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For another case of a great writer who is an awful human being, check out V.S. Naipaul. A beast to his wife, and not in the least ashamed of it. Here is his wif

For another case of a great writer who is an awful human being, check out V.S. Naipaul. A beast to his wife, and not in the least ashamed of it. Here is his wife: "Last night I spoke of him letting me know the morning, nay the afternoon after our marriage, that he didn’t really want to be married to me. Yes, he said, he wanted to ask my permission to write about that … Would anyone, I asked, enjoy reading about that? I put in my usual plea: fiction & comedy … I am very low. But then perhaps it is my own fault." [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/cruel-and-unusual/307073/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/cruel-a...

nl 10y ago
Here's Hitchens (who wrote the piece you linked) quoting Orwell (yes, that Orwell) on Waugh: In 1895, when Oscar Wilde was jailed, it must have needed very considerable moral courage to defend homosexuality. Today it would need no courage at all: today the equivalent action would be, perhaps, to defend antisemitism. But this example that I have chosen immediately reminds one of something else—namely, that one cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it..... Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions. Then Hitchens himself: I have already mentioned that the gross pedophilia of "Decline and Fall" is so artfully suggested that an adolescent might read it unawares. and But toying with his innocents, and showing how cleverly and suddenly their creator could bring them low, was for Waugh part of a serious mandate. He wanted to bring the Book of Job to life for those who had never read, or who feared, it. (If you haven't read the biblical book of Job then the eviliness of this may miss you) During his wartime service—which, it must be said, was often conspicuous for its gallantry—he almost had to be protected from assassination at the hands of the soldiers under his command. While it is well known that Waugh was a fascist sympathizer Hitchens makes it pretty clear that this persisted throughout WW2: Guy Crouchback [in one of Waugh's books] regards the Yugoslav partisans as mere cyphers for Stalin, sympathizes with the local Fascists, and admires the discipline of the German occupiers. We know from many published memoirs that Waugh himself was eventually removed from this theater of operations for precisely that sort of insubordination. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-permanent-adolescent/302717/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-per...

nl 10y ago

Here's Hitchens (who wrote the piece you linked) quoting Orwell (yes, that Orwell) on Waugh: In 1895, when Oscar Wilde was jailed, it must have needed very considerable moral courage to defend homosexuality. Today it would need no courage at all: today the equivalent action would be, perhaps, to defend antisemitism. But this example that I have chosen immediately reminds one of something else—namely, that one cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it..... Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions. Then Hitchens himself: I have already mentioned that the gross pedophilia of "Decline and Fall" is so artfully suggested that an adolescent might read it unawares. and But toying with his innocents, and showing how cleverly and suddenly their creator could bring them low, was for Waugh part of a serious mandate. He wanted to bring the Book of Job to life for those who had never read, or who feared, it. (If you haven't read the biblical book of Job then the eviliness of this may miss you) During his wartime service—which, it must be said, was often conspicuous for its gallantry—he almost had to be protected from assassination at the hands of the soldiers under his command. While it is well known that Waugh was a fascist sympathizer Hitchens makes it pretty clear that this persisted throughout WW2: Guy Crouchback [in one of Waugh's books] regards the Yugoslav partisans as mere cyphers for Stalin, sympathizes with the local Fascists, and admires the discipline of the German occupiers. We know from many published memoirs that Waugh himself was eventually removed from this theater of operations for precisely that sort of insubordination. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-permanent-adolescent/302717/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-per...