Rating: 
Summary: Waugh's Blackest, Funniest Moment
Review: How brilliant an author can be when he doesn't give the slightest hoot about any of the characters he breathes life into! "The Loved One" is a brutal read, but those who read it will uncover a fabulous entertainment precisely because of its total lack of sentiment.
Failed poet Dennis Barlow has left his native England and, much to the embarrassment of his fellow ex-pat Brits, taken work as the front man for a Los Angeles pet cemetery, Happier Hunting Grounds. While making funeral arrangements for his former living companion, a scriptwriter-turned-suicide, Barlow meets and romances a cosmetician at Whispering Glades, the in-place for dead celebs who crave some final status before they go. Using some recycled poetry from the likes of Shelley and Shakespeare (he's long since run out of gas on his own), Barlow manages to woo young Aimee Thanatogenos from under the attentions of chief Whispering Glades undertaker Mr. Joyboy. But will Joyboy play fair with his rival?
One confusing thing people often say about "The Loved One" is that it's a Catholic satire on the materialist way people handle the subject of death. Waugh was a devout Catholic, and a satirist, but it strikes me that "The Loved One" is rather agnostic in tone, without a religious character or idea presented as buttress against the nihilist vision of the book. I don't think people are wrong to be disturbed by it that way. "The Loved One" satirizes the non-religious nature of death as memorialized at Whispering Glades, but not so much with the suggestion of an alternative as with the notion that talk of non-sectarian "better worlds" is like whistling in a vacuum and, at best, frivolous. After a few reads, my sense of "A Loved One" is that it could be a book written by a Lutheran, a Jew, or an atheist. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
The fact that the novel still manages to be entertaining even as it runs against the grain of Waugh's moral and spiritual beliefs is testament to the author's brilliance. It's one thing to write the Crete passage in "Officers And Gentlemen," where the awful carnage of the battle is presented with a sense of some higher significance. When Barlow returns home one day and finds his old friend swinging from the rafters in a noose, we are told "his reason accepted the event as part of the established order." Barlow is an artfully rendered protagonist precisely because he is so lacking in character or decency. He is a thorough clod. Readers tackling "The Loved One" for the first time are well-advised not to make the mistake of caring for any of the characters in it, especially not him.
My favorite part of the book is the opening, where we meet Barlow and his companion, the aging screenwriter-turned-hack-publicist Francis Hinsley. "Kierkegaard, Kafka, Connolly, Compton Burnet, Sartre, 'Scottie' Wilson. Who are they? What do they want?" asks Hinsley over sodas-and-whisky, taking in the literary "new breed" which was by then either dead or collecting pensions. There's a wonderful sense of comic disengagement, the idea of Hollywood as some Somerset Maugham outpost in deepest Africa, and the Tinseltown focus is something we lose as the novel goes on, which I missed.
The rest of the book is a clever forum for Waugh's brilliant observations and off-handed commentary about a life lived in a world without standards. Aimee notes at one point: "Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better."
Or the infamous single episode where we meet Mr. Joyboy's mother, who had "small angry eyes, frizzy hair, pince-nez on a very thick nose, a shapeless body, and positively insulting clothes." Who says adverbs ruin good writing?
As I said, "The Loved One" is not for the fainthearted. I almost wish my edition didn't come with a Charles Addams cover illustration; it sets the wrong expectation. This is a "fiendishly entertaining" read only for those who go into it not expecting to be fiendishly entertained. It's for the dour pessimist in us all. But it's definitely one of the best novels ever written, precisely because of its unremitting focus on the things mankind naturally would turn away from if it could, and the dark amusement it finds from such exploration serves as a kind of triumph of the literary imagination we can still celebrate today.
Rating:
Summary: Waugh's Black Humor At It's Best
Review: Evelyn Waugh has long been a favorite of mine. His satire and his wit, along with his wonderful ability to capture human personality with words, introduced me to a whole new standard of literature in my college days. I read everything he had written, or so I thought, until I stumbled on a few books at the local used bookstore several years ago--and before my introduction to the world of Amazon.com. I don't know why it took me so long to pick up The Loved One, but I'm so glad I finally did!Dennis Barlow is a young Brit, brought over to Hollywood for his poetic skills. When his contract is not renewed, far from being horror-stricken like his fellow ex-patriots, he simply takes another job, with the intention of returning to poetry on the side. What happens afterward is a morbidly humorous tale on which I can not expound for fear of ruining it for you. I can say that it includes a cosmetician, a mortician, Whispering Glades Memorial Park, a parrot and a few famous poems. Oh, and lots of typical Waugh black humor that will have you laughing out loud, re-reading, and thoroughly enjoying yourself at the expense of the characters, dead and alive. I've read all but two of Waugh's novels, and I must say that this one tops even Scoop as my favorite!
Rating:
Summary: Enter Reader, and be happy
Review: I picked this book up long ago because a parts of the Doctor Who story Revelation Of The Daleks was inspired by it. Evelyn Waugh's book is a skewering of the English expatriates and Americans in Hollywood, but also that of the funeral business. English poet Dennis Barlow works at the Happier Hunting Ground,a pet cemetery, where services are offered to bereaved pet owners, such as interrment versus incineration, a niche in the columbarium versus the remains at home, and every year, a card sent reading "Your little <insert name here> is thinking of you in heaven today and <action befitting animal>" That last part might be "purring happily" or "singing in orison." And at a service for a dog: "Dog that is born of b--ch hath but a short time to live." When his friend Sir Francis Hinsley, chief script writer at Megapolitan Pictures, commits suicide after getting the sack, he goes to make funeral arrangements at Whispering Glades, where the dearly departed are referred to as Loved Ones. This is where Waugh's depiction of the funeral hostess who comes off as a salesman with a pitch comes in. There's a funny line on the description of someone who had been a month at sea and was only ID'd by his wristwatch. "They fixed that stiff so he looked like it was his wedding day. Why, if he's sat on an atom bomb, they'd make him presentable." And the hostess later launches into a speech, trying to sell Barlow onto the idea of making arrangements for himself, using an argument akin to people turning down insurance only to lose their home, get robbed, etc. the next day. He meets and falls in love with Aimee Thanatogenos, a crematorium cosmetician. Aimee though, is enamoured with Mr. Joyboy, the head embalmer who goes out of his way to create smiles on the stiffs he sends to Aimee. Joyboy is pleased with her work: "I never have to tell you anything. We work in unison. When I send a Loved One in to you, ... I feel as though I were speaking to you through him." Yet she is torn and writes letters to the Guru Brahmin, a kind of Dear Abby advisory column, over the matter. However, twists of fate occur, leading to tragedy in the end, and leave it to Waugh to leave his tried and true cynical humour.
So enter, reader, and be happy to read this cynical laugh.
Rating:
Summary: Till a the seas gang dry, my dear...
Review: For those unfamiliar with Waugh, no better starting place than this, a compact volume but one that bursts with creativity, style and pitch black humor. In short, failed British expat poet Dennis Barlow competes with the stiff American mama's boy/mortician Mr. Joyboy for the love of Aimee (get it?) Thanatogenos against the backdrop of both 1950's Hollywood and the funeral industry. A small masterpiece, "The Loved One" showcases Mr. Waugh's wit, here like that of a cat toying with a mouse pre-meal. Anyone whose sole exposure to Waugh is via his classic "Brideshead Revisited" will be shocked by the darkness and gallows humor; those who have read "A Handful of Dust" will see Waugh's imaginativeness toward the macabre and the obscene honed to a razor's edge here.
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