A Handful of Dust

Maybe my personal first impression was modified by reading the introduction by Robert Murray Davis about Waugh's development of this novel from his short story “The Man Who Liked Dickens,” but after Tony leaves for his trip, the novel, to me, fell apart. The story was humming along very nicely before that happened. I was reminded more than anything of Willa Cather's The Professor's House, but this was by far more poorly executed. It did get interesting when Tony became sick, and I was intrigued by the endnote about the allusions in the name Todd. The similarities drawn between the “savages” of London and the “savages” of the Amazon were, I'm sure, perfectly acceptable around the time of publication, but I am not so comfortable with it. It kind of turned my stomach in the way the tribal sequence in the 2005 King Kong does. The alternate ending of the novel (used in the serialized version) was appalling but at least more in keeping with the novel as a whole.