#<- my tag for this liveblog btw !! mute if u want to avoid spoilers / not b annoyed by me

[sunjoys]

finally started the promised brideshead revisited reread <3 some prelim thoughts :(under the cut bc i got a bit chattier than i was expecting):

i read brideshead for the first time in feb 2022, and i did "annotate" it (scribbled thoughts and notes in pencil along the margins), so i may post the notes i took from that first read during this revisit <3

i love the preface !! (written by waugh abt a decade after it was published) this bit in particular:

its def smth to keep in mind while reading, esp since brideshead is now considered one of The british-country-house novels (part of why saltburn is so compared to brideshead! the director said that brideshead was one of the books in that "genre" that served as reference for saltburn); the note abt the house being a sort of museum nowadays also reminds me of orlando (by woolf, 1928) vs orlando (film adaptation dir. potter, 1992) - a key setting of the story, the great house (an ancestral british home in the countryside, orlandos home) ends differently: in the 20s novel, orlando lives there with her husband. in the 90s movie, the house has been turned into a 'museum', orlando can only visit it from afar. def interesting, the way the british country house changes pre and post ww2!

also "a panegyric preached over an empty coffin" is interesting to keep in mind - waugh approached writing abt nobility w the mindset that it was basically gone - half mourning, half idolising. kinda reminds me of nick carraways approach to gatsby in the great gatsby ;; anyway i think this is interesting bc off the top of my head, most recent media abt the wealthy/nobilty is either satirical/critical or fluffy/idolising with no real teeth to it (rwrb, bridgerton?), or somewhere in between (whatever the fuck was going on in saltburn) ! so yeah this'll be refreshing ig for me ?? idk where im going with this.

also "these ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement" makes me laugh a little when i remember charles, the narrator, becomes a painter, particularly of noble houses. like hmmm there's definitely something of the author in this narrator 🤔

i feel like i should have a third point and i can't think of any. um. oh yeah the prologue! I like how it starts with charles looking back at the military camp as he leaves it, its not a particularly striking first line but it def establishes that, well, charles has a thing abt looking back at places he can't really return to - a thing about revisiting places, you could say [studio audience boos as the drums chime sadly[

it's pretty bleak at the start tho; during my first read i probably wouldn't have gotten past this if i didn't have my pencil w me (the promise of being able to scribble jokes in the margin if it remained boring) (it did not remain boring, btw). ig that'll make the introduction of brideshead more striking?

i am very excited about this reread <3