Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell and Huxley

Rating:
Summary: Excellent literary criticism
Review: This book contains four very good essays -- one on the works of Evelyn Waugh, one on George Orwell, one on Aldous Huxley and a final one on the common threads running through the works of all three authors. The essay on Evelyn Waugh's works is particularly good. It points out alot of symbolism and motifs which I had missed (but which now seem obvious). This essay focuses primarily upon Waugh's use of architecture as a symbol of social values. However, it only covers Waugh's first four novels (Decline & Fall, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief and Handful of Dust). Similarly, the essay on Huxley only discusses his first two novels(Crome Yellow and Antic Hay) and Brave New World. Both authors continued to write brilliant satire throughout their lives (Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan comes to mind as an example). I wish the Greenblatt had expanded his study to include a representative cross-section of Waugh's and Huxley's works.