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SCOOP 1964 New Edition
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First published January 1, 1938
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About the author
Evelyn Waugh
358 books2,964 followersEvelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”
In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist, he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.
In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.
During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took centre stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honour Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II - “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) - his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.
Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, died on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_W...
In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist, he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.
In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.
During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took centre stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honour Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II - “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) - his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.
Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, died on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_W...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,567 reviews
June 3, 2020
Evelyn Waugh was a snob, a racist, an anti-semite and a fascist sympathiser whose attitude was, in the words of his biographer David Wykes, "[Waugh's racism was] "an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness and rightness of hierarchy as the (main) principle of social organisation".
He was also jealous, personally nasty and malicious, had been a bully at school, and as James Lees-Milne said, "the nastiest-tempered man in England".
Waugh was, however, absolutely devoted to his adopted religion, Catholicism, and generally friendly, welcoming and generous to other Catholics. Nancy Mitford asked him how he reconciled his often objectionable conduct and attitude with being a Christian, said he replied that "were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".
All of this is on display in this absolutely hilarious farce of a book, and right at the beginning the tone is set,
"That’s Mrs. Cohen,” said Effie. “You see how it is. They’re Yids.”
“Sure it isn’t the nigger downstairs you want?”
Scoop is a satire on journalism and the newspaper industry in general based on his own experiences or rather that of a fellow war correspondent for the Daily Mail covering the Abyssinian-Italian war. Although the characters are so utterly defined by the mythical racial characteristics assigned to them by an unkind world, it is still easy to laugh. The snobbery which the non-ethnic characters displayed was equally harsh and that is perhaps the key as to why such an ostensibly nasty book by such an unpleasant man is so funny, he must have seen himself in all of this, "He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich," and so it's a bit of a send-up, and that's something we can all appreciate.
The writing is wonderful, just as it was in his opus magnum, Brideshead Revisited, the humour extravagant, the denoument ridiculous. All in all, recommended to everyone who likes period pieces that aren't quite. nor ever will be, classics.
He was also jealous, personally nasty and malicious, had been a bully at school, and as James Lees-Milne said, "the nastiest-tempered man in England".
Waugh was, however, absolutely devoted to his adopted religion, Catholicism, and generally friendly, welcoming and generous to other Catholics. Nancy Mitford asked him how he reconciled his often objectionable conduct and attitude with being a Christian, said he replied that "were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".
All of this is on display in this absolutely hilarious farce of a book, and right at the beginning the tone is set,
"That’s Mrs. Cohen,” said Effie. “You see how it is. They’re Yids.”
“Sure it isn’t the nigger downstairs you want?”
Scoop is a satire on journalism and the newspaper industry in general based on his own experiences or rather that of a fellow war correspondent for the Daily Mail covering the Abyssinian-Italian war. Although the characters are so utterly defined by the mythical racial characteristics assigned to them by an unkind world, it is still easy to laugh. The snobbery which the non-ethnic characters displayed was equally harsh and that is perhaps the key as to why such an ostensibly nasty book by such an unpleasant man is so funny, he must have seen himself in all of this, "He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich," and so it's a bit of a send-up, and that's something we can all appreciate.
The writing is wonderful, just as it was in his opus magnum, Brideshead Revisited, the humour extravagant, the denoument ridiculous. All in all, recommended to everyone who likes period pieces that aren't quite. nor ever will be, classics.
December 16, 2023
LA GUERRA FUORI CASA
Dopo una serie di sette episodi della BBC nel 1972, è arrivato questo tv movie di due ore diretto da Gavin Millar nel 1987.
Mi verrebbe da dire nel solco di Il caro estinto, e quindi il Waugh satirico, caustico, umoristico, e talvolta comico, perché io ho letto prima quello che mette alla berlina le funeral home californiane, le pompe funebri: se non fosse che quello è stato pubblicato dopo, nel 1947, mentre questo risale al 1938.
Comunque, l’imprinting è quello: stesso cinismo dissacrante, stessa satira intelligente, stesso spirito corrosivo.
Waugh fu inviato dal Daily Mail (che nel romanzo diventa il Daily Beast) in Africa Orientale come reporter per scrivere dell’invasione fascista dell’Abissinia, quella che viene ricordata come Seconda Guerra Itali-Abissina (dall’ottobre del 1935 al maggio del 1936). Quando Waugh ritenne d’aver scovato la notizia bomba, uno scoop, mandò il suo pezzo via telegrafo scritto in latino per aggirare possibili jntercettazioni della concorrenza: il giornale ricevette il pezzo, ma lo trovò incomprensibile e lo eliminò.
Ti saluto, vado in Abissinia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UycG....
Ecco è il probabile antefatto alla creazione di questo romanzo, che per quanto s’inventi un paese africano fittizio, Ismaelia, lo colloca nella stessa zona del continente, a est, verso il corno d’Africa.
Per un banale scambio di omonimi, un giornalista che scrive una breve colonna bisettimanale di giardinaggio intitolata “Luoghi lussureggianti” viene inviato per sbaglio nel paese africano di Ismaelia a coprire quella che il direttore del quotidiano definisce una piccola guerra che promette molto bene.
La promessa è quella di riuscire a vendere copie del giornale.
L’inviato, che di giornalismo sul campo sa meno di zero, ma anche poco di giornalismo in genere, al contrario dei suoi colleghi rivali parte con un bagaglio al seguito imbarazzante: canoa gonfiabile, bastoni cavi per l’invio dei dispacci, tenda con accessori, razioni di viveri per tre mesi, astrolabio…
Come si usa dire, la fortuna del principiante lo protegge: e mentre i suoi colleghi concorrenti annaspano nel vuoto e nel nulla, giocando a chi inventa la notizia più grossa, il nostro inviato speciale riesce per caso a scoprire che in effetti i comunisti stamno preparando un colpo di stato. Scrive il pezzo, lo manda, fa lo scoop, diventa famoso: ma per sua somma gioia, che la fama paventa ed evita, gli onori ricadono sul suo omonimo mai partito.
