Customer Reviews

Scott-King's Modern Europe

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Scott-King is a British professor of the Classics, who takes an opportunity to travel, all expenses paid, from his dreary, post-World-War-II, food-rationed land to sunny Neutralia (Spain, I believe, thinly disguised) for - lo and behold - a conference, sponsored by the government of Neutralia, on an immensely obscure bygone poet, a poet who simply happens to be Scott-King's academic specialty.

After Scott-King's arrival in Neutralia, his situation (through no fault of his own) unravels into absurdity. Practically everything connected with the conference is sham, corruption, squalid intrigue, and (where interactions with any bureaucracy come into play) officious indifference bordering on insanity. Indeed, near the denouement, he faces a threat not far from fatal. He does manage to make it back to Britain, physically intact and in time for the next semester.

And yet Evelyn Waugh has no hatred or disrespect for his main character. The book closes in a genuinely noble way, as Scott-King - a quiet, mature man, who had already endured the delights of a British existence in the first half of the 20th Century (yes, that assuredly was sarcasm) - returns to his familiar surroundings, and, as someone who already took life with a grain of salt, regards himself as even more affirmed in his small niche, and in his reverence for the enduring value of the Classics.

Waugh's words themselves, his turns of expression, are so utterly enjoyable in this work! I will close this review with a quote (from memory but, I believe, very close) of one passage that will show why I love this little book:

"This is the story of a summer holiday - a light tale. It deals, at worst, with solid discomfort, and intellectual doubt. It would be inappropriate here to treat with those depths of the human spirit - the agony, and despair - that marked the next few days of Scott-King's life. To even the Comic muse - the gadabout, the adventurous one of those Heavenly Sisters, to whom so little that is human comes amiss, who can mix in almost any company and find a welcome at almost every door - even to her there are forbidden places."

evelyn waugh has written great novels:black mischief(the second greatest novel of his after scot-king),men at war,his first:decline and fall,and scoop as well as brideshead... this is his best work and with john d. macdonald's pale gray for guilt are two of the most fantastic fictional treasures we have in english!