WAUGH'S THE LOVED ONE: THE ARTIST IN A PHONY WORLD

The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh's satire of certain traits of American culture, 1s the most cont1nu1ngly popular of his works; yet 1t 1s one of the least admired by critics. Its popularity 1s easy to explain. It remains topical: the satirized traits-funeral practices, the on-stage phoniness and back-stage venality of Hollywood, the cosmetic homogeneousness of American young women, the cottony tastelessness of assembly-line food, and various others-these are as current and absurd today as when Waugh ridiculed them a generation ago. American readers, far from being offended, are delighted by the ridicule; they have already seen the absurdity of those traits of the mass culture (from which culture they regard themselves as being set apart), so that Waugh is their spokesman, not their attacker (those who respect the traits and might resent the ridicule then to be non-readers). Beyond that, The Loved One is a very funny book, and funny 1n a current manner, anticipating by nearly two decades the recent vogue for "black" humor-the comic treatment of painful subjects, particularly death.

The critics' lack of enthusiasm is also easy to explain. A rationale for it might go as follows. The Loved One is not especially perceptive or illuminating, since the objects of its satire are so manifestly absurd that they need only be described to satirize themselves. It is not as if Waugh were showing us the absurdity of things we had previously taken seriously. And the satire is superficial, not penetrating below the surface silliness to any basic philosophical absurdity- as Voltaire, for example, exhibited the absurdity of Leibnitz' philosophical optimism in Candide. Consequently Waugh's satire is not unified by a central theme, as Voltaire's is unified by his main philosophical target; Waugh's objects seem to be simply a loose miscellany of ridiculous customs he happened to encounter around Los Angeles.

Further, it might be charged that Waugh's plot is defective. The main character, Dennis Barlow, the expatriate English poet, is used mainly as an observer of things to be satirized; no important meaning evolves from his experiences, including his love affair with Aimée Thanatogenos, the mortuary cosmetician. That affair, not being in itself an object of satire (as Candide's love for Cunegonde is), seems a digression for narrative interest to please the...