Il nostro compianto inviato di guerra, grande reporter, Mimmo Candito, si portava sempre dietro il romanzo di Waugh, in qualsiasi missione fosse mandato, qualsiasi conflitto dovesse seguire. Disse in un’intervista:
Lo porto sempre con me quando parto per raccontare una guerra. Un classico della satira sul mondo del giornalismo, soprattutto sulle approssimazioni di cui il giornalismo vive e di cui i corrispondenti di guerra sono l’archetipo assoluto.
Dopo una serie di sette episodi della BBC nel 1972, è arrivato questo tv movie di due ore diretto da Gavin Millar nel 1987.
Mi verrebbe da dire nel solco di Il caro estinto, e quindi il Waugh satirico, caustico, umoristico, e talvolta comico, perché io ho letto prima quello che mette alla berlina le funeral home californiane, le pompe funebri: se non fosse che quello è stato pubblicato dopo, nel 1947, mentre questo risale al 1938.
Comunque, l’imprinting è quello: stesso cinismo dissacrante, stessa satira intelligente, stesso spirito corrosivo.
Waugh fu inviato dal Daily Mail (che nel romanzo diventa il Daily Beast) in Africa Orientale come reporter per scrivere dell’invasione fascista dell’Abissinia, quella che viene ricordata come Seconda Guerra Itali-Abissina (dall’ottobre del 1935 al maggio del 1936). Quando Waugh ritenne d’aver scovato la notizia bomba, uno scoop, mandò il suo pezzo via telegrafo scritto in latino per aggirare possibili jntercettazioni della concorrenza: il giornale ricevette il pezzo, ma lo trovò incomprensibile e lo eliminò.
Ti saluto, vado in Abissinia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UycG....
Ecco è il probabile antefatto alla creazione di questo romanzo, che per quanto s’inventi un paese africano fittizio, Ismaelia, lo colloca nella stessa zona del continente, a est, verso il corno d’Africa.
Per un banale scambio di omonimi, un giornalista che scrive una breve colonna bisettimanale di giardinaggio intitolata “Luoghi lussureggianti” viene inviato per sbaglio nel paese africano di Ismaelia a coprire quella che il direttore del quotidiano definisce una piccola guerra che promette molto bene.
La promessa è quella di riuscire a vendere copie del giornale.
L’inviato, che di giornalismo sul campo sa meno di zero, ma anche poco di giornalismo in genere, al contrario dei suoi colleghi rivali parte con un bagaglio al seguito imbarazzante: canoa gonfiabile, bastoni cavi per l’invio dei dispacci, tenda con accessori, razioni di viveri per tre mesi, astrolabio…
Come si usa dire, la fortuna del principiante lo protegge: e mentre i suoi colleghi concorrenti annaspano nel vuoto e nel nulla, giocando a chi inventa la notizia più grossa, il nostro inviato speciale riesce per caso a scoprire che in effetti i comunisti stamno preparando un colpo di stato. Scrive il pezzo, lo manda, fa lo scoop, diventa famoso: ma per sua somma gioia, che la fama paventa ed evita, gli onori ricadono sul suo omonimo mai partito.
Il nostro compianto inviato di guerra, grande reporter, Mimmo Candito, si portava sempre dietro il romanzo di Waugh, in qualsiasi missione fosse mandato, qualsiasi conflitto dovesse seguire. Disse in un’intervista:
Lo porto sempre con me quando parto per raccontare una guerra. Un classico della satira sul mondo del giornalismo, soprattutto sulle approssimazioni di cui il giornalismo vive e di cui i corrispondenti di guerra sono l’archetipo assoluto.
June 10, 2024
A raving, scathing, pretty witty satire about the world of newspapers. A little shallower than I expected, but a fun, quick read.
December 21, 2018
There’s a song on Tusk by Fleetwood Mac where the chorus is “not that funny, is it” repeated over & over, & this did spring into my mind as I was a-reading Scoop but I opposed Lindsey Buckingham’s punkish sneer with an urbane “no, but it is amusing” as in it kind of makes you nearly smile inwardly almost the whole time except when of course as you must expect (this being Evelyn Waugh talking about a fictionalized Ethiopia in 1938) you hit the old colonial casual racism so be warned that there are three or four n words, one darky and one coon – and a couple of yids - but beyond that the usual farce of ridiculous white people blundering around and surprisingly less-caricatured black people trying to extract the maximum amount of western currency from them while they do so, and picking them up when the goat connects with their rear ends. This is one of Robert McCrum’s 100 Best Novels in English EVER, so I think that indicates you can’t believe a word that Robert McCrum says, because if ever there was a three star novel Scoop is it. You might say that the way fake news is created and parleyed into real news (very prescient of Evelyn Waugh) is a solid subject for satire, but you may also say that treating western manipulation of African countries as a contemptuously easy chess game between various Powers is as Lindsey says NOT THAT FUNNY.
March 28, 2023
Scoop is a scathing satire on journalistic policy and practice that has been plaguing the world from the time of its birth. Nothing much has changed from the time of its publication, and the story is still apt for today. So, one can say that this is and will be a timeless tale.
Partly based on his journalistic experience, working for the Daily Mail, and partly based on his criticism of the foreign policy of the British government, Scoop tells the story of how the fictional country of Ishmaelia (said to be representing Ethiopia) the plaything of the opposing Western factions. Waugh tells a hilarious story of how the news is obtained, the methods of unintentional bullying and manipulations, and how it's exaggerated to suit the "public" policy as defined by the top notches of the newspaper.
“Can you tell me who is fighting who in Ishmaelia?”
“I think it’s the Patriots and the Traitors.”
“Yes, but which is which?”
“Oh, I don’t know that. That’s Policy, you see.”
“What we mean when we say traitors, I really couldn’t tell you. But from your point of view, it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants Patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But of course, it’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain?”
The insight into the journalistic practice, while hilarious, gives room for meditation. And the questions arise as to whether we are learning the truth or a glazed account of someone's propaganda? Waugh's story demonstrates that it's the latter. It's always "public policy" (as suits the government) and it's always propaganda. And "The Beast" and "The Brute", the two rival newspapers of the story, aptly represent the nature and conduct of practised journalism wherein both are unscrupulous in their competition for scoops.
The work is rich with satire and produces much material for contemplation. But as a story of its own, Scoop fell short of my expectations from Evelyn Waugh. This is the author of Brideshead Revisited, whose beautiful prose captured my heart and yearn for more. Of course, Scoop is of a different nature; it is a satirical comedy and cannot have the same lustre of a work of sober contemplation. Yet, the story was a little too bare. However, I think Scoop is an important work in world literature as well as in Waugh's repertoire, and have no scruple in recommending it.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
Partly based on his journalistic experience, working for the Daily Mail, and partly based on his criticism of the foreign policy of the British government, Scoop tells the story of how the fictional country of Ishmaelia (said to be representing Ethiopia) the plaything of the opposing Western factions. Waugh tells a hilarious story of how the news is obtained, the methods of unintentional bullying and manipulations, and how it's exaggerated to suit the "public" policy as defined by the top notches of the newspaper.
“Can you tell me who is fighting who in Ishmaelia?”
“I think it’s the Patriots and the Traitors.”
“Yes, but which is which?”
“Oh, I don’t know that. That’s Policy, you see.”
“What we mean when we say traitors, I really couldn’t tell you. But from your point of view, it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants Patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But of course, it’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain?”
The insight into the journalistic practice, while hilarious, gives room for meditation. And the questions arise as to whether we are learning the truth or a glazed account of someone's propaganda? Waugh's story demonstrates that it's the latter. It's always "public policy" (as suits the government) and it's always propaganda. And "The Beast" and "The Brute", the two rival newspapers of the story, aptly represent the nature and conduct of practised journalism wherein both are unscrupulous in their competition for scoops.
The work is rich with satire and produces much material for contemplation. But as a story of its own, Scoop fell short of my expectations from Evelyn Waugh. This is the author of Brideshead Revisited, whose beautiful prose captured my heart and yearn for more. Of course, Scoop is of a different nature; it is a satirical comedy and cannot have the same lustre of a work of sober contemplation. Yet, the story was a little too bare. However, I think Scoop is an important work in world literature as well as in Waugh's repertoire, and have no scruple in recommending it.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
February 12, 2019
Biting and cruel and ever so Waugh, this read aged well enough in its characters and mostly well in the events that illuminate them. I read this about 35 years ago, alongside Waugh in Abyssinia, for a journalism course. I am sure that's the reason I liked the book as well as I did, since I disliked William Boot with vigorous and vitriolic epithetry.
Lord Copper, the vile capitalist, was Falstaffian fun, but I suspect I'd find him less so in my own old-manhood. All in all, a slightly-too-small armchair from younger, more limber days, yet always among my mental furniture.
Lord Copper, the vile capitalist, was Falstaffian fun, but I suspect I'd find him less so in my own old-manhood. All in all, a slightly-too-small armchair from younger, more limber days, yet always among my mental furniture.
June 6, 2015
2.5 stars
I’ve read little Waugh apart from Brideshead Revisited, which I loved; Waugh is writing there about the decline of the upper classes and writing about people he knew.
This is a comic novel about Journalism and the newspaper industry and is a very effective satire. Lord Copper, the tyrannical and megalomaniac newspaper boss was said to be based on Lord Northcliffe, but was probably also part Beaverbrook and Hearst. The story is based on Waugh’s experiences working for the Daily Mail as a foreign correspondent covering Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. Ethiopia is changed to the imaginary state of Ishmaelia. Lord Copper owner of the Daily Beast has learnt that something is going on in Ishmaelia. As his best correspondent has recently transferred to the Daily Brute, he is in need of a new one. A certain Mr John Boot, a writer, is recommended. As it happens William Boot writes an obscure countryside column for the paper. He is mistakenly called to London and given the job. Boot is sent to Ishmaelia with large amounts of useless luggage, where he meets lots of other journalists, including Americans and French. They look for communists and fascists and for the promised civil war. Of course little is going on so the journalists make it up. William has adventures, falls briefly in love. William also has his moment when something actually does happen. There is a good cast of supporting characters; many of whom are based on people Waugh knew. The character of William Boot is said to be loosely based on Bill Deedes who had been with Waugh covering the situation in Abyssinia. Deedes was 22 at the time and his newspaper had sent him out with a quarter of a ton of baggage. Deedes spent the next 65 years denying this!
This is a funny and well written novel and was in the Observer list of the one hundred greatest novels of all time. The satire of the newspaper industry still has relevance today and is very pertinent.
However there are problems for me with the whole. This was written in 1938 and one would expect with a robust writer like Waugh some issues with language. That is an understatement; Waugh is anti-Semitic and racist and his approach to other races is execrable. He was a clear believer in hierarchy and very misanthropic. Cyril Connolly referred to him as a permanent adolescent. Christopher Hitchens has argued that Waugh’s many faults, dislikes and contempt for other human beings makes his cruelty funny as a novelist and writer. I remain unconvinced and Orwell (who was an exact contemporary) made a more thoughtful comment in some notes for an unwritten essay on Waugh; Waugh was
“almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be . . . while holding untenable opinions”
Waugh’s satire of tabloid journalism and its complacent corruption is still prescient, but his attitudes and opinions are awful
I’ve read little Waugh apart from Brideshead Revisited, which I loved; Waugh is writing there about the decline of the upper classes and writing about people he knew.
This is a comic novel about Journalism and the newspaper industry and is a very effective satire. Lord Copper, the tyrannical and megalomaniac newspaper boss was said to be based on Lord Northcliffe, but was probably also part Beaverbrook and Hearst. The story is based on Waugh’s experiences working for the Daily Mail as a foreign correspondent covering Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. Ethiopia is changed to the imaginary state of Ishmaelia. Lord Copper owner of the Daily Beast has learnt that something is going on in Ishmaelia. As his best correspondent has recently transferred to the Daily Brute, he is in need of a new one. A certain Mr John Boot, a writer, is recommended. As it happens William Boot writes an obscure countryside column for the paper. He is mistakenly called to London and given the job. Boot is sent to Ishmaelia with large amounts of useless luggage, where he meets lots of other journalists, including Americans and French. They look for communists and fascists and for the promised civil war. Of course little is going on so the journalists make it up. William has adventures, falls briefly in love. William also has his moment when something actually does happen. There is a good cast of supporting characters; many of whom are based on people Waugh knew. The character of William Boot is said to be loosely based on Bill Deedes who had been with Waugh covering the situation in Abyssinia. Deedes was 22 at the time and his newspaper had sent him out with a quarter of a ton of baggage. Deedes spent the next 65 years denying this!
This is a funny and well written novel and was in the Observer list of the one hundred greatest novels of all time. The satire of the newspaper industry still has relevance today and is very pertinent.
However there are problems for me with the whole. This was written in 1938 and one would expect with a robust writer like Waugh some issues with language. That is an understatement; Waugh is anti-Semitic and racist and his approach to other races is execrable. He was a clear believer in hierarchy and very misanthropic. Cyril Connolly referred to him as a permanent adolescent. Christopher Hitchens has argued that Waugh’s many faults, dislikes and contempt for other human beings makes his cruelty funny as a novelist and writer. I remain unconvinced and Orwell (who was an exact contemporary) made a more thoughtful comment in some notes for an unwritten essay on Waugh; Waugh was
“almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be . . . while holding untenable opinions”
Waugh’s satire of tabloid journalism and its complacent corruption is still prescient, but his attitudes and opinions are awful
September 20, 2007
Second time reading.
File this under guilty pleasures. I'm, well outraged isn't the right word, made weary by the dreariness of the other reviews of this book: plot summaries, gestures towards its transhistorical narratives (or towards its capturing that peculiar moment before the Nazis invaded Poland), and hamfisted comparisons to P. G. Wodehouse (different sort of writer entirely, although, hilariously, Wodehouse does get a shoutout as the plot winds down). And then, well, there's the fact that the book is terribly racist. It's not racist in a Mein Kampf or Turner Diaries kind of way; there's no particular program Waugh wants to push; but the novel nevertheless goes hand-in-thoughtless-hand with the postwar atrocities committed by Britain in Kenya. Is this attitude inevitable? Simply a record of its time?
Of course not. Don't be foolish.
That said, it's delightful. I'm of course reminded of A. J. Liebling's war journalism. The plot should be a model for plots everywhere. The odd mixture of affection and contempt is characteristic of the best humor writing (see, for example, Diary of a Nobody or Cold Comfort Farm). I'm going a bit too far here: it's clear that Waugh finds the expropriation of Africa's natural resources by European colonial powers distasteful. And that's something.
I'd suggest, however, starting with The Loved One.
File this under guilty pleasures. I'm, well outraged isn't the right word, made weary by the dreariness of the other reviews of this book: plot summaries, gestures towards its transhistorical narratives (or towards its capturing that peculiar moment before the Nazis invaded Poland), and hamfisted comparisons to P. G. Wodehouse (different sort of writer entirely, although, hilariously, Wodehouse does get a shoutout as the plot winds down). And then, well, there's the fact that the book is terribly racist. It's not racist in a Mein Kampf or Turner Diaries kind of way; there's no particular program Waugh wants to push; but the novel nevertheless goes hand-in-thoughtless-hand with the postwar atrocities committed by Britain in Kenya. Is this attitude inevitable? Simply a record of its time?
Of course not. Don't be foolish.
That said, it's delightful. I'm of course reminded of A. J. Liebling's war journalism. The plot should be a model for plots everywhere. The odd mixture of affection and contempt is characteristic of the best humor writing (see, for example, Diary of a Nobody or Cold Comfort Farm). I'm going a bit too far here: it's clear that Waugh finds the expropriation of Africa's natural resources by European colonial powers distasteful. And that's something.
I'd suggest, however, starting with The Loved One.
April 2, 2022
Although I have liked Evelyn Waugh’s novels for a while (of which I had read about three), my recent reading of Barbara Pym – both her novels and biography – led me first to GIRLS and then to Vile Bodies, and before I tackle his Bio, this partly autobiographical novel seemed a good approach. That it is very much based on his own experiences, Waugh states in the preface. He had been sent by the Daily Mail to Addis Ababa in 1935 to cover Mussolini’s campaign. Waugh has created a fictional country, Ishmaelia with Jacksonburg as its capital. Many of the fictional characters are based, partly, on various people he met, mixing real traits to produce new literary hybrids (à la Proust).
Published in 1938, its farcical portrayal of journalism continues to be relevant today. Waugh exposes the corruption of governments, -- in the way they use public funds, manipulates the press, sloppily oversee national security, decide negligently on foreign affairs, practice nepotism, etc. As well as the press – in the way they use company funds, manipulate their readership, delude government, interfere with national security, and botch a country’s foreign affairs situations. In this world, events succeed each other as a string of errors that randomly turn out either well or shoddily.
It is a hilarious read. The plot, the parodies, the play of language, the caricatures… wonderful.
June 10, 2024
📰 Waugh dissects sensationalistic journalism and reportage in his humorous and sarcastic style. I’ll never forget a scene where a politician held in awe by all, indifferent to the important proceedings taking place around him, leans his big head on his hand and, taking a notepad and pencil, doodles a picture of a little cow. 🐄😂
August 8, 2021
A nice parody on journalistic practices, British colonialism, the backwardness of the British country side, and so much more. This is written in quite a different register in comparaison with the dead-serious Brideshead Revisited. Entertaining and funny; take the name of the newspaper involved for instance, 'The Deadly Beast'. Or the definition an arrogant journalist gives of the news: "News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead." You could look at Waugh's representation of the media as a caricature, but lets face it: it still is relevant (and I know what I'm talking about)!. Of course, it's not a ground breaking novel, but I really loved this one.
July 30, 2024
4 stars
short review for busy readers: What can you say about a Waugh comedy? He's an equal opportunity misanthrope and everybody gets a pie in the face, that's what. In Scoop, he covers his usual territory of buffoon/nutters of the lower aristocracy, incompetent journalists and hopelessly corrupt African nations with scathing satire. And it's still hilarious - and current - after almost 90 years.
in detail:
What is news, or rather, how is news made?
Welcome to The Daily Beast, a newspaper run by a viscount with a memory as hole-y as Swiss cheese, who knows exactly what he wants and that he wanted it five minutes ago.
If only he could remember what it was exactly.
No wonder two Boots, one John and one William, get mixed up with the result that William Boot, a mild-mannered introvert who writes a dreamy nature column for The Beast, gets sent to the African nation of Ishmaelia to cover the Soviet takeover of the place.
Too bad it never happened. Or did it?
Waugh takes on an entire flotilla of subjects in this novel, but it's mostly about one thing that's still a thorn in our sides today. A thing that now, thanks to the internet, anybody can do, not just major dailies. That's right: it's all about fake news and the lengths journalists will go to for the Holy Grail of a major scoop -- even if they have to invent it.
This is my 2nd Waugh comedy and while I liked Black Mischief more, this one was also highly entertaining!
I listened to the German language audio book wonderfully read by Jan Weiler. (Yes, *that* Jan Weiler.) And I have to say, I've never heard a male reader who could do women's voices so convincingly! If you didn't know it was a man, you really would think a woman was speaking. Amazing.
short review for busy readers: What can you say about a Waugh comedy? He's an equal opportunity misanthrope and everybody gets a pie in the face, that's what. In Scoop, he covers his usual territory of buffoon/nutters of the lower aristocracy, incompetent journalists and hopelessly corrupt African nations with scathing satire. And it's still hilarious - and current - after almost 90 years.
in detail:
What is news, or rather, how is news made?
Welcome to The Daily Beast, a newspaper run by a viscount with a memory as hole-y as Swiss cheese, who knows exactly what he wants and that he wanted it five minutes ago.
If only he could remember what it was exactly.
No wonder two Boots, one John and one William, get mixed up with the result that William Boot, a mild-mannered introvert who writes a dreamy nature column for The Beast, gets sent to the African nation of Ishmaelia to cover the Soviet takeover of the place.
Too bad it never happened. Or did it?
Waugh takes on an entire flotilla of subjects in this novel, but it's mostly about one thing that's still a thorn in our sides today. A thing that now, thanks to the internet, anybody can do, not just major dailies. That's right: it's all about fake news and the lengths journalists will go to for the Holy Grail of a major scoop -- even if they have to invent it.
This is my 2nd Waugh comedy and while I liked Black Mischief more, this one was also highly entertaining!
I listened to the German language audio book wonderfully read by Jan Weiler. (Yes, *that* Jan Weiler.) And I have to say, I've never heard a male reader who could do women's voices so convincingly! If you didn't know it was a man, you really would think a woman was speaking. Amazing.
April 22, 2014
Review was first posted on BookLikes:
http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...
For nearly two weeks now, the bent and creased copy of Scoop sitting on my desk has been staring at me. Patiently. Waiting whether I was going to write a review or not.
On finishing the book I had exactly two feelings about it:
1. As far as satire of the press goes, Waugh created the most delicious and entertaining spoof I could have imagined. However,
2. This book contained so many openly racist and chauvinist remarks that even Fleming's Live and Let Die (which I had finished just before Scoop) looks like an enlightened and unbiased work promoting intercultural understanding.
For the best part of the last two weeks, I have looked at my old copy of Scoop and wondered whether to chuck it onto the charity shop pile or straight into the bin. It's not a book I would recommend unreservedly. Even looking at Waugh as a representative of a time when sentiments of racial or cultural stereotyping were common and widely accepted, I wonder whether there was a need for it in Scoop because this was not a part of the book that was satirical. Or, if it was, this did not come across well.
So, while I am glad that I have read Scoop, I expected more. Much more.
http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...
For nearly two weeks now, the bent and creased copy of Scoop sitting on my desk has been staring at me. Patiently. Waiting whether I was going to write a review or not.
On finishing the book I had exactly two feelings about it:
1. As far as satire of the press goes, Waugh created the most delicious and entertaining spoof I could have imagined. However,
2. This book contained so many openly racist and chauvinist remarks that even Fleming's Live and Let Die (which I had finished just before Scoop) looks like an enlightened and unbiased work promoting intercultural understanding.
For the best part of the last two weeks, I have looked at my old copy of Scoop and wondered whether to chuck it onto the charity shop pile or straight into the bin. It's not a book I would recommend unreservedly. Even looking at Waugh as a representative of a time when sentiments of racial or cultural stereotyping were common and widely accepted, I wonder whether there was a need for it in Scoop because this was not a part of the book that was satirical. Or, if it was, this did not come across well.
So, while I am glad that I have read Scoop, I expected more. Much more.
December 7, 2008
Waugh followed the near-perfect "Handful of Dust," with "Scoop," an absolutely perfect "Newspaper Adventure" that satirizes journalism, especially as practiced by foreign correspondents. This was the perfect topic for Waugh; not only did he work throughout a career as a foreign correspondent, journalists are a recurring stock character in his fiction. Inevitably, Waugh portrays journalists as drunk, fast talking adventurers, who are not above making up a story in their pursuit of fame and fortune.
the basic story finds young gentleman William Boot-who writes a gardening column-is mistakenly sent to the african nation of Ishmaelia to cover the civil war that is supposed to be raging there. Instead of finding a civil war, Boot finds the mix of journalists, freebooters, marxists, fascists, and ex-pats who were a regular feature of life in the Third World throughout the 20th century. In fact, if you have read PJ O'Rourke's "Holidays In Hell," you'll be amazed how these characters survived 50 years after Waugh was writing. Ishmaelia is a Liberia-style nation which is being fought over by successive groups of communist subversives (including a college educated boxer from Alabama!), sinister fascists, and assorted plunderers. Boot manages to run into everybody, and inadvertently becomes a famous writer. Waugh's knowledge of Africa, and the people fighting over its spoils, gives this book a verisimilitude that is rare in the world of satire.
Some gripers, I see, have declared this book to be fatally flawed because it is racist. They are absolutely right. The relentless mockery of white anglo-saxons in this book is absolutely merciless. No one is spared. The landed class is portrayed as impoverished bores living in drafty manors. Newspaper publishers are portrayed as pompous starched shirts who live to make windy speeches at awards banquets. African explorers are portrayed as amoral profiteers stealing the natural resources from African natives. Journalists are not heroic Dan Rathers who Speak Truth To Power; they are drunk ignorant rascals who are little better than fiction writers. Waugh even manages to take some gratuitous whacks at such sacrosanct elements of British life like gardeners and WW1 vets. Still, I was able to "read through" all of this cruelty, and I would urge sensitive types to do the same; or, at least, get a grip.
