Tools for Matching Readers to Texts: Research-Based Practices Book

Let me say that the best way to appreciate Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell is to read them, and to not bother with biographies or criticism until you've done so. You don't need to read a biography of Eric Blair to understand or appreciate "Homage to Catalonia" for example.

And reading a biography of Waugh prior to reading books like "Decline and Fall" or "A Handful of Dust" could positively distract from the sense of wonder one gets from tackling them in ignorance. Waugh (and probably Orwell) had a rich and complicated inner life which manifested itself in often peculiar ways. Not to put to fine a point on it, Waugh could be an obnoxious little shit.(I think it was Daphne Dumaurier who said something like 'novelists should be read and neither seen nor heard.' Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh was the poster child for that sentiment.) I've read just about everything Waugh wrote for publication, and I was able to work that out on my own. Pick up any Waugh novel and read it. If you like it, read the rest. Then read the biographies and criticism. Then read Waugh again.

Which brings me at last to Lebedoff's book. I liked it a lot. If you must read a biography of Waugh or Orwell this isn't a bad place to start. It's engaging and well written--the chapter about Randolph Churchill and Evelyn Waugh cooped up together in a house in Croatia is a hoot.

But I don't really buy his premise that Orwell and Waugh were the same man. A bit of a stretch that. What I think can be said, and which Lebedoff does effectively say, is that they shared certain misgivings about the future, that things were bad and bound to get worse. They each recognized the genius of the other. They certainly respected and probably genuinely liked one another. And that's enough.