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BRIDESHEAD REVISITED THE SACRED AND PROFANE MEMORIES OF CAPTAIN CHARLES RYDER

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BRIDESHEAD REVISITED THE SACRED AND PROFANE MEMORIES OF CAPTAIN CHARLES RYDER
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

Brideshead Revisited (25th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

ASIN: B0000EF1LO

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder : A Novel

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Great Depiction of the Very Wealthy [74][80][T]
"Of course, there were also the corpses, dahling..."
A Book That Should Be Returned To Again and Again
Brideshead - Revisitations of an Adult Convert
Profound Passion.

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder : A Novel
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: G K Hall & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Literature & Fiction | Large Print | Formats | Books
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One of Waugh's most famous books, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the difficult loves of insular Englishman Charles Ryder, and his peculiarly intense relationship with the wealthy but dysfunctional family that inhabited Brideshead. Taking place in the years after World War II, Brideshead Revisited shows us a part of upper-class English culture that has been disappearing steadily.

Customer Reviews:

Great Depiction of the Very Wealthy [74][80][T].......2007-03-24

Charles Ryder is the protagonist who we follow from his first days of Oxford through his marriage, divorce and potential engagement. Intertwined with each adventure is the family that owns Brideshead. He is best friends with a son of the owner, a debater of religion with another, and very fond of a daughter.

Ultimately becoming a famous artist of architectural designs which are victims to age or developers' ruin, he becomes famous for his architectural portraits of grand manors and other buildings which are destined for doom. He "preserves" their images with portraits which become plates in books sold to the public.

Like Ryder's paintings, Waugh's writing preserves much of upper class British society. His detailed dialogue infused with their jargon and repertoire is very different from 21st century America, and that is what is so very indelible about this book. Each person speaks as one could only imagine people "like that" did in "those times."

This book has many similarities to "Handful of Dust" - another Waugh classic - as each imports similar characters: a owner of a mansion, an untrue spouse, a British politician who hob nobs with the rich, a playboy, and the others who like fox hunting. But, this novel is more mature, more deep-rooted, more . . . everything.

Unquestionably, a great novel. This book may be the best of the people of Britain in that social scale during the 1920's-40's.

"Of course, there were also the corpses, dahling...".......2007-02-20

Rather a lot of people died rather horribly in the two World Wars. But to read Waugh's novel, you'd think that the greatest single tragedy these conflicts brought about was that his posh friends were deprived of their expensive houses.

Advice for aspiring novelists: if you're A) a genuinely gifted prose stylist, and B) an utterly repulsive specimen of humanity, it's best to steer away from writing thinly veiled autobiography.

Also, if you decide to ignore the above advice, don't try to exculpate yourself by twittering on about how you've Found Jesus.

A Book That Should Be Returned To Again and Again.......2006-09-29

There is little new to say of this book other than to mention what an excellent light it sheds on Waugh's other, very different books. Although dismissed by Waugh as the product of Spam and blackouts (wartime privations), Brideshead endures because of its superb structure, characterizations and ultimately heart. It is this last feature which gives evidence of the human depths that inform all of Waugh's novels even those whose satire keeps these depths at a clinical distance.

Brideshead - Revisitations of an Adult Convert .......2006-09-25

Evelyn Waugh's book "Brideshead Revisited" gives you that feeling of autumnal-university-literature-class heaviness that you crave from time to time. Like that piece of chocolate cake that you shyed away from the other day, it's something that is too dense and too heavy for you to eat hurriedly but something that you want to sit and take time with.

There are all of the usual literary forms in this book which employs memories of Post-WWI modernist progressivism framed by the mires of WWII meaninglessness. But Waugh isn't doing this simply for the want of honor and tradition that seem to have been lost to progress and get-'er-done type flunkies, he's (and yes, he is a "HE") doing it for your soul.

Evelyn Waugh was an adult convert to Roman Catholicism, and you can trace both his faith as well the memories of his wrestling against faith in this book. The book uses the protagonist of Charles Ryder to explore the lives and existential nature of the family that resides in the Brideshead mansion. It is a look into human nature as it wrestles with all sorts of things, and especially as it wrestles with faith.

