Work Suspended is the most enigmatic of Waugh's writings. Its mockery of socialism and philistinism is of course quite in keeping with his rôle as the right-wing Catholic apologist defending 'civilization' from the 'barbarians', but the emotional intensity of the work, expressed in a more conventional and committed prose style than that of the five early novels is surprising. Although unfinished, Work Suspended has an evasive cohesion, perhaps because the characterization appears to be based on values and assumptions which derive from a private world beyond the text. (p. 302)
Even when allowance is made for the narrating persona, Waugh appears to be laying his literary soul open in an entirely new fashion. It is true that the death of the old and the birth of a new, 'dark' age had been his subject since 1930 (Vile Bodies concludes with a scene set on 'the biggest battlefield in the history of the world') but this strange, incomplete tale alters his whole approach. What, then, is the significance of [the novel's] disparate figures? And why, when it is of such high quality, did he find himself unable to complete their history? (pp. 302-03)
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