Department of Corrections

Here at Unpleasant Accents, we're no strangers to shredding idiotic media coverage of the Church, nor to the works of Evelyn Waugh, whose Brideshead Revisited is the source of our humble blog's name.

Sometimes, however, the jokes write themselves.

From The Federalist: TIME: Evelyn Waugh Is One Of The Most-Read Female Writers in Colleges

Um, yeah, about that:

Correction: The original version of this story included Evelyn Waugh, who was a man.

"I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house…"

Cheer up, Evelyn. Maybe Glamour can name you Woman of the Year!

How To Tell If You Are In An Evelyn Waugh Novel

(With further apologies to The Toast, whose series started it all.)

Waugh is not amused.

Your name is Pennyfeather.

You appear to be floating through life. Hilarious misfortune befalls you and those around you.

A small boy is accidentally shot in the foot by the starting gun at a race. He dies.

You befriend a man with a wooden leg who is not who he says he is.

Your beloved (who is much older and wealthier than you) has gotten you mixed up in the South American flesh trade. You are sent to prison, which is quite an agreeable experience. Your time in solitude there has you feeling the the best you've felt in years.

Your name is Seal.

While visiting Africa to advise an Oxford-educated ruler, you end up running his country, falling madly in love, intriguing, having a court official's throat cut, and going to a cannibal banquet. Also, your pillow talk to your girlfriend about "wanting to eat her up" later turns out to be a poor choice of words.

Honour, Virtue, and Not-Unpleasant Accents

It's (still) the summertime, and from my lofty perch top atop the Honorary Chair of Leisure as Culture, I can't think of a better time to review some recent — and not-so-recent — works of literature and television concerning Catholics living in times of tempestuous social change!

It also happens that this post coincides with the centenary of WWI, which is the setting for Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End trilogy. This great tragedy that marked the beginning of the 20th century could not be stopped, despite attempts to secure peace by the reigning Pope and the devout Catholic Emperor of Austria. 

Benedict XV

Blessed Charles/Karl I 

Vampire Weekend: Waugh Revisited

In keeping with our reviews of popular media in a Catholic context, the latest entry in our Leisure As Culture series is a triple feature: a joint music, book, and television review. Vampire Weekend is a recent addition to my music library, while Brideshead Revisited has been a favorite book of mine since before I began college. Both share a connection that may not seem obvious. A story of pre-WWII English Catholic aristocracy and rocknrolla? Sure, the band’s image is that of well-dressed university-age fellows, but that’s merely a superficial similarity. It’s VW frontman and songwriter Ezra Koenig who draws the connection to Brideshead in a New York Times article:

[The band’s three albums] reminded me of ‘Brideshead Revisited’... The naïve joyous school days in the beginning. Then the expansion of the world, travel, seeing other places, learning a little bit more about how people live. And then the end is a little bit of growing up, starting to think more seriously, about your life and your faith. If people could look at our three albums as a bildungsroman, I’d be O.K. with that.

If this were how I started every tennis match, I'd be O.K. with that. (Obscure VW reference for the uninitiated here.)