6/10/2023 0 Comments Helena by Evelyn WaughOnce more Beach, with that lucid brain of his, had dispelled the fog of mystery which had threatened to defy solution.” Wodehouse wrote in a strange, baroque manner that is unique in English prose: “The puzzled frown that had begun to gather on Lord Emsworth’s forehead vanished like breath off a razor blade. Wodehouse (a writer he greatly admired), their styles have little in common. Helena is not that kind of book.Īlthough he is frequently mentioned in relation to P.G. In books like Decline and Fall (1928), Black Mischief (1932 ), A Handful of Dust (1934), Scoop ( 1938 ), Put Out More Flags (1942 ) and his World War II novels, he brings to life dozens of funny characters from the British upper and middle classes who have the element needed for comic success in that type of book: they are believable but absurd, and the absurdity contributes to the believability-there is no seam in the garment that Waugh offers us. Among modern writers in English only Ernest Hemingway, with whom he had a good deal in common, and William Faulkner created fictional voices as recognizable. Waugh wrote a half dozen of the funniest books in English, in a clear, forceful style that is as distinct as that of any twentieth-century British writer. Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, appears at first an anomaly in his career. Although Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic, Helena (1950), his novel about St.
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