salter, being a more confident writer, could give you flashes and glimpses that spoke more to passion and the emotional tie between the characters than where they were placing their body parts.

We’re told of their romance by a much older narrator who reveals that the events are a confusion of his own perceptions and dreams. This is where Salter one-ups Fitzgerald. The narrator admits that this is more a jealous fantasy of his young counterpart’s life than a clear record of actual events. Occasionally their paths cross, but the narrator, whose own love life is stale and uneventful except for lusting after divorcee, is obsessed with that life he cannot live, the interior life of two younger people caught up in one another.

However, the catch, without revealing anything, is that the narrator has age and reality on his side. That French girl is not as perfect as the American would hope. She is the real France, which he’s not quite prepared for. And the narrator knows where this fling is headed. He’s been there, and even in lusting for it as much as the American wants his perfect French lover, he knows both are futile endeavors.

Don’t let the title of this book, or the those of the 20 poems in this collection, fool you. Hosho McCreesh is razor sharp in his poetry. Not a word is wasted. And flying through all 20 in one sitting, you get caught up in McCreeh’s view of the world. It’s soaked in whiskey-and-wine and the disappointment of every challenge that we’ll never be able to overcome. Yet, it has a beauty to it, like a good Mark Lanegan song.

In the first nine poems, McCreesh has an axe to grind. Not with you, or me for that matter, but with us. In McCreesh’s eyes we’ve pissed it all away, or are incapable of redeeming the pile of crap that was handed to us. It’s dark, hell-bent, screaming, confrontational poetry, and in most hands it would be an clichéd and ridiculous homage to Bukowski. But McCreesh has heart and as angry as he is, he empathizes with us. He knows we can’t help it:

“We are forced to search out
small fires, a little light,
some warmth, &
a little bit of
madness
to help drag us through
all this so-called
sanity
It’s usually not much.
It usually doesn’t last
But it helps…

In the second batch of poems, McCreesh gets optimistic, but in his own cynical way. Sure, we’re still screwed, but there are the small victories. And again, it is McCreesh’s economy with words that wins you over. Such as the simple argument he makes in “Seems Everyone These Days Wants Some Magical Cure for Death…”

I want a
cackling, drunken
cure
for lives
poorly
lived…”

Amen to that brother.

Let the story do the talking is the mantra that Scott McClanahan follows. And it serves him well.

This collection of seventeen short stories reads more like a conversation with a fellow patron in a rundown bar along the side of a road in West Virginia. The prose is sparse, cut to the bone, and makes no attempts to dazzle the reader with clever wordplay. McClanahan is confident enough in the tale not to wallpaper it – the grit and the grime will keep you locked in for the duration.

Often a story will kick off as if the reader sat down midway through the narrator’s diatribe.

“And then there was the time my Dad got into it at a NASCAR race in Charlotte.”

It gives the stories a great conversational aspect, where the narrator is really having a talk with the reader, telling him the story of his life.

As for the stories themselves, there is great pain in these tales of the downtrodden, heaps of regret, but also a great black humor that arises when one realizes you’re so completely screwed what else can you do but laugh. And of course there’s great heart in McClanahan’s stories, yet it never drifts into being sappy or cliché. Both “The Prettiest Girl in Texas” and “Poopdeck Pappy” are great examples of how McClanahan can take a single incident, line it with slivers of humor and satire, but also render pure heartbreak for the main characters involved. Then there are stories like “ODB, The Mud Puppy, and Me” where the narrative drifts from folk tale to absurd comedy to bloody horror as the parties involved try render an act of kindness on a suffering animal.

That story really gets to the heart of McClanahan’s bent with this collection: that life can be absurd and horrific, and often even your best intentions will make a mess of things. In these postcards from West Virginia and small towns throughout the south, the characters usually can’t see how the road is going to twist in front of them, and most are inevitably thrown. But in the author’s honest storytelling, that never editorializes, who are we to judge them?

