Decline and fall

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Evelyn Waugh: Decline and fall (1977)

English language

Published May 29, 1977

ISBN:
978-0-316-92607-2
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Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s. The novel's title is a contraction of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The title alludes also to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1922), which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures …

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a re-read

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A re-read, based on the LRB piece. What stuck out this time is the gratuitous racism – it's meant to be funny (even being set up as the punchline of a chapter), though it almost feels incidental, as if it could be snipped away entirely without changing the book. (It's odd this doesn't show up in the book's Wikipedia page right now.) But it can't really be snipped away – it's clearly part of the worldview espoused by the book.