While Beaver is travelling to Hetton Abbey, we arrive there first to meet Tony and his wife Brenda. This is Tony Last at his most confident and Brenda Last at her most docile as they discuss their plans. Beaver probably knows this, but he is ever the social climber. Tony, incidentally, did not intend his invitation to be taken literally it was merely an act of courtesy during a night drinking at the club.
Beaver is relatively poor and quite lazy and selfish, though to an extent the reader might find him charming as he tells his mother he has accepted an invitation to visit Hetton Abbey, the proud inheritance of Tony Last.
In the novel’s first few pages we meet a young Mr. His isolated characters represent a civilization in decline. Leavened with quite a lot more humor, Waugh is taking on the same theme in A Handful of Dust. I think we can all agree, though, that it is centered around a dying civilization, or, perhaps better, a decaying civilization - civilization already being dead. Its imagery, both of the city and of sex, and set pieces of conversation between lonely souls feel so sad, so dry. I devoted a chapter of my masters thesis on that nasty poem I can tell you an awful lot about it and its allusions, though I still don’t understand it all and could not explain it. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you Your shadow at morning striding behind you I will show you something different from either The title comes from one of my favorite poems (and one I’ve hated too), The Waste Land by T.S. I remembered immediately why I fell for Waugh in the first place.
After over a year of neglect, I decided it was time to visit Waugh again and read what some consider his best work, A Handful of Dust. I have several Waugh novels sitting on my shelf due to my sudden infatuation with his writing in late 2008. Just those two books made me start boasting that Waugh was one of my favorite authors.
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