Here Be Dragons

Alexander Waugh, Fathers and Sons, Doubleday, 454 pp.

They didn't ask me to review this book for the Guardian, and I'm sorry about that, because I would have liked to review it in the Waugh style: "Here is the tale of a tribe of nasty corpulent little buggers who've been a big deal in England over the course of the last hundred years." I actually have nothing against corpulence, nastiness, small stature, or buggery (either the real kind or the metaphorical kind), but you can see what fun it is, issuing mocking and ad hominem slurs about the way people look or their sexual proclivities. That's how the Waughs made their living (at least Evelyn and Auberon), and Auberon's son, Alexander, shows a talent in that direction, too, though it is nested in a larger generosity and a sincere love of his father. Since I am not reviewing it, though (and it is an absorbing and sometimes amazing book, if only because you can't believe they actually talked and wrote to one another as they did), I would like to make a few observations about what I've learned from it.

1. Parents can really screw up. Evelyn Waugh's father was Arthur Waugh, born in 1866. Himself tormented by his own father (who was nicknamed "the Brute"), he proceeded to torment his sons, but in a strange and creepy manner; he became deeply obsessed with Alec, born in 1898, and was almost entirely indifferent to Evelyn, born in 1903. From the time Alec was an infant, Arthur poured out his affections in an undignified, self-abasing, and needy way, writing such things as "But Billy, darling, your father is by your side. Lift up your eyes to the hills. Fight the good fight. Faint not nor fear. We have gone all the way together. We shall rest together in the glory that shall be revealed. Ever your devoted friend, your true and loving father---" According to Alexander, Arthur believed in telepathic communication -- but only between himself and Alec. As anyone might have suspected, after leaving school and university, Alec gradually withdrew from his father, and eventually from family life altogether, spending his days far from England and far from the overbearing dependence of his father. In the meantime, Evelyn grew up as "it" -- unloved and pretty much uncared for by either parent. At one point, a family friend sent Evelyn a desirable toy. Arthur changed the tag and gave it to Alec. Although Alexander Waugh is empathetic to Arthur and his affections,clearly this is parental screwing up on an ogreish, fairy-tale level. Of course, Evelyn turned out to be the successful son, the family's gift to English letters (Arthur was the publisher of Chatto and Windus, an English publishing house. Toward the end of his career, the profits on Evelyn's books saved the house). And of course, Evelyn also turned out to be an alcoholic depressive with a sizable mean streak who married a woman who seems to have been indifferent to him, who took refuge in religiosity, and who was as mean to his own children as his father was to him.

2. The English literary world is not like the American literary world. Once Arthur was installed in Chatto and Windus, the Waugh generations lived in suffocating closeness to novels, novelists, journalists, literary copyrights, fame, gossip, and high expectations. Alec wrote a novel about his school when he was 19, as did Auberon. Evelyn published his first novel (Decline and Fall) at 25, and would have done so sooner if he were not so resistant to his father's desires. All of their novels were closely based on whom they knew and the world they lived in. When Alec's novel was published, he managed to offend everyone at his old school, so that even his father, who had also been to that school and loved it, had to resign from the alumni club (or something to that effect). Evelyn persisted over the years in naming ugly or disagreeable characters in his novels after a teacher who disapproved of him, and the teacher knew him and hated him for it. The lesson here is that novelists in America have a different journey to make -- literally. We are born somewhere away from the literary world (if only as far away as Newark, New Jersey or Shillington, Pennsylvania) and we first encounter it in the works -- novels and poems -- that seem to have something to do with us and our circumstances even though they are set elsewhere. We experience literature from the beginning as a general endeavor that talks to us but is larger than particular human circumstances. Homer is followed by Melville is followed by Waugh is followed by Shakespeare is followed by Austen -- they are more alike than different, and one way in which they are alike is that they are alien from our world, and therefore a refuge. Not so for the Waughs. For the Waughs, literature and journalism are personal and present, the scene of a battle that must be fought, either willingly or reluctantly. Failure is not the same for them as it is for us, and neither is success. For us, failure is a return to obscurity, for them it is a public defeat among people who know you and have strong opinions about you. Obscurity is not a real option (though clearly Alec attempted a return to obscurity when he left the scene and moved to America). I would suggest that this experience of literature as a club works against literature as a form. And guess what? Women aren't welcome in the club. Auberon Waugh was an especially pugnacious member of the club during his life as a journalist, but when Polly Toynbee, in her obituary, criticized him and the culture he stood for, the other members of the club, all male, attacked her without mercy all over the English press, more or less proving her main point -- that the culture of the club was more important than Waugh's actual sentiments.

3. In the end, parental screw-ups aren't that important. Alexander Waugh seems like a kind and generous person who is interested in music, God, and his own family. He has the grace to apologize for hardly mentioning the women in his family, so we can't really criticize him on that score. He seems to love his wife and children. The important thing is that he has a way of portraying the lives of Arthur, Alec, Evelyn, and Auberon as idiosyncratic and all of a piece. Even while I am deploring their eccentricities as parents, I am thinking that they could not have been any other way -- counseling, say, would not have improved them and, given their snobbishness, would only have offended them. So they drank, so they were depressed and unhappy and created depression and unhappiness all around themselves. Still, they were lively and, more important, they were themselves. This is not necessarily TRUE as a way of looking at people and their potential, but it is the gift of Alexander and his larger sense of acceptance and forgiveness. That is the remarkable thing about this book, and why it has gotten so many good reviews. He offers the reader a way of looking at humans, or getting perspective on them and their unhappiness. I think it is a peculiarly English vision. When strong personalities are crowded together, vying with one another and consorting with one another, they do come to distinguish themselves and the ways they distinguish themselves become fixed social qualities. Obscurity is not an option, and so you must persist in who you are even if it is destroying you. Evelyn and Auberon both died young (early sixties). Nasty, corpulent, never abstemious, they earned their short lives honestly, by drinking and smoking to excess, by raging and arousing rage. Is it good? Is it bad? Alexander Waugh makes it, at least, compellingly interesting.