Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and it sits in the 725th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, albeit the algorithm there keeps changing the order, I have started reading a volume from the first 1k and by the time I finished, it dropped abysmally – more than five thousand books from these lists and films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made are reviewed on my blogs https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and it sits in the 725^th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, albeit the algorithm there keeps changing the order, I have started reading a volume from the first 1k and by the time I finished, it dropped abysmally – more than five thousand books from these lists and films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made are reviewed on my blogs https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite authors, he has no fewer than eight books on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/decline-and-fall-by-evelyn-waugh.html and Decline and Fall is one of them

 

“Waugh - very silly fellow he was. One first class cunt could have written the 'funny' parts of S of Honor and the whole of Behead. More and more I think of him as a chap who wrote one marvelous book (D&F) then WENT OFF having joined the Catholic Ch. Woman I met who knew him a bit said it wasn't so much his rudeness that stuck in your craw as his buttering up dukes and marquises, praising their marvelous houses and beautiful gardens, lovely daughters & c. He did that to her when she was married to one, then stopped it when she stopped being…” this is what another luminary, Kingsley Amis, wrote about Waugh…

 

Paul Pennyfeather is the hero of this narrative, not a super-hero nevertheless, he is a victim at the start, and I was thinking (this is the second time I read this, and then I think I have heard a play adaptation – if he wins in the end

I will not write here, I am just musing over this, it reminds me of the Zen Master story https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-look-at-charlie-wilsons-war.html told at the end of Charlie Wilson’s War

 

Things keep changing, one bad event is followed by good news, and The Zen Master keeps his equanimity throughout, the point being that we do not know, some apparent miracle is followed by a fall, Decline and Fall if you will!

Ergo, ataraxia is needed – Paul is expelled from Oxford, and indecent behavior is associated with him, for running without trousers on the premises, only it is not his fault, some drunks have targeted and exposed him

 

Because he is not a man of means, indeed, even what income he could access is denied by his relative, he has to find work and he ends up in Wales – when Evelyn Waugh was writing this marvelous magnum opera, he was there

The upper classes that Waugh liked so much were often atrocious, another incident that took place at Oxford involved a poor fox, brought in a cage by that disgusting Bollinger Club, and killed with champagne bottles

 

When the Honorable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, visits the school where he teaches and her son learns, Paul is attracted to her, ‘he is delighted to be hired by her as tutor to her son’, but what appears to be ‘the beginning of a beautiful friendship’, to quote the immortal Casablanca, Rick talking to the French man, at the end, does not confirm

They are to be married, but the woman sends her would be husband to fix some problems in France, and upon return, he is arrested, charged and then sentenced to seven years in jail for human trafficking, something that the would-be spouse would be responsible for… “Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY"…this is what brilliant Evelyn Waugh wrote about this phenomenal, outstanding novel

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’