Submitted by Barry Larking, Jul 30, 2008 05:08

Straight away must I congratulate Mr. Lebedoff on his use of the word "disinterested" in its original and correct meaning. We are two in a shrinking band for whom this word retains its usefulness. It must be an achievement to write about Waugh in particular for an American audience without dismissing him as some kind of nasty Brit. In fact, Mr. Lebedoff is too kind. Waugh, a writer I admire, was a man of truly dreadful views and habits and much more of a poisonous snob than he appears in Mr. Lebedoff's sketch. His son Aubron was even worse, though sometimes very funny. Grandson Alexander is charming however, so whatever got into the Waugh gene pool, has now died out. One minor quibble in an otherwise unusually fair piece about both writers, is the reference to Orwell not having a sense of humor. It is there but perhaps one has to be English to experience it. Certainly the essay "Boy's Weeklies" is hilarious, if uncomfortable, reading in its send up of class and empire. In life though, he struck people as gloomy and that stayed with them. Americans who have not yet done so may wish to read Orwell's "Mark Twain, Licensed Jester" and "Riding Down to Bangor" for a sense of Orwell's affection for American literature. Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist, claimed to have engineered the meeting between Orwell and Waugh in the Gloucestershire sanitorium where Orwell was dying of TB. What would we give to know what they spoke about? Orwell was then working on an essay about Waugh which was not completed at the time of Orwell's death. The notes have been published and are worth reading, particularly in the light of the comments on the "Brideshead Revisited" film.

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