'It seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.'Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (1945)
When I read this I hear it spoken in mellifluous tones and it just takes me straight back to sixth year at school when my life was about to 'be.'
ReplyDeleteSigh, I haven't achieved very much at all.
Beautiful prose.
ReplyDeleteCod, my man, you should not forget Charles; it is he who speaks the phrase. Let us raise a glass: contra mundum.
ReplyDeleteVots a nice Jewish boy like you doing reading Evelyn Waugh?
ReplyDeleteJust finished reading it and that was one of my dog-eared pages!
ReplyDeleteIf asked which character of fiction I would like to spend an evening "out on the town" with, it would have to be Anthony Blanche from this novel:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylghQ3tHsbo
Naughtiness ? High sins? Was buggery part of the program for those two chaps?
ReplyDeleteUh, MLS, how many straight college boys do you know that carry teddy bears named Aloysius ?
ReplyDeleteYea, homosexual writers (particularly British ones) during the mid-20th century had to speak in euphemisisms and secret messages. Same applied to Oscar Wilde and the generation he helped influence. So homosexual themes are only indiretly and suggestively discussed. A bit differtent from openly gay writers today -- just read Edmund White, for example (one of his books is called, aptly, "The Joys of Gay Sex").
ReplyDeleteAntoine ~ If you don't like it you can fuck off. I mean it. This isn't a canvas for your pithy remarks and attempted witticisms. I make the rules here.
ReplyDelete