Dickensians will quickly discern that Waugh [in A Handful of Dust] caricatures Dickens outrageously and, in places, unfairly. But the joke, hilarious and effective, is definitely against Dickens. Waugh's reaction, like Aldous Huxley's, indicates that the response of modern satirical novelists to Dickens has been mixed. At other times an imitator of Dickens, Waugh puts the works of Boz in Mr. Todd's hut for a very satirical reason: he considers the Inimitable largely responsible for the ...

INTERVIEWER: E. M. Forster has spoken of "flat characters and round characters"; if you recognize this distinction, would you agree that you created no "round" characters until A Handful of Dust? WAUGH: All fictional characters are flat. A writer can give an illusion of depth by giving an apparently stereoscopic view of a character—seeing him from two vantage points; all a writer can do is give more or less information about a character, not i...

Nobody would argue that vintage Waugh lurks in any of his short stories or that we meet there anything like the magisterial wit of A Handful of Dust, Ninety-Two Days, or The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Short forms tempt Waugh toward his melodramatic, schoolboy-rag side—he needs more room to develop nuance and the appearance of sympathy with his characters. Still, [Charles Ryder's Schooldays and Other Stories] is a worthwhile collection of short pieces if not a startling one, eleven of the twelv...