Will This Do?: An Autobiography

An outrageous and witty autobiography by the son of novelist Evelyn Waugh describes his difficult relationship with his father, education, non-stellar military service, and careers as a novelist, journalist, and columnist for the notorious Private Eye, during which he developed his reputation as a practioner of "the vituperative arts."

What makes Will This Do? so delightful is its tone--self-deprecating, continuously ironic, always intent on the amusing anecdote or unspeakable truth. Sentences possess a taut, couplet-like snap, while paragraphs begin slyly, then grow funnier and funnier. The author, naturally, never cracks a smile.

One senses Waugh doesn't really want his readers to answer the question in his title, because for many it won't do! Those without knowledge of or interest in English literary publications and feuds therein will wonder at so many tempests in such tiny teacups, and those put off by English upper-class pretensions will get an overdose. This eldest son of the curmudgeonly novelist Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), who died in 1966, tries to have it both ways: he seems to want the spotlight as a famous man's son, but he also wants his own talent and mordant wit to be judged solely on merit. He tells a rather sad tale. It seems Evelyn Waugh didn't much care for his children, asserting in his diaries that they wouldn't be his first concern in a house fire. His son also claims that his father felt entitled "to advertise an acute and unqualified dislike of [his six children]." This particular Waugh has wandered around the world and written five novels, many book reviews and hundreds of acerbic, often witty columns for periodicals like the Spectator, Private Eye and the New Statesman. This possibly first installment of his autobiography was published in 1991 in the U.K. While offering juicy gossip for aficionados, it seems unlikely that U.S. readers in general will find the book sufficiently interesting. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Auberon Waugh, to his great credit, has infused some much needed verve into this somnolent genre.... an exuberant chronicle of English literary life and a very funny sendup of the form.

A minor, triflingly amusing memoir by the British journalist best known for being Evelyn Waugh's son. Though Waugh (The Last Word, 1980, etc.) has carved out a respectable niche as the editor of Londons Literary Review, has contributed to a number of other English publications, has even cranked out the occasional small book, he has not led the kind of life that usually justifies a memoir. He failed out of Oxford, accidentally shot himself in the army, then embarked on a literary/journalistic life, just this side of hackdom, with middling success. His account is all too typical of the gently retributive, dryly amusing, name-dropping memoir cranked out on the other side of the Atlantic, but it doesnt travel well. Unless youre a rabid anglophile, the passing squawks and the squabbles of the British literary world look, at several thousand miles removed, a lot like microbes fighting. And why do British memoirists insist on going on and on about their school days, as if the first 18 years were the only ones that mattered? Fans of Waugh pre, will find some worthwhile nuggets here. A letter to Nancy Mitford typifies his peevish, snitty attitude toward his children: ``My two eldest children are here and a great bore . . . the boy [Auberon] lives for pleasure and is thought a great wit by his contemporaries. I have tried him drunk & I have tried him sober.'' Waugh fils, fortunately, is made of sterner stuff, laving his childhood, indeed his life, with an appealing, gimlet-eyed acerbity. He has inherited much of his fathers gift for invective, and his account of the numerous libel actions hes been involved with (Englands libel laws notoriously favor the plaintiff) are some of the better non-Evelyn parts of this book. Will this do? Perhaps not quite. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In the "Apologia" to this interminable, name-dropping memoir, Auberon Waugh (b. 1939), editor of London's Literary Review, columnist for the Daily Telegraph, author, and son of writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) ponders his motives for writing his autobiography. Except during rare moments of limited insight into his curmudgeonly father, the reader remains just as perplexed. In spite of Auberon's somewhat disingenuous self-effacement, his desire for his father's approval, not forthcoming during the elder's lifetime, is apparent. The best portions of the book, which involve descriptions of Auberon's early career as a journalist and novelist, unfortunately, do not comprise the bulk of the memoir. Though smartly written and dryly humorous, this insider's look at British upper-class life, replete with nicknames like Toady, Slimy, and Pips, tales of Oxford, and near-deadly pranks in the army could only appeal to the most ardent Anglophile.?Diane Gardner Premo, Rochester P.L., NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.