SOURCE: “Books of the Times,” in The New York Times, November 22, 1982, p. 16.

In the following review of Charles Ryder's Schooldays and Other Stories, Broyard finds the work completely without merit.

With the exception of Put Out More Flags, I think I've liked all of Evelyn Waugh's fiction, and so it saddens me to report that Charles Ryder's School Days and Other Stories, most of which were published in a limited edition in 1936, is not very good.

Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the difference between Waugh at his best and worst is the piece called “By Special Request,” which is an alternative ending to A Handful of Dust. At the end of that novel, Tony Last was disillusioned by the affair of his wife, Brenda, with a man named Beaver, and he went off on a trip to South America, where he was held prisoner in the jungle...