Often it is what you don’t write that matters more. This is the case with Spencer Dew. Reading Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes, what is more important to the story, and to what Dew is trying to get across, is within the cracks — the unspoken insinuations hidden in the sparse prose.

That’s not to say that Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes is lacking in anything. It’s a very intelligent, well-crafted, and even deeply emotional. Yet it never falls into any of the traps that one might expect. It has a high concept: a young woman struggling with the grips of a family tragedy buries herself in Henry Adams’ treatise on medieval architecture and his own feelings of insignificance at the dawn of the 20th century (which shares the same title as Dew’s book). It is melodramatic: I’m not giving anything away that the plot involves a death of someone close to the protagonist, who drifts between states of cold removal and emotional train wreck. It has an oft-used device: the book-within-a-book scenario that can become hackneyed in the unskilled hands of too many writers.

Yet, full credit to Dew, he uses all of these to his advantage to craft a story that is completely unique. I wouldn’t dare to say that Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes is “like” anything. The writing is daring. The minimalist prose says volumes, even having layers to it that are revealed in later sentences or chapters. There is an emotional element to the novel, but it never feels overwrought. Meanwhile, he uses Adams’ own writing — appearing throughout the text as quotes or even dominating chapters — not as an obvious plot device or commentary, but as a mirror of the protagonist’s own struggles. In the end, the protagonist and author share a bond – they are facing the same philosophical dilemmas, almost a full century apart. Adams states:

“The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone into the vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which are within hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doing in the precise words of a poem.”

The protagonist responds:

“Maybe so. But it would be a harsh, dark poem.”

Perhaps, that is the nut of it. What Dew has crafted is a dark poem. In Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes, death is easy, fathomable even. Life, especially one without any connections or purpose, is the fate you should fear.

Postscript: I have to give extra points to Dew and his publisher Another New Calligraphy who did a stellar job on the design of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes. From the great cover, to the transparent pages within the book, to the build-it-yourself cathedral that was included with it, they made the design as interesting as the prose.

What a way to finish up my tour of the great Japanese writers of the 20th century. It’s not often you can call a writer brave. Generally it’s reserved for writers who risked their own lives for their art. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would be a good example. But as I read the tales in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, I could only stand in awe at how brave Kenzaburō Ōe was as a storyteller.

Take the opening tale, “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears.” It is told entirely from the prospective of an unnamed narrator, who spends his days in a hospital bed, dying from liver cancer, wearing thick underwater goggles covered in cellophane, dictating the story of his youth to a constantly interrupting stenographer who continually questions the motives of the narrator, the veracity of his account, and whether or not he truly has cancer (something the doctors dispute). The reader spends the entire story in the twisted headspace of the narrator, looped into his madness, as he recounts the tale of his sickly dying father accompanying a band of insurrectionists on a mission to restore Japan’s honor. As with his delusions of sickness, the narrator’s story of the insurrection is somewhat distorted, as if the cellophane over his goggles have changed his perception of days past. It is only the arrival of a third party later in the story that we learn the truth. Written as an angry parody in reaction to his friend Yukio Mishima’s grandiose suicide by hara-kiri, “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears” explores one’s inability to escape the myth and identity of the past. The overall narrative is inventive and challenging for the reader, but the power of Ōe’s writing carries it through.

Carrying through that theme of lost innocence and having one’s eyes ripped open to reality is the second story, “Prize Stock.” A black U.S. soldier is captured in a remote Japanese village during World War II. Kept in a dark dungeon, the soldier is viewed as a domestic animal by the local children including the narrator. Slowly, the soldier becomes more integrated into their daily lives, an important part of that particular summer of their youth. But when the local authorities decide to turn the soldier over to the prefecture, the children cannot abide the loss. This unleashes an ugly outcome that ends all innocence for the children. The story, grim and ugly in its portrayal of humanity, leaves one in awe, speechless at the gut punch it delivers.

Equally adept at skewering himself, Ōe parodied his own life in the title story and “Aghwee the Sky Monster.” Ōe’s son, who he called “Pooh,” was born with brain damage. In many ways, the child forced Ōe to isolate himself from the rest of the world, both physically and emotionally. In the two lead characters of these stories, we find that same isolation, two fathers whose sons of have caused them to be misfits in society. The title story, in spite of its sadness is quite funny, including the horror show of doctors and nurses attempting to perform and eye exam on the child (named “Eeyore” by his father). But it is also sweet in its portrayal of the bond that forms between the father and son, an enjoyed co-isolation from the world. “Aghwee the Sky Monster” has an eerie sheen to it, rendered mostly in the lead character’s schizophrenia and guilt from a planned infanticide. In the end, there is redemption, but it comes with a steep price.

In all these stories, Ōe puts his characters through the wringer. Redemption is hard-won. Innocence and identity are fleeting myths. And his portrayal of humanity’s ugliness is rendered beautifully.

A publicity biography of Michael Palin, written by John Cleese, is included in the introduction for (Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years):

“Michael Palin is not just one of Britain’s foremost comedy character actors…he also talks a lot.

Michael chats, quips, fantasises, reminisces, commiserates, encourages, plans, discusses, and elaborates. Then, some nights, when everyone else has gone to bed, he goes home and writes up a diary.”

You can almost hear Cleese’s signature tone of ire in your head as you read that last line. But it sums up this collection of Michael Palin’s diaries from Monty Python’s definitive years perfectly. At 673 pages (not counting the index), this hefty tome takes you deep inside Palin’s head during a period of almost exhaustive creative output, constant travel, financial wranglings, headbutting within the Python camp, and ultimately, great success.

Even if one is not a Monty Python fanatic, the book is a fascinating look at Palin’s struggles for artistic and creative achievement. He bluntly presents the state of affairs for the Pythons as they are in the process of creating what would become (unbeknownst to themselves and certainly the BBC) one of the greatest comedy series of all time. And yet throughout this period of groundbreaking artistic output, the Pythons are fighting with the BBC over censorship of segments and often taking on all sorts of side work to make ends meet. The scenes of Palin lowering himself to do adverts (for a measely £50) are gut wrenching to read, as Palin’s knack for not being able to say no leads him into embarrassing encounters with ad agency reps (even agreeing to ‘audition’ for a Maxwell House commercial).

As for the affairs of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the book is an endless source of fascination because of the author’s immediate response to events of the day. If this were a memoir, some of the wonderful surprises would be lost forever. Instead, we are given Palin’s reaction to each day undiluted by future hindsight. A good example comes in the 1970 chapter when Palin and the Python’s are filming episodes in Torquay and return to their hotel:

“However, Mr. Sinclair, the proprietor, seemed to view us from the start as a colossal inconvenience, and when we arrived back from Brixham, at 12.30, having watched the night filming, he just stood and looked at us with a look of self-righteous resentment, a tacit accusation that I had not seen since my father waited up for me fifteen years ago.”

That Mr. Sinclair would later become the main influence for Cleese’s superbly funny Basil Fawlty on Fawlty Towers.

In addition, the constant disputes between members — while never mean-spirited or backbiting — is very interesting in the context of the time as you read about the Terrys’ (Jones and Gilliam) squabbles with Cleese, whose motives often seem more self-serving (even if in many cases Cleese is arguing in favor of Python’s integrity).

While exhaustive in its content, the book never feels as if it’s too much, mostly due to Palin’s wit and dry, bare-bones writing style. We follow Palin through the end of the Python television series, into their first films (including Monty Python and the Holy Grail), overseas to America, back and forth several times, and through the creation of Palin’s own Ripping Yarns series. The book ends with the filming and release of the now classic Life of Brian (the Python’s own selection as their best movie) and the ensuing outrage from Christian groups and pro-censorship lunatics. Palin and the Pythons, finally achieving financial security and great artistic success, suddenly find themselves at the center of controversy and yet on the side of right. The troupe rallies together in favor of the cause and in the end come out a stronger unit than the previous years.

