The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh by Evelyn WaughD. Quentin Miller
Evelyn Waugh. The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh. Little, Brown, 1999. 536 pp. $29.95.
This comprehensive collection of short fiction by the acclaimed British author of Brideshead Revisited demonstrates his virtuosity and his willingness to experiment. The first half of the collection is dominated by stories published in the 1920s and 1930s which testify to the author’s acerbic wit and his gift for characterization through dialogue. Waugh, like Fitzgerald, was better known for his more ambitious novels, but the early stories in this collection, taken together or separately, hold their own. The best of these stories evoke a time, place, and social class that seems almost quaint in comparison to the psychological intensity of much of today’s short fiction. They are wry stories that can make you laugh, more frequently at the characters than with them. The second half of the collection contains longer, later stories, fragments of unfinished novels, juvenilia, and “Oxford stories.” These last two categories try the patience of the casual reader. The dust jacket indicates that this anthology might be a good place to begin reading Waugh’s work, and that may be true of the polished, published stories, but only dedicated fans are interested in excerpts of novels or early writings. It also becomes apparent in the second half of the book that Waugh was more comfortable with longer forms. His voice relaxes notably when he is attempting a novel or even a long short story. The shorter attempts sometimes feel pinched or incomplete, as though they were all fragments or notes for longer works to begin with. It would have been difficult to reach the same conclusion if the collection didn’t insist on including everything. Still, it’s a great collection by a great writer, and the reader who dips into it at random is sure to be rewarded. [D. Quentin Miller]