In his latest book, The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh in Love and War , David Lebedoff argues that George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh held surprisingly similar—identical, even—worldviews. The bold claim that a strident atheist and a devout Catholic are, when boiled down, really the “same man” makes for an interesting book. Thanks to our very own Nathaniel Peters, however, we also know that it makes for an even more interesting book to review:
Up to this point, The Same Man serves as a witty and brisk biography of the two men. But Lebedoff’s analysis lacks depth. The last chapter is nothing more than a lightly fleshed-out list of comparisons between the two. The greatest enemy they saw was, as Waugh put it, “the Modern Age in arms.” They hated totalitarianism with a passion but saw that even if totalitarianism was defeated, civilization as they knew it would remain in danger. Lebedoff writes: “What both believed—their core, who they were—was that individual freedom mattered more than anything else on earth and reliance on tradition was the best way to maintain it.” (Here the lack of nuance in Lebedoff’s analysis is glaringly apparent.) But reliance on tradition was in decline. Also in decline was a belief in objective reality and objective truth, which Orwell so deeply probed in 1984. Lebedoff also writes of their trust in the common sense of the common man against the condescension of an upper-middle class. The catalogue of ideological similarities ends in an all-encompassing synthesis: “It was in the freedom and courage to choose one’s own life that Orwell and Waugh were most nearly the same. That their lives were deliberately chosen is the most valuable legacy that both offer to us now, in our own so-busy time.”Ugh. Clearly there has to be something more, something deeper that unites them than the “deliberate chosenness” of their lives. Or it might be that despite their similar critiques of the modern age, they were different men at the core. If this were the case, the place they were most different was in the area of religion. Both writers saw the need for man to believe in a moral code, but Orwell thought he could have morality without religion . He wrote to Waugh that he liked Brideshead except for “hideous faults on the surface,” one of these being the book’s Catholic themes. But Waugh did not believe that morality would last without faith. For him, the days of spending Christianity’s cultural and moral capital without embracing its creeds were coming to a swift end.
Nathaniel’s review of the The Same Man was published online this week as Books & Culture ‘s Book of the Week. Check it out.
