Who said of whom: 'I have talent but he has genius'? Evelyn Waugh had been reading Futility, which first came out in 1922, but his favourite Gerhardie novel was to be Jazz and Jasper. This almost forgotten work appeared in 1927, two years earlier than Vile Bodies. Its author wanted to call it Doom, a title not adopted until the 1974 edition. In 1947 it made a brief appearance as My Sinful Earth, and the 1928 American edition was called Eve's Apples, the American publisher having decided, no doubt wisely, that the word 'jazz' had been 'worn threadbare' in crossing the Atlantic.

LRB 24 May 1990 | PDF Download