I had this project called alien minds, which I began in the late seventies, and have continued until now. I picked some people whose thought processes seemed utterly alien to my own, and got everything they wrote (fiction, essays, reviews, diaries if published, correspondence, etc) to see if I could see the world through their eyes.
Evelyn Waugh was one of my picks. While I would never claim I can see through his eyes, I do believe that he was a snob from the gitgo--you can see it in his diary during his teen years, and on. He had one voice for his upper crust friends, and another for the rest of the world. It was desperately important to him to be taken as better born than he was.
Brideshead is (imo) an interesting, complex work. It's admirable in many ways, and revealing in others . . . and it's interesting to note in reviews, private letters, diaries, etc that many of his upper class pals found it embarrassing.
For some really interesting contrasts, read his diary and then his memoir about his school years in A Little Learning. Some of his most beautiful writing in it, but here is a man who utterly reinvented himself, to great cost in more ways than mere money.
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Date: 2014-12-03 09:37 pm (UTC)Evelyn Waugh was one of my picks. While I would never claim I can see through his eyes, I do believe that he was a snob from the gitgo--you can see it in his diary during his teen years, and on. He had one voice for his upper crust friends, and another for the rest of the world. It was desperately important to him to be taken as better born than he was.
Brideshead is (imo) an interesting, complex work. It's admirable in many ways, and revealing in others . . . and it's interesting to note in reviews, private letters, diaries, etc that many of his upper class pals found it embarrassing.
For some really interesting contrasts, read his diary and then his memoir about his school years in A Little Learning. Some of his most beautiful writing in it, but here is a man who utterly reinvented himself, to great cost in more ways than mere money.