This is Waughian satire at its best. It's tightly plotted, filled with detail, and very funny. In fact, The quality of his craftsmanship is at a very high level. His ability to set a scene - whether at a manor house, a newspaper office, a colonial outpost, or a stuffy banquet - gives this book a grounding in reality that makes the humor even more biting. if you just want to read one satire by Waugh, this would be the place to start (with "Dust" as the best of his "serious" books).
the basic story finds young gentleman William Boot-who writes a gardening column-is mistakenly sent to the african nation of Ishmaelia to cover the civil war that is supposed to be raging there. Instead of finding a civil war, Boot finds the mix of journalists, freebooters, marxists, fascists, and ex-pats who were a regular feature of life in the Third World throughout the 20th century. In fact, if you have read PJ O'Rourke's "Holidays In Hell," you'll be amazed how these characters survived 50 years after Waugh was writing. Ishmaelia is a Liberia-style nation which is being fought over by successive groups of communist subversives (including a college educated boxer from Alabama!), sinister fascists, and assorted plunderers. Boot manages to run into everybody, and inadvertently becomes a famous writer. Waugh's knowledge of Africa, and the people fighting over its spoils, gives this book a verisimilitude that is rare in the world of satire.
Some gripers, I see, have declared this book to be fatally flawed because it is racist. They are absolutely right. The relentless mockery of white anglo-saxons in this book is absolutely merciless. No one is spared. The landed class is portrayed as impoverished bores living in drafty manors. Newspaper publishers are portrayed as pompous starched shirts who live to make windy speeches at awards banquets. African explorers are portrayed as amoral profiteers stealing the natural resources from African natives. Journalists are not heroic Dan Rathers who Speak Truth To Power; they are drunk ignorant rascals who are little better than fiction writers. Waugh even manages to take some gratuitous whacks at such sacrosanct elements of British life like gardeners and WW1 vets. Still, I was able to "read through" all of this cruelty, and I would urge sensitive types to do the same; or, at least, get a grip.
This is Waughian satire at its best. It's tightly plotted, filled with detail, and very funny. In fact, The quality of his craftsmanship is at a very high level. His ability to set a scene - whether at a manor house, a newspaper office, a colonial outpost, or a stuffy banquet - gives this book a grounding in reality that makes the humor even more biting. if you just want to read one satire by Waugh, this would be the place to start (with "Dust" as the best of his "serious" books).
April 10, 2020
We know that there will be general confusion by the people employed to keep it together. Newspaper novel: where are the machines, the news, the excitement? Plot? Character? The main character gets confused--a true staple of Waugh--but it really doesn't matter at the end, with these White Britons being interchangeable anyway. This is my first wah-wah-wah experience by Waugh. Handful of Dust, Decline & Fall, Brideshead Revisited, Vile Bodies--these are superb in a way that this one just isn't.
July 27, 2022
There were some laugh out loud moments early in this satire of newspapers and foreign correspondents but it became tedious, it would’ve been more successful for me if half the size or less!
December 23, 2011
This book made me laugh out loud, something that books rarely do. Then again, I don't read comical fiction. Still, I suspect that, were I to look into the genre, Waugh would stand out in the crowd.
This is the third book that I've read from Waugh's work, and of the three it is the clear favorite. Along with his usual talent for razzing British societal mannerisms, Waugh adds his satirical take on foreign policy in a small, developing country that is, ostensibly, under threat of civil war. What starts as a jab against hyperbolic journalism and a total lack of understanding amongst policy makers turns into an absurd spectacle that even includes a measure of swashbuckling.
It feels like Waugh had fun writing this tale, and his powers of description are so apt that the feeling is catching. Here, for example, Waugh sketches the front yard of a woman who rents out rooms on her property:
Phrases such as "meteoric onslaught" are an excellent example of the skillful hand that Waugh brings to language.
Only one aspect of this book did not work, whatsoever, and that is the rampant racism that Waugh shows for black people. It is a sad and foolish shortcoming, much like the racism that Robert Howard succumbed to in his adventure stories. It is possible that Waugh is going for more humor when he tosses around slurs and epithets, but if this is the case, he goes too far and employs them with a discomforting fluency.
Otherwise, I very much enjoyed this book. I trust Waugh to make me laugh, and I am sure that I will turn to his work again in the future.
This is the third book that I've read from Waugh's work, and of the three it is the clear favorite. Along with his usual talent for razzing British societal mannerisms, Waugh adds his satirical take on foreign policy in a small, developing country that is, ostensibly, under threat of civil war. What starts as a jab against hyperbolic journalism and a total lack of understanding amongst policy makers turns into an absurd spectacle that even includes a measure of swashbuckling.
It feels like Waugh had fun writing this tale, and his powers of description are so apt that the feeling is catching. Here, for example, Waugh sketches the front yard of a woman who rents out rooms on her property:
"The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on their way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it and so did Frau Dressler's guests." (156)
Phrases such as "meteoric onslaught" are an excellent example of the skillful hand that Waugh brings to language.
Only one aspect of this book did not work, whatsoever, and that is the rampant racism that Waugh shows for black people. It is a sad and foolish shortcoming, much like the racism that Robert Howard succumbed to in his adventure stories. It is possible that Waugh is going for more humor when he tosses around slurs and epithets, but if this is the case, he goes too far and employs them with a discomforting fluency.
Otherwise, I very much enjoyed this book. I trust Waugh to make me laugh, and I am sure that I will turn to his work again in the future.
January 7, 2007
Journalists seem to love this guy. He's awfully snarky for a writer from the 1930s--but oh so good.
A quick read, "Scoop" is about a man "named" John Boot gets accidentally sent to Ishmaila as a foreign correspondent. The fellow manages to report some news after blazing through his budget and falling in love with a married gold digger named Katchen. Meanwhile Waugh paints a hilarious portrait of foreign correspondent idiots creating fake news and running around chasing ridiculous leads. It's not the nicest picture of journalists, but pretty funny. And Waugh creates the most ridiculous situations in his novels.
A quick read, "Scoop" is about a man "named" John Boot gets accidentally sent to Ishmaila as a foreign correspondent. The fellow manages to report some news after blazing through his budget and falling in love with a married gold digger named Katchen. Meanwhile Waugh paints a hilarious portrait of foreign correspondent idiots creating fake news and running around chasing ridiculous leads. It's not the nicest picture of journalists, but pretty funny. And Waugh creates the most ridiculous situations in his novels.
