From 'A Handful of Dust'
Evelyn Waugh’s novel, ‘A Handful of Dust,’ was funny. Very funny. Personally, I laugh at things that aren’t supposed to be funny all of the time. When Pinkie makes his recording for Rose, calling her a bitch and telling her to leave, I actually laughed. I still felt bad for Rose and thought it was terrible of Pinkie, but I laughed—it was kind of funny. It wasn’t supposed to be funny though; that wasn’t the point of Pinkie making that recording. In ‘A Handful of Dust’ however, that is the point. You’re supposed to laugh when something terrible is said. Mainly I think of Brenda’s ‘Thank god!’ exclamation when she finds that her son is dead, as opposed to her boyfriend. It’s okay to laugh at the tragedies and sufferings; that’s the point; and it’s my kind of humor. As I’ve said, I do that whether I’m supposed to or not. In my own recent writings, I have used a lot of humor. And when we have to read our writings aloud to the class I usually get a fair amount of laughs. However, rereading my own writing, I notice that it lacks substance. I think my own writing suffers from an overuse of humor. It’s basically just funny stories that you might tell at a party. I think because I am new to writing for pleasure (not informational essays), I use humor as a preemptive self-defense against any critiques. Whether my writing is good or not, people respond positively to it simply because it made them laugh. That won’t however work forever or when we start writing more than a paragraph or two. After reading ‘A Handful of Dust’ I first hope to also soon read ‘Brideshead Revisited,’ which I have heard is even better than the former. And I hope to use humor in a more subtle way that mixes both humor and substance.
“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”
--Evelyn Waugh, ‘A Handful of Dust’
“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”
--Evelyn Waugh, ‘A Handful of Dust’
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