Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing Phoney about this 'Waugh'", Feb 23 2004
This is one the great comic novels of the history of the world. I would expect it would not be quite the work to start out with, but for people aware of what Britain was like during the first days of WWII, this is pure pleasure.
The book, like most of Waugh's satires, contains a number of secondary characters who are often quite amusing. In this Waugh is the equal of Dickens (a comparison Waugh might not have appreciated), in his celebration of the English eccentric. From a technical execution the novel is rather interesting in that its main character, its anti-hero, Basil Seal, is somewhat of a character himself. Basil Seal originally appeared in the work "Black Mischief" is a trickster, eternally on the lookout for a way of earning a dishonest living. Basil's life is complicated by the outbreak of war and the insistance by the women in his life to play a hero's part in it (preferably dying while do so, in the case of his mother). Possessed of considerable guile he hotfoots it off to the country where he runs a profitable extortion racket involving three very undesirable war refugee children. These obnoxious brats manage to destroy most of the stately cottages of, if not the upper classes, then the upper middle classes. Another central character in the book is Ambrose Silk. Silk wishes the war would go away and at the same time wonders what his role should be. Eventually he settles on publishing an arts magazine, whose most notable work celebrates his love for a German soldier is twisted into Nazi propaganda by Basil working as a counterespionage agent.
Though filled with topical humor, "Put out More Flags" manages to transcend the time in which it was written. It contains a number of thinly disguised portraits of famous people. If anyone is curious as to the various identities, I would recommend Humphrey Carpenter's excellent work, "The Brideshead Generation." The work is also interesting for fans of Waugh as
well. It is the second to last of his "funny" books. The next books would take on a more serious tone. Waugh's next book would be Brideshead Revisited. With the exception of "The Loved One" Waugh's later works would take on a seriousness which ultimately would set him apart from his contemporaries. I also recently read "The Sword of Honour" Trilogy and it is interesting to compare this work with "Put out More Flags." The themes are similar, but the approach is markedly different. This book shows Waugh as a writer who had already conquered many worlds, but at the same time was preparing to take on new challenges.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Grimness beneath the humor, April 28 2003
Not even the traumas of World War II could put Evelyn Waugh's delightfully satirical pen on hold; the horrors of war expose the grimness beneath his humor and invite a new kind of irreverence. Consider a scene in "Put Out More Flags" (1942) in which a woman's husband has just been killed in combat and the man with whom she's been having an affair wastes no time in proposing marriage. Her lackadaisical response to this most solemn of requests: "Yes, I think so. Neither of us could ever marry anyone else, you know."Like Wodehouse, but with greater subtlety, Waugh finds an underlying silliness in all types of characters and sets them up to be knocked down like ducks in a shooting gallery. In "Put Out More Flags," he dredges up some characters from previous novels and introduces them into comic situations within the context of the incipient European war (1939-1940). Foremost among them is Basil Seal, a thirty-six-year-old who is as unemployable as a six-year-old. His mother tries to help him get a prestigious position in the Army, but he blows it when he unintentionally and unknowingly insults the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Bombardiers. Fortunately, he is able to get a job with the War Department where he discovers that the secret to success is to level charges of Communism and Nazism against his (mostly) innocent friends and inform on them. Basil's friends and family also make the most of war time. Ambrose Silk, a Jewish atheist, takes advantage of his job at the Religious Department of the Ministry of Information to start a fustian periodical. Alastair Trumpington, a pampered aristocrat, dutifully enlists as a soldier because he believes that "he would make as good a target as anyone else for the King's enemies to shoot at," while his wife Sonia waits for him in the car outside the training camp like a mother picking up her kid at school. Meanwhile, Basil's sister Barbara is allowing the use of their country estate as a shelter for poor people evacuating London for fear of German bombing raids; among them are a trio of insufferable brats named the Connollys who provide Basil with the fodder for an irresistible extortion scheme. Waugh's great insight was the immediate recognition of the potential humor of the war's impact on the British class conflict, and therein lies his brilliance. His books are funny, but more importantly, they're every bit as intelligent, perceptive, and well-written as any "serious" novel, whose level of social consciousness they rival. The twentieth century needed an Evelyn Waugh, and we certainly could use one now.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Waugh, Dec 23 2002
It's vintage Waugh, standing halway between the farcical funny ones and the serious ones. He's unique in being a satirist of the idiocy of war who can also deal with patriotism and courage.
This is set in that strange time when Britain had just gone to war but France had not fallen. You meet some characters from his other books. This added to the pleasure for me but I don't know if it's the one I would recommend to someone who'd never read any Waugh before. It also helps if you know something about the 1930's British literary scene and can recognize who is being satirized. Parsnip and Pimpernell are presumably Auden and Spender. I've heard of various candidates fir being Ambose Silk.
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