The book is one of the many that are lumped into the "hound of heaven" category. Over and over in the book, we see that no matter how far astray or how morally and ethically objectionable people are - God's grace seeks after them and brings them back with a twitch upon the thread that connects them to God.

Although the book isn't overtly Christian, the Christian reader can certainly enjoy a deeper level of significance. The non-Christian can also enjoy the book, especially the look into the Christian life that shows that even Christians aren't ever perfect, nor do they need to be - they know a hound of heaven who is.

Profound Passion........2006-09-04

Told mostly in a long continuous flashback by Captain Charles Ryder during WWII, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a novel about sin and grace and the fall of the English aristocracy. The novel is divided into two parts. The first section deals with Ryder and his friendship with Sebastian Flyte. At the beginning of the novel, Capt. Ryder and his troops arrive at Brideshead, an English manor and estate that Ryder stayed in throughout his college days and youth after WWI. Brideshead was Sebastian's former home. This part of the novel deals with Charles relationship with Sebastian and how Sebastian's family came to "adopt" Charles into their strange little world.

The second section of the novel begins years later and deals with the romantic relationship between Charles and Sebastian's sister, Julia. At this point, Charles is a semi-famous artist who is married with children. During a chance encounter aboard a ship returning to England, Charles and Julia meet again. Married to people that neither loves, they soon begin an affair and contemplate divorcing their spouses and starting a new life. What follows is an emotional and spiritual struggle as Charles and Julia wrestle to find temperance between their love for each other and Truth.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is the first Evelyn Waugh story that I have ever read. I have been told that it is one of his best, if not his finest work. The novel is full of wit, local colour, and passion. It contains beautiful descriptive passages that at times I read several times over just because it was written so well.

Nevertheless, Waugh has a very unique style. At times the reading is demanding at other times it was frustrating because I could sense condescension emitting from the pages. At times this tone caught me off guard and caused me to distance myself from the piece. There are many readers who just can't read a novel like this very well or if they can, they won't enjoy. Even though I wouldn't say it's one of the best books I've ever read, I did, however, enjoy the book. It is a novel filled with tragedies and triumphs. It is a novel about life, love, and loss. It is a novel about sin and grace and ultimately understanding and redemption. "No one is ever holy without suffering."

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Brideshead revisited;: The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder, a novel
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little, Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006D8JDQ

Average customer rating:

The dissonance between "divine grace" and authorial intentions
Preserving the Past's Dialogue [74][80][T]
Superb reading by Jeremy Irons
"We possess nothing certainly except the past. "
Good, but not flawless

Brideshead revisited: The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder : a novel
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little, Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Brideshead Revisited (25th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

ASIN: 0316926272

Amazon.com

A departure from Evelyn Waugh's normally comic theater, Brideshead Revisited concerns the tale of Charles Ryder, a captain in the British Army in post-World War I England. Unlike Waugh's previous narrators, Ryder is an intelligent man, looking back on much of his life from his current post in Oxford. He strikes a special friendship with Lord Sebastian Flyte as the setting moves to the Brideshead estate and a baroque castle that recalls England's prior standing in the world. Ryder falls for Flyte's sister while families, politics and religions collide. What makes the book extraordinary is Waugh's sharp, vivid style and his use of dialect and minor characters. This is one of Waugh's finest accomplishments and a superb book.

Book Description

A classic of our time, beautifully performed by Jeremy Irons and the basis of the award-winning television mini-series, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the Marckmain family, as narrated by friend Charles Ryder. Aristocratic, beautiful, and charming, the Marchmains are indeed a symbol of England and her decline; the novel a mirror of the upper-class of the 1920s and the abdication of responsibility in the 1930s. Brideshead Revisited has become shorthand for a fantasy era of titled elegance, dead-end hedonism and fatuous wit.

