[Marxism] Reactionary authors

[Philip Ferguson <philip.ferguson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim F wrote:
>Sometimes reactionaries like Balzac, or to take a more recent author,
Evelyn Waugh, have deeper insights into their societies than authors who
are more politically progressive, perhaps because their reactionary
ideology helps to give them the distance necessary to assess the world
around them in a clear-eyed, realistic manner.


I agree with the general point you are making, like Louis saying that
art has to stand as art not by some pc standard.

However, I don't see Evelyn Waugh as a great novelist.  'Brideshead
Revisited' is just a pathetic soap opera about a sorry-assed
self-obsessed bunch of privileged people who seem to have no redeeming
features at all, but whom the repulsive Waugh portrays as being worth
our interest and even sympathy.

Yeh, the poor upper-class English Catholics.  My heart goes out to them!

There are reactionaries who write great novels, but Waugh ain't one of
them in my view.  'Brideshead' is just too wallowing in nostalgia and
too soap operaish to even be considered serious literature in my view.

Phil






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