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A Lost Leader? The Course of a Literary Friendship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bernard Bergonzi
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In the opening chapter of David Lodge’s How Far Can You Go?, set in 1952, two Catholic students at London University are comparing the merits of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh:

Michael’s favourite novel at the moment is The Heart of the Matter, and Polly’s, Brideshead Revisited. ‘But Greene’s awfully sordid, don’t you think?’ says Polly.

‘But Waugh’s so snobbish.’

‘Anyway, it said in the Observer that they’re the two best English novelists going, so that’s one in the eye for the Prods.’

In the assertive English Catholic culture of the time the achievements of Catholic novelists, like those of Catholic sportsmen or soldiers, could be flaunted as marks of the superiority of the Faith. Waugh was happy to appear before the world as a Catholic writer, but Greene disliked the term and preferred to regard himself as a writer who happened to be a Catholic.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 81 , Issue 955 , September 2000 , pp. 339 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

Greene, Graham, Ways of Escape, London , The Bodley Head, 1980.Google Scholar
Hazzard, Shirley, Graham Greene on Capri: A Memoir, London , Virago, 2000.Google Scholar
Lodge, David, How Fur Can You Go?, London , Secker and Warburg, 1980.Google Scholar
Stannard, Martin (ed.), Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, London , Routledge, 1984.Google Scholar
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Sykes, Christopher, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, London , Collins, 1975.Google Scholar
Waugh, Evelyn, Diaries 1911–1965, ed. Davie, Michael, London , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976.Google Scholar
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Amory, Mark, London , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.Google Scholar
The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Gallagher, Donat, London , Methuen, 1983.Google Scholar