June 29, 2014
Delightful, old fashioned, smart , funny, not at all politically correct. In fact Evelyn Waugh at his best. It is a very short book but I enjoyed every minute of it. The main character fumbles his way through outrageous situations but always has the fates on his side and he always comes up a winner. I loved it!
May 22, 2018
“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.”Scoop is a much-admired satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh, widely held to be a comedic literary classic. It was first published in 1938 and recounts the tale of British foreign correspondents reporting on a civil war from the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia.
Waugh had himself worked as a special correspondent in Ethiopia during the 1930s, reporting for the Daily Mail on Mussolini's invasion. His experience left him with a cynical view of the profession and the men behind the news: the powerful newspaper barons.
Scoop's farcical plot involves the hapless William Boot, a nature writer who is mistaken for the fashionable novelist John Boot, and is sent in error to cover the African conflict by Lord Copper's Daily Beast. It paints journalists as callous, corruptible buffoons, and was described by Christopher Hitchens in his introduction to my modern Penguin Classic as: “A novel of pitiless realism; the mirror of satire held up to catch the Caliban of the press corps.”
It therefore saddens me to report that I didn't entirely connect with Scoop. While there were parts, for instance the ridiculous muddle over a badger and a great-crested grebe, which made me chuckle, on the whole it failed to amuse or delight. Why? For several reasons, not least because Waugh's book felt excessively dated. This in itself wouldn't normally concern me unduly – in fact, I concede, in some novels it can be a pleasing aspect – but I found certain racist elements, for instance the revolting names used by characters to describe black people, sickening in the extreme. Yes, I fully appreciate it is satire and the terms merely reflect the era in which the story was written. The period is of course representative of pre-war British journalism, exactly as Waugh intended, but to this bleeding heart, lefty, postcolonial reader, large chunks of the narrative simply weren't funny.
Waugh himself, while being an immensely gifted writer (one of my favourite novels is Brideshead Revisited ), was a controversial figure even during his lifetime, not least because of his openly fascist sympathies. However, Scoop remains one of his most popular works and is regarded by many as being one of the funniest pieces of fiction ever written about journalism. So there is little more I can write on the subject, except to assert, as someone deeply troubled by fake news, I was bitterly disappointed not to have enjoyed this novel.
You can read more of my reviews and other literary features at Book Jotter.
February 22, 2015
Add me to the list: hilarious. Sort of a British "salt-of-the-earth" comedy, where the common man is wiser than his supposed betters.
July 24, 2023
This is a light-hearted, humorous take on journalism, which points to the importance of luck and the near irrelevance of merit in reporters’ success. The launching point for the story is a foreign war that is going on, such that the powers at be in the news industry want it covered.
“I am in consultation with my editors on the subject. We think it a very promising little war. We propose to give it the fullest publicity.” (p. 14)
There is a novelist who wants to cover it. He pulls some strings to become the correspondent for the news agency, but the powers at be don’t really know anything about any of the writers, and send the wrong guy who happens to have the same last name. The guy they send is a rural countryman who is only a small-time writer of a back-pages “Lush Places” column (e.g., it talks about rodent movement on farms) and he hates traveling.
“I’m afraid I know very little about journalism.” (p. 79).
Yet, he lucks into success, partly by being scammed by a married woman who sells him geological specimens and who he falls for; complications and funny moments follow.
“Poor William. I will get you some news.” (p. 172)
“…and then, laboriously, with a single first finger and his heart heavy with misgiving, he typed the first news story of his meteoric career.” (p. 179)
Great Quote:
“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.” (p. 80)
“I am in consultation with my editors on the subject. We think it a very promising little war. We propose to give it the fullest publicity.” (p. 14)
There is a novelist who wants to cover it. He pulls some strings to become the correspondent for the news agency, but the powers at be don’t really know anything about any of the writers, and send the wrong guy who happens to have the same last name. The guy they send is a rural countryman who is only a small-time writer of a back-pages “Lush Places” column (e.g., it talks about rodent movement on farms) and he hates traveling.
“I’m afraid I know very little about journalism.” (p. 79).
Yet, he lucks into success, partly by being scammed by a married woman who sells him geological specimens and who he falls for; complications and funny moments follow.
“Poor William. I will get you some news.” (p. 172)
“…and then, laboriously, with a single first finger and his heart heavy with misgiving, he typed the first news story of his meteoric career.” (p. 179)
Great Quote:
“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.” (p. 80)
February 12, 2018
Orwell said Waugh was almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be while holding untenable opinions. “Outside the owls hunted maternal rodents and their furry brood”; funny how he mercilessly speared sentimentality, given that it’s such a fundamental part of the fascism that he seemed quite partial to. But then internal logic was never the strong suit of bigots.
July 29, 2025
I wrote the following after purchasing a copy of this novel and Black Mischief in 2023:
'Of course I have read this novel many times but not in years, in fact I haven't read any work by Waugh in years even though he was an author I loved greatly, sometimes you fear that the books you love in your youth may prove disappointments - particularly this one and Black Mischief - I fear I may not find them as funny. But I will find out before the end of 2023.'
It is now mid 2024 so I am behind schedule in my reading, as always, but I have now read, or reread (I read all of Waugh for the first time in my teenage years and some of it I reread several times), Scoop and intend to work my way through his oeuvre again. I had feared that I would find Scoop unreadable or offensive, it isn't, but it is problematic and I am going to treat both the novels strengths and weaknesses.
First of all Waugh was a writer of some of the finest English prose ever, and the opening 71 pages (in my edition) of the section 'The Stitch Service' is a masterpiece of complex plotting, jewel like precision and a use of minimal writing that should be studied by any aspiring writer. In those few pages he sets up all the major themes, characters and plot devices that will carry the novel through. When you consider that he creates fashionable Mayfair, Fleet Street and the grotesqueries of Boot Magna it is awe inspiring how much Waugh does with so few words. Because Waugh's writing can be described, I suppose, as cinematic, his novels, including this one, have been made into some dazzlingly mediocrefilms and writers as varied as William Boyd, John Mortimer and Stephen Fry have found that once you remove Waugh's words all you are left with is set dressing (please see my footnote *1). Adaptations of Waugh's novels like Scott Fitzgerald's invariably disappoint.
