SOURCE: In Evelyn Waugh, Writer, Pilgrim Books, Inc., 1981, pp. 32–9, 70–2.

In the following excerpt, Davis compares and contrasts Waugh's early short fiction, exploring his techniques and influences.

Waugh's undergraduate fiction, except for “Anthony: Who Sought Things That Were Lost,” was written in first person and consisted largely of parochial anecdotes. “The Balance,” sub-titled “A Yarn of the Good Old Days of Broad Trousers and High Necked Jumpers,” shows him working toward but not entirely trusting a technique by which he could present as objectively as possible his own subjective reactions and thus transmute autobiography into fiction. From the devices of the film he adapted techniques by which he was able, sporadically, to achieve authorial distance from the characters and to present selected glimpses of physical action economically and vividly.

The plot of “The Balance”¹ is not particularly remarkable: Adam Doure, an art student recently down from Oxford, has his...