Ultimately, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years perfectly captures what it was truly like for Palin (and in turn the rest of Python) in those key years when they took comedy into completely uncharted realms. In some ways, it is better than the Almost the Truth documentary or Autobiography of the Pythons in that there is no cleaning up of the story. It is Palin’s opinion as unflinching and dead center as it was during those quiet late-night or early-morning hours when he was trying to make sense of it all by jotting down a few notes about his journey.

In the hand of any other writer, a macabre little book such as this would come across as overwrought and fall apart from too much nudging and winking at the reader. But only a Brit of Evelyn Waugh’s superb wit and writing prowess could concoct a story of death, cemeteries, suicide, and Hollywood that expertly skewers the American way of life (and the writer’s own countrymen).

Whenever a discussion of satirical novels comes up, the two masterpieces I always think of are Terry Southern’s Blue Movie and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. While the former is stuffed with Southern’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink style of satire, Waugh’s tome is decidedly more British – spare, dry, and razor sharp in its humor. Southern was such a fan of The Loved One, he wrote a movie adaptation of the novel (although a very Southern-ized version that didn’t quite work as a film).

What still fascinates me to this day about the The Loved One is its perfectness. It is a small novel, almost a novella at 164 pages. But not a word is wasted. Each turn of phrase or change in tone is used to maximum impact.

And then there is the wonderful death-obsessed, macabre quality to what is an almost soap-opera-esque, traditional love-triangle story. A young British ex-pat, Dennis Barlow, washed up in Hollywood, spends his days cremating dead animals at a cheap two-bit pet cemetery, the Happier Hunting Ground. All the while, he’s envious of the glorious necropolis next door, Whispering Glades (inspired by Hollywood’s Forest Lawn memorial Park), with its themed rooms, faux-lakes, and sprawling lawns full of imitation art and architecture. On an unfortunate visit to the memorial park, he falls in love with one of Whispering Glades more skilled “cosmeticians,” Aimée Thanatogenos, who unfortunately is drawn to both Dennis and the seemingly debonair Mr. Joyboy, Whispering Glades premier embalmer, who shows his love for Aimee by creating artificial smiles on the faces of their subjects.

“Now was the moment; his assistant watched with never-failing administration the deft flick of the thumbs with which he turned the upper corners of the card, the caress of the rubber finger-tips with which he drew the dry and colourless lips into place. And, behold, where before had been a grim line of endurance, there was now a smile! It was masterly. It needed no other touch. Mr. Joyboy stood back from his work, removed his gloves and said: ‘For Miss Thanatogenos.’

Of recent weeks the expressions that greeted Aimée from the trolley had waxed from serenity to jubilance. Other girls had to work on faces that were stern or resigned or plumb vacant; there was always a nice bright smile for Aimée.”

Later in the novel, Waugh uses Mr. Joyboy’s penchant for corporeal theatrics to great effect when Aimée spurns her suitor.

“Five miles away Aimée uncovered the first corpse of the morning. It came from Mr. Joyboy bearing an expression of such bottomless woe that her heart was wrung.”

Even the book’s title is a wonderful joke – an expression to ease the queasiness of the mourners who visit Whispering Glades, but also a hint at the books final outcome.

I am surprised that The Loved One is somewhat lesser known than Waugh’s other novels such as Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, Scoop, and Vile Bodies. There could be any number of reasons for this. The novel was written later in his career. It was also one of the few books by Waugh that was set in America and focused less on the British frame of mind. Or perhaps it was the novel’s death-obsession. Waugh expected strong resistance to the novel from readers in the States, partly due to its unflattering portrayal of Americans, but mostly because of its focus on the deceased (and cadavers). And yet, it is one of Waugh’s better novels, ranking up there with any of the previously mentioned gems.

One can only thank a failed attempt by MGM to make a film version of Brideshead Revisited. Had they not flown Waugh in for a short stay in Hollywood, he never would have stumbled upon the inspiration for this wonderful satire.