Une nécropole illusoire : le cimetière de Whispering Glades dans The Loved One d’Evelyn Waugh

Abstract

Evelyn Waugh’s trip to Hollywood in 1947 nurtured two articles. The first one, « Why Hollywood is a Term of Disparagement » (Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, April 30, 1947 and May 1, 1947), dealt with the film industry, while the second one, « Half in Love with Easeful Death: An Examination of the Californian Burial Customs » (Life, September 29, 1947), focused on Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and the work of the morticians there. These essays in turn gave birth to a short novel, The Loved One (1948), in which death, art and love entertain a triangular relationship, with the mortuary (rechristened « Whispering Glades ») as « a jolly setting » (letter to A.D. Peters, September 14, 1947). Both fascinated and horrified by Forest Lawn’s artificiality, the novelist denounces it as a « simulacrum » which only seeks to hide the spiritual void entailed by the act of man shunning divine love. Basing our study on the concept of « hyperreality » as defined by Umberto Eco or Jean Baudrillard, we will see how, behind the facade of Waugh’s ornamented writing, hides a message that the reader can only grasp by paying attention to what the pompous scenery of the cemetery conceals – a satire of the Anglo-American cultural decadence.