Customer Reviews:

The dissonance between "divine grace" and authorial intentions.......2007-06-08

The first two-thirds of "Brideshead Revisited" is classic Evelyn Waugh, filled with wit and humor, fascinating characters and provocative scenes, and (above all) evocative description and meticulous prose. Waugh continues his tradition of skewering the pretensions and foibles of the aristocracy--although it's true the Oxford scenes are not as over-the-top as in "Decline and Fall" (Frank Kermode's introduction notes Waugh's acknowledgment of the 'mood of sentimental delusion' which pervades the work).

I have the same reservations, however, about the third part of the book as did many of Waugh's contemporaries, including Edmund Wilson and Conor Cruise O'Brien. While the prose never falters and the "plot" is fascinating to the end, the satire is set aside for a moral, and your appreciation of the book may very well depend on whether you agree with its underlying religious message. To be sure, I really admire this book and continue to recommend it to everyone, but a second reading showcased what for me are shortcomings--flaws that make the work seem slightly less aesthetically pleasing than Waugh's earlier comic novels (particularly "Decline and Fall" and "Handful of Dust").

Like, say, Flannery O'Connor or Graham Greene, who present their theology in the complexities of the characters' actions and motives, Waugh famously declared that he intended to show the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters." Yet, where O'Connor and Greene use their stories to illustrate the subtleties of grace, Waugh seems to be making a case for it--but there are many passages that more convincingly show the operation of authorial, rather than divine, grace. And when he details conversations and debates on secular values and Catholic faith, Waugh can be a little heavy-handed--bordering on didactic. Throughout the dialogue the deck is loaded to demonstrate, for example, that Charles's milquetoast agnosticism pales in comparison to the richness of Catholicism.

In fact, the problem with fiction as a vehicle for theological principles is that it can never truly show anything like "divine grace"; it's necessarily the author who determines what happens to the characters--and why it happens. While Lady Marchmain declares halfway through the book that "we must make a Catholic of Charles," and while Julia's near-apostasy and Sebastian's alcoholism interfere with their spiritual salvation, it is ultimately Waugh--not God--who decides their various outcomes. (This dilemma is clearest during a deathbed conversion scene, which tell us everything about the author's hopes and "proves" nothing about faith. And this episode is based on a real-life occurrence in which, aside from the presence of God, Waugh himself played a coercive role.)

This is not to say, however, that Waugh portrays his Catholic characters as saints or their actions as exemplary. Indeed, what saves the novel from becoming a catechism is that Charles, Julia, and Sebastian all are deeply flawed, at times disagreeable people. And, not ironically, the character who (in my mind) is the most lively and lifelike of the bunch is the irrepressible and unapologetic Anthony Blanche. In fact, one might even argue that Blanche's scene-stealing charm is "secular grace" working its inexorable way on Waugh himself.

My comments here focus on only one theme--albeit a central one--in the novel. Most of the book, fortunately, is a comic excursion through a lost age and an elegiac ode to lost youth, as well as a thesis on divine grace. In the final analysis, it's impossible to ignore the beauty of the writing or underestimate the ability of this novel to make one ponder one's own secular or religious beliefs.

Preserving the Past's Dialogue [74][80][T].......2007-03-25

Written in Boswellian memory (where tangible objects elicit greatly detailed memories of one's life)this book has a middle-aged soldier stomp upon a castle named Brideshead from which many memories are emerge.

Charles Ryder is the protagonist who we follow from his first days of Oxford through his marriage, divorce and potential engagement. Intertwined with each adventure is the family that owns Brideshead. He is best friends with a son of the owner, a debater of religion with another, and very fond of a daughter.

Ultimately becoming a famous artist of architectural designs which are victims to age or developers' ruin, he becomes famous for his architectural portraits of grand manors and other buildings which are destined for doom. He "preserves" their images with portraits which become plates in books sold to the public.

Like Ryder's paintings, Waugh's writing preserves much of upper class British society. His detailed dialogue infused with their jargon and repertoire is very different from 21st century America, and that is what is so very indelible about this book. Each person speaks as one could only imagine people "like that" did in "those times."

