Books: Mischief Maker

BLACK MISCHIEF — Evelyn Waugh— Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

What Aldous Huxley was to the generation still anxiously calling itself “young,” Evelyn Waugh is becoming to the present. Less serious than Huxley but more religious (he has lately become a Roman Catholic), more scandalously funny but less satirical, he writes less like an insulated Englishman than like a French cosmopolite. Author Waugh recently traveled to Abyssinia, to Ras Tafari’s coronation, wrote a disappointingly half-serious book about it (They Were Still Dancing, TIME, Dec. 14). In Black Mischief he returns to the subject of Negro majesty, does it up black & blue in true Waugh style.

Author Waugh calls his imaginary African country “Azania,” an independent island about the size of Madagascar but much farther north. Emperor of Azania is Seth, black as shiny coal but bursting with progressive ideas he has swallowed. As soon as he is firmly settled on his rickety throne he proceeds to regurgitate them in rapid succession. Pat to his purpose comes Basil Seal, outrageous example of London’s outrageous young wastrels. Seth makes Basil head of the Bureau of Modernization, which before long practically takes over the government of the country. In off hours Basil has fun with Prudence, enthusiastic daughter of the vague British Minister, but as Seth really hits his stride Basil’s off hours become few & far between. Seth, remodeling his capital, tears down the Anglican Cathedral, renames the site “Place Marie Stopes.” Climax of Azanian modernization is to be a Pageant of Birth Control. The pageant turns into a riot, the riot into a revolution. Seth is killed, the English settlement flees the country in airplanes. Prudence’s plane has engine trouble, makes a forced landing. Few days later Basil, entertained by friendly cannibal chiefs, eats her unaware.

The Author used to be spoken of as “Alec Waugh’s brother”; now it is the other way about. His publisher father, manager of London’s Chapman & Hall, came in handy soon after Author Waugh left Oxford, has published most of his bright young son’s books. At 24 (he is now 29) Author Waugh married another Evelyn, daughter of Lady Burghclere, was divorced two years later. He loves to travel, once gave it as his opinion that only two good travel books had ever been written: one of them The Acts of the Apostles; he intended to write the third. Other books: Rossetti: A Critical Biography, Decline & Fall, Vile Bodies.