The Loved One

I first encountered this excellent author decades ago when I read his first novella, Decline and Fall. What struck me then was not just his brilliance, wit and soaring writing skills, but his utter heartlessness towards his creations. No author I have encountered before or since does such utterly beastly things to his characters. In the Loved One, Waugh sends up multiple aspects of American mores and society in a style that somehow manages to be both outrageous and understated. At the same time, he recalls and seemingly repackages, without acknowledging it, the central character from Decline and Fall. In the earlier work, that character is Paul Pennyfeather, the more than callow public school teacher that acts as a tabula rasa for the indignities that life visits on those adrift on the seas of British education, pretension, and social prejudice. In The Loved One, it is as if Paul has been recreated, slightly older and only obliquely wiser, refitted with ultimate cynicism. The renewed character, I think, proves to be less successful in the final reel of the book (could he really be that cynical?), but otherwise it’s a grand, short romp with an author with some of the wittiest, grandest, most irreverent authorial skills of the twentieth century. A true delight.

Fairly boring but I did get an English degree for some reason.

You laugh out loud, really. It's strange that in the Waugh literary scene, this book appears to be an embarrassment. Waugh thought Americans wouldn't find it humorous, and was disappointed when it became so popular and the basis of a film. Waugh is a great writer, and he spares little at lampooning our cult culture of glorification in afterlife while our living lives are vapid and superficial. Dennis, the main character, Waugh admitted, was a self-caricature, who is a conniver and all too willing to live off of other's generosity. The portraits of Mr. Joyboy (embalmer) and Aimee Thanatogenes are unforgettable. Highly recommended.

The Loved One is an odd little story about a love triangle among people who are unusually comfortable handling dead things. Dennis, a poet/pet mortician, is not entirely forthcoming about his occupation with Aimée Thanatogenos lest she, as a beautician of human cadavers, despise him for it. Aimée, for her part, is torn between her attraction to Dennis and her respect for Mr. Joyboy, who is what passes for a stud among morticians. Joyboy courts Aimée by manipulating into smiles the faces of the corpses he works on that are headed for her cubicle. Waugh's macabre novella pokes fun at the ceremonial nonsense with which we shroud death, packaging that manages to render the inevitable obscene. It's amusing, if not a "wickedly funny" satire as promised in the blurbs, and would perhaps be more successfully humorous on film. Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

This was an excellent value and was protectively packaged.

I recall seeing the film adaptation of this book when I was young. I didn’t get it. I get it now. The Loved One is not a great book, but it is an entertaining story of post-war American and British mores. I’ve conducted more than a few funerals in my time. Waugh knew more than he knew he knew, I believe.

Waugh is my favourite author in the world and no one says it better than him. The loved one is an irreverant, cheeky, completely accurate look at the business of commercializing death in Hollywood. From beginning to end this book will entertain you! Watch the 1965 movie if you can find it - the cast is stellar Rod Steiger, Roddy McDowell, Liberace, John Guilgud - the best thing about a Waugh movies is that his writing style is so good that it is inimicable - the movies follow the books word for word!

This was my first reading of Evelyn Waugh. His description of the mortician business in Los Angeles is realistic and funny. His prose is fluid and entertaining. His characters are hilarious, cynical and selfish. The result is a story at the same time representative of the period/place it refers (years before WWII) and pleasant for the reader. The irony of the author and the somewhat hypocrisy and superficiality of the characters combined to a great story.

If the idea of a religious service being performed for a dog sounds funny to you get this book. Waugh is a genius.

I'm not a Waugh fan, but I loved this. Hilarious satire. And pertinent today - the cult of celebrity and of body changing. This book divided my book group, some boycotted the meeting because they hated the book so much, but not me.

Great book

Little, Brown and Company (1999/09) ISBN-10: 0316926086 のレビュー 評価はこの版の装丁と値段に対して。内容に対してではありません。 無駄に余白がおおきく、印刷が傾いていたりかすれています。マスマーケット版につめれば100ページほどで収まる中編なのに、この値段は高い。他社の版も安くはないですが、この版が高価だからといって、しゃれた装丁や表紙を期待しないこと。 以下は、内容と読みやすさについて。 近々、岩波文庫と光文社古典新訳文庫から被って新訳が出るようです。むかしむかし早川書房からブラックユーモア選書というシリーズで出ていました。 最初のアメリカ西海岸で暮らすブリテン人の悲哀をアイロニーと自虐を込めて描いた部分、ちょっととっつき難い。 中盤からのブラックユーモア、悪趣味な描写はむしろ解りやすい。（ただし、詩のパロディーはわたしには解りません。） 1948年発表の作品で、当時としては無茶苦茶な設定・描写であったかもしれませんが、現在の日本では、この作品を参考にしたかと思えるような葬儀産業が花盛りで、インパクトが薄れたかもしれません。 ディズニーランドのパロディみたいなシーンがありますが、この作品が書かれた当時まだディズニーランドは存在しないのですね。

Pünktliche, einwandfreie Lieferung, Ware in sehr gutem Zustand! Der Roman ist eine Satire auf die englische und amerikanische Gesellschaft zur Zeit des 2. Weltkriegs; amüsant zu lesen!