A Handful of Dust

The consensus seems to be that Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's best novel, but I simply cannot figure that one out. Waugh was at his best as a satirist--and the more acidic and pervasive his cynicism, the sharper and more humorous his satire was. He never wrote satire more finely pointed and more wickedly barbed than he did in A Handful of Dust.

This novel also bears with it a cultural relevance that surpasses that of Waugh's other novels. Given its affinities with (and numerous allusions to) T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, A Handful of Dust is the most modern of Waugh's novels. In fact, the title is taken from the first section of The Waste Land, and bears with it echoes of Biblical significance: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The yearning for genuine spiritual meaning--and the profound absence of it in modern culture--is the grounding idea of both works. We see this spiritual lack in all aspects of the British society depicted in A Handful of Dust, but to most direct (and most humorous) effect in the portrait of the vicar of Hetton, who has been recycling sermons since his days as a garrison chaplain in India. With his dated references to Queen Victoria and the golden age of British imperialism, his Christmas-time references to the unceasing heat, and his frequent mention of camels and tigers, his sermons are utterly irrelevant to his parishioners--and yet he "had a noble and sonorous voice and was reckoned the best preacher for many miles around." At one point, Tony Last, the novel's aptly-named protagonist, thinks of renovating the bathrooms in his Gothic mansion during the vicar's sermon.

And yet Tony (with the exception of his smart-alecky but endearing young son) is just about the most sympathetic thing going in this novel. He is hapless and bumbling, but at least he quests for something. It may be a fool's errand he sends himself on, but he at least realizes that something is missing, even if he cannot himself restore it to the world he lives in. At many points, the novel verges on mean-spirited; Waugh does some awful things to his characters. But this mean-spiritedness may simply be an essential element of satire, which to some extent requires grotesquerie and violence in order to make its point. Satire that does not sting is merely humor, like a late-night talk-show host who makes fun of whoever is in office because it is part of the job description. In the most famous satire of all time, Swift told us to eat babies. Waugh does not go quite that far, but there is some untowardly violence here. He makes his point.