Yesterday I read Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. It is hysterically funny but then I’m American. If you’re English, then The Loved One must be dry humor, barely worth a guffaw. I’m taking my cues from Waugh, who makes the differences between Americans and Brits quite clear in this 1953 novel, one loud and obvious, the other embalmed but surviving: “You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.” And the novel begins quite far from England. An expat Englishman has fallen into a disreputable profession (pet cemetery worker), another has fallen out of a fine profession (devising backgrounds for starlets), and therein begins the story.
Waugh uses this novel to take wonderfully-pointed shots at America, and supplies plenty of sharp jabs at the English as well. Englishmen taking care of their own so as to preserve face, and Americans pursuing the dream, no matter how inauthentic. American women really take it on the chin from Waugh, described as “standard product” and indistinguishable one from the other: “[a] man could leave such a girl in a delicatessen shop in New York, fly three thousand miles and find her again in the cigar stall at San Francisco, just as he would find his favorite comic strip in the local paper; and she would croon the same words to him in moments of endearment and express the same views and preferences in moments of social discourse. She was convenient…” Brr. But if you think this is cold treatment, just wait till you read what Waugh does to a sweet and innocent American girl. I won’ tell you, you have to read it yourself.
The novel begins with two Englishmen enjoying whiskey and sodas in a hot and remote location, “exiled in the barbarous regions of the world” yet seemingly content. As one explains to the other, “The climate suits me. They are a very decent, generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. It’s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.“ The two men are joined by another who chides them for hiding away: “We limeys have to stick together.“ Against whom? Where are we?
We are in Hollywood, we are in America. And we soon find ourselves in a funeral park by the name of Whispering Glades (“Enter Stranger and Be Happy“, quite the opposite from Dante’s words of welcome), where “final arrangements” means a long list of decisions, such as to be buried in “Poet’s Corner” where one can be buried by statues of prominent poets such as Homer, the most expensive sites of “Lake Isle” on a replicated Lake Isle of Innisfree, “Lovers Nest” by a replicated statue of Rodin’s kiss, “Shadowland” for people from the film industry, and the cheapest spot, “Pilgrim’s Rest” behind the Crematory fuel dump. Other decisions include what to wear, a “casket suit” specially made for one-time wear (not too durable) or a shroud designed to look like a suit but which is open in the back; whether to be viewed in a casket or artfully arranged on a chaise (more suitable for women, with their lovely legs); whether to be fixed with a “joyful smile“, or to look “judicial and determined” or “serene and philosophical“; and, of course, complexion tone (“rural, athletic, scholarly, that is to say, red, brown or white.“).
We are in the Hollywood of Megalopolitan Pictures, with its fiberboard sets and starlets of changing ethnicity (Spanish is out, Irish is in, never mind that it is the same starlet from Brooklyn with a new name, new nose, and new teeth), and its Cricket Club without turf to play on but with a solid membership that does its duty to king and country. The name of the film company is just one of a score of very funny names handed out in this book. There is Mr. Joyboy, no boy at all and not much of a joy either, given that his profession is preparing the dead for burial and he lives with a psychotic mother and a parakeet; there is the woman he loves, Aimee Thanatogenos, the cosmetician for the bodies he prepares, and there is our erstwhile hero, poet and Englishman and pet cemetery worker Dennis Barlow (nothing funny about that, I know, but that is what is funny).
Barlow meets Aimee when making the final arrangements for his friend. He falls for her because she seems unique and not a copy of other American girls; also, because of her “eyes greenish and remote, with a rich glint of lunacy.” He begins to woo her, poet that he is. Unfortunately, he is somewhat bogged down in his writing, so he reverts to quoting great poets of the British Empire (after all, in “the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice”) and Aimee has no clue. Aimee also has no clue that Barlow works for a pet cemetery (where final arrangements are also quite rigorous but not to the standards of Whispering Glades): the only thing she has in common with the Brits of the book – other than appreciation of Robert Burns but she thinks his name is Bruce — is that she doesn’t approve of such a job either. Deadbody artiste Joyboy also falls in love with Aimee and the two men are joined in a battle that will end only when there is one more body in the icebox, awaiting final arrangements.
I must remember to make my final arrangements, for me and my pets, and to read up on my English poets. Wouldn’t want some poseur making claims of poetry to me. And maybe I should dye my hair away from the dirty blonde I was born with; I really do look like every other woman in this town. Waugh has wisdom, as well as wit (say that ten times, fast).
