In his acknowledgment, Minneapolis attorney and author David Lebedoff notes that in the bookshelf straddling his fireplace are sets of writings by George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. Orwell's are "stern, hard-covered volumes"; Waugh's are "little tattered paperbacks." The contrast is ironic, considering that Waugh was a shameless social climber and that Orwell purposely lived as a tramp.
"In time," he says, "I came to see how similar were the writers ... and how far our own world was moving from what those two men held most vital."
If one might dissent from Lebedoff's thesis -that the two authors were "the same man" despite their obviously contrasting lives-one can hardly take issue with Lebedoff's enviable skill in fashioning his argument. His style is exquisite. His use of the English language does justice to each author. And his admiration of both of them is palpable. Of Waugh he says, "It was as if he needed merely to place his pen on paper to see the ink expand and spread across the page in glorious design."
Lebedoff begins with Orwell, whose true name, never legally changed, was Eric Blair. And he takes us on the path that led Blair to become "George Orwell." Blair's life at St. Cyprian's prep school in Sussex was living hell, most likely because of his lack of wealth.
An example of Lebedoff's style is found in the book's first chapter, where he describes Blair's admission to Eton: "It was the best of all keys to success." Then, completing the metaphor, Lebedoff says, "But he didn't turn that key."
In the same chapter, he describes Waugh's publisher-father and the question of whether he was "in [the literary] trade." This, says Lebedoff, was "a question worthy of Talmudic scholars, none of whom, rest assured, would have been consulted." A few pages later: "To say that Evelyn Waugh was a social climber is to describe Everest as a hill." And then there's the chapter "The Waugh to End All Waughs." Lebedoff's humor is seldom absent from these pages, but it is never abused. Indeed, it often makes the point.
Nearly midway through, Lebedoff argues that the last pages of Waugh's Vile Bodies share the hopelessness associated with Orwell's 1984. We begin to discern that the Catholic Waugh and the atheist Orwell-the well-bred Waugh and the downtrodden Orwell-actually had a shared philosophy, as Lebedoff describes it, "a hatred of moral relativism."
More than a few observations made in this intelligent writing serve as antecedents to subsequent references. For example, Blair's experience at St. Cyprian's pops up later in a discussion of Orwell's left-leaning politics. Lebedoff also includes a helpful appendix that provides a parallel chronology of the authors' lives.
But it is not until the final chapter, titled "The Same Man," when Lebedoff becomes most assertive: The eight preceding chapters lay the foundation for his pronouncement: "[B]ecause in the things that really matter-the moral code of each-they were very much the same man." It is here where we learn as much about the author as we do his subjects.
Lebedoff says, "The world is healthier and wealthier than ever before, and everyone agrees that it's becoming more so. The future seems to be an escalator, going up."
But then he suggests that Orwell and Waugh might see our time "as worse than their own." And this was written before the current state of affairs.
In discussing the "growing displacement" of all values by materialism and escapism, Lebedoff asks, "For many people the only reality is reality shows, which they compulsively TiVo. Who needs Macbeth?"
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