Vile Bodies is a 1930 novel by Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

 satirising

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 the Bright Young People

Bright Young People

The Bright Young People was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London. They threw elaborate fancy dress parties, went on elaborate treasure hunts through nighttime London, and drank heavily and experimented with drugs—all of which...

: decadent young London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 society between World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

Title

The title comes from the Epistle to the Philippians

Epistle to the Philippians

The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, usually referred to simply as Philippians, is the eleventh book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was written by St. Paul to the church of Philippi, an early center of Christianity in Greece around 62 A.D. Other scholars argue for an...

 3:21. The book was originally to be called "Bright Young Things" (which went on to be the title of Stephen Fry's

Stephen Fry

Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

 2003 film

Bright Young Things

Bright Young Things is a 2003 British drama film written and directed by Stephen Fry. The screenplay, based on the 1930 novel Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, provides satirical social commentary about the Bright Young People: young and carefree London aristocrats and bohemians, as well as society in...

); Waugh changed it because he decided the phrase had become too clichéd. The title that Waugh eventually settled on comes from a comment that the novel's narrator makes in reference to the characters' party-driven lifestyle: 'All that succession and repetition of massed humanity... Those vile bodies...'

Style

Heavily influenced by the cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and by the disjointed style of T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, Vile Bodies is Waugh's second and most ostentatiously "modern" novel

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

. Fragments of dialogue and rapid scene changes are held together by the dry, almost perversely unflappable narrator. The book was dedicated to B. G. and D. G. (Bryan

Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne

Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne , was an heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, lawyer, poet and novelist...

 and Diana

Diana Mitford

Diana Mitford, Lady Mosley , was one of Britain's noted Mitford sisters. She was married first to Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, and secondly to Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, leader of the British Union of Fascists; her second marriage, in 1936, took place at the...

 Guinness

Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne

Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne , was an heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, lawyer, poet and novelist...

). Waugh claims it was the first novel in which much of the dialogue takes place on the 'phone.

Summary

Adam Fenwick-Symes is the novel's antihero; his quest to marry Nina parodies the conventions of romantic comedy

Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy can refer to* Romantic Comedy , a 1979 play written by Bernard Slade* Romantic Comedy , a 1983 film adapted from the play and starring Dudley Moore and Mary Steenburgen...

, as the traditional foils and allies prove distracted and ineffectual. War looms, Adam's circle of friends disintegrates, and Adam and Nina's engagement flounders. At the book's end, we find Adam alone on an apocalyptic European battlefield. The book's shift in tone from light-hearted romp to bleak desolation has bothered some critics. (Waugh himself later attributed it to the breakdown of his first marriage halfway through the book's composition). Others have defended the novel's curious ending as a poetically just

Poetic justice

Poetic justice is a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct.- Origin of the term :...

 reversal of the conventions of comic romance.

Influence

David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

 cited the novel as the primary influence on his composition of the song Aladdin Sane

Aladdin Sane (song)

"Aladdin Sane " is a song by David Bowie, the title track from his 1973 album Aladdin Sane. Described by biographer David Buckley as the album's "pivotal" song, it saw Bowie moving into more experimental musical styles following the success of his breakthrough glam rock release The Rise and Fall of...

.