Do you, Gentle Reader, have one of those books or films or whatnot that you have never seen, despite all your friends, acquaintances and even complete strangers telling you how much you would love it? And after a while, obstinacy compels you to continue not seeing it (or reading it, or listening to it, or playing it, or whatever). Well, obstinacy and a reluctance to experience the inevitable letdown, as you will either grudgingly have to admit that yes, you ought to have experienced this years ago as everybody said you ought, or that you don’t really see what all the fuss is about. As well, there’s the reluctance to cross one more thing off the list of Stuff You Should Do Before You Die, and therefore getting that much closer to death (yes, the list accumulates entries much faster than you could cross them off, but that isn’t the point).
Anyway, I still haven’t seen the Masterpiece Theater version of Brideshead Revisited, but I’ve read the bugger at last. It’s ... wonderful. I mean, really good. The frame is marvelous and powerful, as opposed to being stupid and annoying, as such frames usually are. And the beginning of the story, when the boys are at University, is really lovely. I fell in love with Charles, rather; he’s a very sweet lad. Unlike in many novels of this era, including the other Evelyn Waugh book I’ve read, where foolish and unlikable people do unfortunate things that make them all more foolish and more unlikable, the main character here stays rather likable almost throughout the book. He’s an outsider, of course, and mostly he reports on the foolish things other people do, which lets us continue liking him. And as the most foolish thing he does is love some rather unlikable and foolish people, I was inclined to have some sympathy for him, but also for the foolish and unlikable people he loved, if only because he loved them.
The book, for those Gentle Readers who have not been on at me to watch the television series, is about a fellow who falls in love with at least two members of an old Anglo-Catholic family. The book really turns on the issue of marriage, marriage and divorce, and the Catholic rejection of divorce and remarriage. All within a context where marriage is viewed pretty skeptically as an institution. It’s interesting, from this far after, to look at the way marriage is so clearly about to just dry up and blow away, and the way that it didn’t do any such thing. I wondered, reading the book, if among Our Set, that is, educated urbanites, marriage is much stronger than it was then, because there’s much less pressure to be married, and particularly much less pressure to be married young. I was trying to think of friends I know who are divorced, and really, I have very few friends who are divorced. I can easily think of two, one of whom is a trifle older than I am, and one of which is much older than I am. Most of my friends, though, are married or have never been married. Divorce is not a stigma, although it is, in some sense, a mark of failure, like a bankruptcy. Not so much like bankruptcy, even, more like leaving one career to try another, and most of my friends have done that. But if divorce doesn’t carry much stigma, neither does remaining single, or shacking up long-term. Or even having a succession of relationships that last a few years.
My point (if I have one, which I doubt) is that marriage is one option for us, perhaps a very good option, but not the only satisfactory option. And even if it is a very good option, it’s somewhat of a risk; we know that there are divorces, and more than that we know there are bad marriages. Knowing all that, and taking our time with our futures (as we somewhat famously do), perhaps those of us who do go in for matrimony have a better time of it, value it more, enjoy it more, work at it harder, or simply make accommodations to it and with it that make it longer lasting. As an institution, it’s different from the one that Mr. Waugh viewed as nearing the end of its sway, but from this vantage point, it looks good for another generation at least.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.