EDNote: Can anyone locate this Waugh quote?

Subject: Curious speculation

Charles wrote: "....I once saw Evelyn Waugh remark in an interview that
James Joyce spent his life slowly going completely mad, and that you can
see this quite clearly in his writing; ie Finnegans Wake is the work of
a madman, nearing his end."

Could this be true??

Walter Miale

 

You can be quite certain that I haven't made it up. The interview was on British television, and it must have taken place before 1980, when I ceased watching tv  --- except very occasionally, when I'm in someone else's house. I regret I can't remember the context. Waugh did not say that Finnegans Wake was the work of a madman, but he implied it by saying that Joyce gradually went mad, and that you could see it in his books. Presumably he was thinking of Joyce's progress from Dubliners and the Portrait of an Artist, through Ulysses to Finnegans Wake. Even if you disagree with Waugh, which I'm sure you do, it is possible to see what he meant.

 

Charles