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Path of Dalliance: a Novel
The Honourable Guy Frazer-Morrison and Jamey Sligger have come up to Godolphin Hall, Oxford from their Roman Catholic school, Cleeve. Rumours concerning their sexuality start when they share a college room. Waugh expertly describes the dons, the students, the relationships, intrigues, snobbery, politics - and Guy and Jamey's desire to get laid and get on in life.
- GenresFiction
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1964
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 16, 2025
This is an abysmal book. It is one of the few which make me deeply regretful of my decision to always read through to the end of any book I start. I started to regret this one after just a few paragraphs. My only hope is that I can save someone else from the terrible waste of time involved in reading it.
There were the lamentably unfunny names Waugh fabricated (Sligger, Alec Scroton-Wise, Rapey Rawley, MacGhastly, and so on). I suspect he saw himself as some neo-Dickens. Then there were the cack-handed attempts at satire. Very, very little of it was remotely humorous and none of it incisive. Even allowing for the fact it was written sixty years ago, the satirical punch would have been embarrassingly weak if created by a fourteen-year-old.
As bad as the weak satire are the weird attempts at slapstick humour such as when Jamey drives over a duck and then plans to give it as a gift to the woman after whom he is lusting; or the ridiculous sex-play between the Price-Williamses. How did publishers’ editors allow this tosh to get through and consume paper-stocks?
I am afraid I could not get rid of the picture of Waugh giggling to himself over the wit of his writing. It seemed odd that he did not want to use his father’s name to promote his writing; yet he called an army unit in this book the same fictional name, Halberdiers, as his father had made up for The Sword of Honour , which felt a little like clinging to his father’s coat-tail.
Supposedly, he gave up novel-writing for journalism because he thought he would be compared unfavourably with his father. To be fair, he would be compared unfavourably with many a ten-year-old. His fiction-writing prowess is comparable to the machine gun repair prowess he showed when, in the forces, he shot himself, front on, trying to correct a fault in a loaded weapon.
There were the lamentably unfunny names Waugh fabricated (Sligger, Alec Scroton-Wise, Rapey Rawley, MacGhastly, and so on). I suspect he saw himself as some neo-Dickens. Then there were the cack-handed attempts at satire. Very, very little of it was remotely humorous and none of it incisive. Even allowing for the fact it was written sixty years ago, the satirical punch would have been embarrassingly weak if created by a fourteen-year-old.
As bad as the weak satire are the weird attempts at slapstick humour such as when Jamey drives over a duck and then plans to give it as a gift to the woman after whom he is lusting; or the ridiculous sex-play between the Price-Williamses. How did publishers’ editors allow this tosh to get through and consume paper-stocks?
I am afraid I could not get rid of the picture of Waugh giggling to himself over the wit of his writing. It seemed odd that he did not want to use his father’s name to promote his writing; yet he called an army unit in this book the same fictional name, Halberdiers, as his father had made up for The Sword of Honour , which felt a little like clinging to his father’s coat-tail.
Supposedly, he gave up novel-writing for journalism because he thought he would be compared unfavourably with his father. To be fair, he would be compared unfavourably with many a ten-year-old. His fiction-writing prowess is comparable to the machine gun repair prowess he showed when, in the forces, he shot himself, front on, trying to correct a fault in a loaded weapon.
March 22, 2021
Oh dear.
April 22, 2012
Heavy going: sub-Wodehouse, sub-Porterhouse Blue, sub-early volumes (and no 10) of A Dance to the Music of Time. It is sepulchrally slow and has an odd relationship between singular group nouns and plural verbs which I find extraordinary from an author who was so picky about 'proper' English. Either that of House Of Stratus have failed him in the editing department. I admit defeat.
December 3, 2014
Worth reading for the nascent style and blackness of his humour.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews