Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh · first published 1928
8mentions
1recommended by
8HN commenters
2011–2024first – last mentioned
13% recommend88% neutral
Subtitled "A Novel of Many Manners, " Evelyn Waugh's notorious first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportsmanship, the cultured perfection of Oxford, and the inviolable honor codes of the English gentleman.
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…to choose sides. Draw the line between the sides yourself if necessary. It's Hitchens' writings that introduced me to the early, dry, humorous works of Evelyn Waugh (best known is "Scoop", but also Decline and Fall, and the Sword of Honour trilogy). Some of Hitchens' best writing was literary appreciation, not polemics.
on “In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011” ↗Because contemporary historiography has moved on and refutes many of Gibbon's propositions. So Decline and Fall is a good read, but also old enough to be a part of history itself.
on “Edward Gibbon and the importance of great writing to great history” ↗We don't know that he got touched. We have a press story with some unlikely events that strongly suggests he got touched. There's a between-the-wars novel by English author Evelyn Waugh called Decline and Fall. The main character gets involved in all kinds of unspeakable crimes, more out of naivety than inherent criminality, and at the end is "disappeared" out of jail and given a new identity. Waugh was an…
…produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing," he said with disgust, "sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver...." --Dr. Fagan, a schoolmaster in Decline and Fall (1928), by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
on “England and Wales House Price Analysis” ↗…novel with his Ashenden stories. Hemmingway was a short story writer, but somehow he is remembered for the fawning reception of Farewell to Arms. Evelyn Waugh was savagely funny if you have read Scoop, Decline and Fall or Black Mischief, but Brideshead Revisited was the critical success that got made into a sappy miniseries. It's like critics take your least spectacular and most vulnerable work and tag you with it…
on “H.L. Mencken Reviews the Great Gatsby (1925)” ↗…opposition to the very idea that a real human being might actually attempt to live (and crap, and have sex) in one of his houses, Eisenman recalls the self-important German architect from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Decline and Fall, who becomes exasperated the need to include a staircase between floors: “Why can’t the creatures stay in one place? The problem of architecture is the problem of all art: the elimination of the human…
on “Flat Design vs. Traditional Design: Comparative Experimental Study (2015)” ↗Captain Grimes says in Evelyn Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall, that they put you through perfect hell during a period of your life that is bound to be perfect hell anyway, then watch out for you for the rest of your life.
on “Eton and All the Murder (2019)” ↗…another futurist work around 1610. There's a history book published ~1580, that covers then recent past, and another cluster around 1650, perhaps including Hobbes's 'Leviathan'. Of course we miss Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall' because it covers antiquity, off the chart. Secondly, the horizontal lines. There is a bright line at ~1100, perhaps the First Crusade, and more at ~1300, ~1600 ~1800. The line at ~1350 could be the…
on “Parochialism in time and space (2021)” ↗