An Odd Couple: Galbraith & Waugh
CHRIST AND NEIGHBOR
Lately I’ve been communing with two men I greatly admire: John Kenneth Galbraith and Evelyn Waugh. Somebody gave my wife a copy of Galbraith’s Annals of an Abiding Liberal (1979) and I discovered that Galbraith had a somewhat reluctant but fervent admiration for the writings of Evelyn Waugh in general and his Diaries (1976) in particular.
Although Waugh’s opinions on almost every subject, including religion, appalled him, Galbraith could not stop himself from loving Waugh’s style. He writes:
Social purpose…is not Waugh’s claim to accomplishment — the thought alone is slightly bizarre. His claim, even when telling of aristocratic nonentities, drugs or drunkenness, is in the way he tells it. Many have said it before: there was not in our time, perhaps in our century, such a master of the craft.
This is high praise, coming as it does from perhaps the most stylish economist of our century. True, Galbraith seems to be most delighted by Waugh’s gift for abuse. Waugh was indeed a masterful character assassin. I remember meeting him at a party in New York and having a pleasant conversation during which I said, “From reading your books I expected you to be cold and caustic and I’m glad to find you are not.” He said, “Don’t be deceived. These are my party manners. I am beastly cold and caustic.”
You May Also Enjoy
We step outside the world by way of something that stands apart from it. The Church ought to be that timeless and lucid entity by which we can see.
John Senior was a noble man who stood against the spirit of the age to remind the world of a better time, and he left those he touched better for his presence.
Clare Boothe Luce wrote that most converts, like herself, "enter God's kingdom through the gates of pain."