Vile Bodies

“If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from the outside.”

When the censorious border agents confiscate Adam’s manuscript, Waugh underscores the class conflict that emerges in the interaction. The middle-class agent can’t tell his Dante from his Aristotle, much less judge Adam’s work on its literary merits, but the state has granted him authority to destroy it nonetheless. The interaction signals the social priorities Adam will encounter in London, where old forms of media and old forms of elitism no longer carry weight.

“I should never have mentioned it, but whenever I see Agatha Runcible I can’t help thinking… girls seem to know so much nowadays. We had to learn everything for ourselves, didn’t we, Fanny, and it took so long.”

The 1920s were a critical time in freeing gender and sexuality from tradition. In the conservative landscape of Waugh’s novel, however, such liberation only leads to confusion and unhappiness.

“‘Every Molassine dog cake wags a tail,’ Mr. Outrage read, and the train repeated over and over again, ‘Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gent Right Honorable gent…’” 

In this passage, the disgraced Prime Minister observes a repeated advertisement for dog biscuits from the window of a moving train. The memorable imagery of modern life bridges the chasm between high and low culture, making the world surreal, difficult to navigate, and more like the frame-by-frame effects of cinema than like a novel.