One of the saddest of recent literary sights has been the stacks of unwanted copies of Evelyn Waugh's "Diaries" … visible all over town. While the works of, say, Harold Robbins have moved briskly, Waugh's have languished, sad casualties of the apparent American war against wit. It's as if Waugh were too clever, as well as too hard, for us. A pity, because Waugh is much needed as an antidote to the current solemnity, earnestness, literal-mindedness and verbal sloppiness….

Waugh is indispensable today, for one thing, because he is that rarity, a writer who cares about language. He knows that writing is an affair of words rather than soul, impulse, "sincerity" or an instinct for the significant. If the words aren't there, nothing happens. And in our atmosphere where verbal accuracy and elegance and wit seem almost to have disappeared, Waugh is one of the heroes, perhaps one of...