Waugh is another writer who, I think, is remembered for the wrong book. Most people hear the name Waugh and immediately think of Brideshead Revisited, but in truth, Waugh was never satisfied with this book. In it, his reactionary views are untempered by satire and humor. Waugh was a terrible snob, as well as a racist, quite genuinely convinced of the natural superiority of the upper classes. But despite this, or even because of it, his cruel, despairing comedies are some of the best there is. Waugh ought to be remembered as a brilliant comic novelist, not as Mr. Brideshead Revisited. His Decline and Fall, for instance, is another one of my favorites. Vile Bodies, Scoop, The Loved One, and so forth, are also well-respected comic novels. If you come to Waugh's books prepared to hate him for his political views, as I did, then go ahead and read Decline and Fall. I suspect that by the end of it, you will have become convinced of his genius as a writer of comedy, even if you continue to disagree with his opinions.
And what about Wodehouse? We have to talk about him. After all, the term "comic novelist" isn't even associated with Waugh and Huxley in the minds of many readers. But Wodehouse-he certainly bears that title. To be sure, he's a very clever and funny writer. But, like Austen, the typical interpretation of his work is all wrong. Wodehouse was, it is true, born in England. But he spent much of his life in America. The view of him as the quintessential Englishman is incorrect. I think what his work really represents is the American impression of England-totally wrong now and mostly wrong at the time he was writing. Wodehouse, like Austen, was working in a fantasy realm populated by a make-believe upper class. Americans tend to think he was being courageous-satirizing the powerful coterie of rich snobs in his country of origin. But what he was really doing was evoking a dead and gone world. What's more, readers enjoy him because they like to step into that world, not because they want to see it criticized.
So Wodehouse wouldn't be my favorite, although he's good, to be sure. His satire isn't fierce enough, his universe isn't real enough, to move me particularly. I think satire is best (and, as I've said, the best comic novels are satirical) when it echoes our own world most accurately. We love to see our own lives in the distorted mirror of satire: to say, "My God-that is so true! That is how it is!" That's why another one of my all-time favorite satires is Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Of course, I'm steeping out of the British focus of this essay a bit, but I have to pay tribute to Lewis. Babbitt, although published in 1922, says more about our society today than any other book I've come across. As a satire, it speaks to me more than Wodehouse because I can see so much of our lives today in its pages.
But since this is a look at the British comic novel, I have to move now to Kingsley Amis, and, in particular, to his first novel Lucky Jim: another favorite of mine. Amis was very much immersed in the British comic tradition. He once declared that Fielding was the only old author worth reading. Of modern writers, he was fond of Wodehouse. But Amis doesn't exactly fit into this tradition: his Lucky Jim is a thing apart, and I now think, if it came down to it, it would edge out Crome Yellow for the position of my favorite comic novel. Mostly, Lucky Jim works because of the strength of its main character, Jim Dixon. Most of the humor derives from his reactions and personality, which are always both unapologetic and unforgiving: an interesting combination.
Of course, there have been comic novels and novelists since Amis. But it does alarm me that the comic novel, at least not in the tradition I've been talking about, seems to be dying out. And yet, we are living in a very funny age! The Unite States today is bursting with quack doctors, sham spiritualists, televangelists, Pat Buchanans, and the like. There's an unjust war on. There's sham patriotism galore, a president who lies, cheats, and steals, hypocrisy in every corner, great wealth alongside dire poverty-of course, none of this is funny when we have to live with it. But you have to admit, it's a situation which is crying out to be ridiculed. Satire is more necessary now than ever because it can be the best antidote to corrupt power. No one, as far as I know, has written a great satire about what has been happening to America since 9/11. I think this fact is a dangerous sign that the novel is becoming irrelevant. And once it's irrelevant, it's only a matter of time before it goes the way of, say, fertility symbols, cave paintings, rock sculptures, and other now-defunct art forms.