This book has many similarities to "Handful of Dust" - another Waugh classic - as each imports similar characters: a owner of a mansion, an untrue spouse, a British politician who hob nobs with the rich, a playboy, and the others who like fox hunting. But, this novel is more mature, more deep-rooted, more . . . everything.

Unquestionably, a great novel. This book may be the best of the people of Britain in that social scale during the 1920's-40's.

Superb reading by Jeremy Irons.......2007-01-15

Jeremy Irons does an excellent reading of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel. He very poignantly captures much of the depth and emotion of each of the characters. I highly recommend this audio version.

"We possess nothing certainly except the past. ".......2007-01-15

Published in 1945, this novel, which Waugh himself sometimes referred to as his "magnum opus," was originally entitled "Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder." The subtitle is important, as it casts light on the themes--the sacred grace and love from God, especially as interpreted by the Catholic church, vs. the secular or profane love as seen in sex and romantic relationships. The tension between these two views of love--and the concept of "sin"--underlie all the action which takes place during the twenty years of the novel and its flashbacks.

When the novel opens at the end of World War II, Capt. Charles Ryder and his troops, looking for a billet, have just arrived at Brideshead, the now-dilapidated family castle belonging to Lord Marchmain, a place where Charles Ryder stayed for an extended period just after World War I, the home of his best friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The story of his relationship with Sebastian, a man who has rejected the Catholicism imposed on him by his devout mother, occupies the first part of the book. Sebastian, an odd person who carries his teddy bear Aloysius everywhere he goes, tries to escape his upbringing and religious obligations through alcohol. Charles feels responsible for Sebastian's welfare, and though there is no mention of any homosexual relationship, Charles does say that it is this relationship which first teaches him about the depths of love.

The second part begins when Charles separates from the Flytes and his own family and goes to Paris to study painting. An architectural painter, Charles marries and has a family over the next years. A chance meeting on shipboard with Julia, Sebastian's married sister, brings him back into the circle of the Flyte family with all their religious challenges. Three of the four Flyte children have tried to escape their religious backgrounds, and this part of the novel traces the extent to which they have or have not succeeded in finding peace in the secular world. "No one is ever holy without suffering," he believes.

Dealing with religious and secular love, Heaven and Hell, the concepts of sin and judgment, and the guilt and punishments one imposes on oneself, the novel also illustrates the changes in British society after World War II. The role of the aristocracy is less important, the middle class is rising, and in the aftermath of war, all are searching for values. A full novel with characters who actively search for philosophical or religious meaning while they also search for romantic love, Brideshead Revisited is complex and thoughtfully constructed, an intellectual novel filled with personal and family tragedies--and, some would say, their triumphs. Mary Whipple

Good, but not flawless.......2006-02-03

I happen to love English literature (serious and not-so) from the early part of the twentieth century. This book is both wonderful and horrible--it won't be for everyone, but those in sympathy with the period will not feel they have wasted their time reading it.

There is no question the first part of the book--the Oxford days--is its strongest, most cohesive part. The later sections lose that early, sharp focus.

The prose is truly a thing of beauty--as smooth and silky as foie gras or Belgian chocolate. It makes one long for the days when it wasn't necessary to explain that true martinis are made with gin. But as I turned over the last pages, I realized I despised almost every character in the book--especially those with whom I am sure I was supposed to feel sympathy. I found the narrator to be little more than a crashing snob, although that isn't always a hindrance toward my love for a character. Indeed, the only character I really liked was Anthony Blanche--who was disliked by most of the others, but who was the most insightful and least delusional. Some of the even-more-minor characters are unobjectionable, but that, after all, is damning with faint
praise. In spite of that, I am glad I read it and shall probably re-read it every few years.

A must-read for any true Anglophile, but not without its flaws.

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BRIDESHEAD REVISITED THE SACRED AND PROFANE MEMORIES OF CAPTAIN CHARLES RYDER
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H3DJTE

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Brideshead Revisited - The Sacred And Profane Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K09V50

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Brideshead revisited;: The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder,
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

Brideshead revisited: The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Hearst Magazines
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Average customer rating:

Brideshead revisited: The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Readers Union with Chapman and Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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