As a novel, and I refuse to use a qualifier like 'comic', Scoop is brilliant through its first two parts the already mentioned 'The Stitch Service' and the second part 'Stones £20' which makes up the bulk of the novel and sees the novel's unlikely hero William Boot triumph. Unfortunately the concluding section 'Banquet' drags rather. Waugh doesn't seem able to end the novel or tie up all the loose ends, which is surprising when you consider the devastatingly brilliant endings he produced in Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust. Although only 32 pages (in my edition) 'Banquet' has longueurs which make it seem three times as long. For this reason I regard Scoop as flawed, there is even suspicion that Waugh got bored and wrote himself into a corner and floundered creating an ending.
As for the novel's problems? First off there is the problem of Evelyn Waugh. He was a particularly unlikeable writer, but then if we only read books by nice people the books left for reading would be dreadfully dull.
Is Scoop racist and anti semitic? There is language and phrases used that no one would dream of using now, or probably any time since WWII. But Waugh's intent was not to be racist or anti semitic, that doesn't mean he isn't. But if readers want to be as offended by Waugh as they would be by Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer or Thomas Dixon's The Clansman' then they will be and nothing I can say will change it. If words like 'yids' or the 'n' word are used it is because Waugh reproduces how those were used in 1938. You have the same problem with Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn. Were Twain and Waugh racists? By today's standards of course but not for their time (and Waugh and Twain were from eras and cultures alien to each other) and racism was not their intent.
In the case of Waugh one needs to be clear that though he wasn't, for his time, racist he was someone who never regarded anyone outside the gilded little world he existed in as of any importance. His English working or middle class characters are as cliched and limited as the inhabitants of Ishmaelia. They aren't fully rounded people, or characters but collections of knee jerk reactions. You have only to see how limited and two dimensional the locals who meet Slater at Boot Magna are compared to the inhabitants of Boot Hall.
I find it interesting that so many reviewers will obsess over Waugh's antique put downs and ignore his staggering insouciance about war, revolution, deaths, murder, rapine and pillage. It isn't simply the reproduction of the attitudes of foreign correspondents. It is an attitude that pervades a certain type of English literature of those times. There were people that mattered, those of an infinitesimally small class and background, and then there were the 'little people' - comic cockneys, annoying strikers, bolshie workers, the women or servants who keep their well oiled and comfortable lives going - when this novel was written they were just there and didn't have to be taken seriously. After WWII they couldn't be ignored or dismissed and most of the novels post WWII by Waugh and his confreres (Nancy Mitford, Ian Fleming et al) are long rants about uppity oiks who expected to be paid decent wages.
The shocking thing about Scoop is not that Waugh is racist or antisemitic but that he, and so many other English people of his background and generation, viewed the world as a place full of funny foreigners doing silly things because they were neither English nor ruled by England. Waugh is not just nasty about Jews or blacks he is nasty about anyone who wasn't part of his circle and that nastiness can encompass plenty of blue bloods as well. Waugh observes the world from outside, he is not part of it, he despises it. For this reason English literary and cultural life for most of the post WWI years is so insubstantial compared to countries like France. Where are England's Cocteau or Radinguet? never mind Bernanos, Celine, Malraux or Gide?
The final question, the only question that matters, is whether Scoop is worth reading. It is.
*1 John Mortimer cheated in his 1981 TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited by having large chunks of the novel read as voice over - this was possible with eleven hour long episodes but no cinema film has that luxury.
'Of course I have read this novel many times but not in years, in fact I haven't read any work by Waugh in years even though he was an author I loved greatly, sometimes you fear that the books you love in your youth may prove disappointments - particularly this one and Black Mischief - I fear I may not find them as funny. But I will find out before the end of 2023.'
It is now mid 2024 so I am behind schedule in my reading, as always, but I have now read, or reread (I read all of Waugh for the first time in my teenage years and some of it I reread several times), Scoop and intend to work my way through his oeuvre again. I had feared that I would find Scoop unreadable or offensive, it isn't, but it is problematic and I am going to treat both the novels strengths and weaknesses.
First of all Waugh was a writer of some of the finest English prose ever, and the opening 71 pages (in my edition) of the section 'The Stitch Service' is a masterpiece of complex plotting, jewel like precision and a use of minimal writing that should be studied by any aspiring writer. In those few pages he sets up all the major themes, characters and plot devices that will carry the novel through. When you consider that he creates fashionable Mayfair, Fleet Street and the grotesqueries of Boot Magna it is awe inspiring how much Waugh does with so few words. Because Waugh's writing can be described, I suppose, as cinematic, his novels, including this one, have been made into some dazzlingly mediocrefilms and writers as varied as William Boyd, John Mortimer and Stephen Fry have found that once you remove Waugh's words all you are left with is set dressing (please see my footnote *1). Adaptations of Waugh's novels like Scott Fitzgerald's invariably disappoint.
As a novel, and I refuse to use a qualifier like 'comic', Scoop is brilliant through its first two parts the already mentioned 'The Stitch Service' and the second part 'Stones £20' which makes up the bulk of the novel and sees the novel's unlikely hero William Boot triumph. Unfortunately the concluding section 'Banquet' drags rather. Waugh doesn't seem able to end the novel or tie up all the loose ends, which is surprising when you consider the devastatingly brilliant endings he produced in Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust. Although only 32 pages (in my edition) 'Banquet' has longueurs which make it seem three times as long. For this reason I regard Scoop as flawed, there is even suspicion that Waugh got bored and wrote himself into a corner and floundered creating an ending.
As for the novel's problems? First off there is the problem of Evelyn Waugh. He was a particularly unlikeable writer, but then if we only read books by nice people the books left for reading would be dreadfully dull.
Is Scoop racist and anti semitic? There is language and phrases used that no one would dream of using now, or probably any time since WWII. But Waugh's intent was not to be racist or anti semitic, that doesn't mean he isn't. But if readers want to be as offended by Waugh as they would be by Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer or Thomas Dixon's The Clansman' then they will be and nothing I can say will change it. If words like 'yids' or the 'n' word are used it is because Waugh reproduces how those were used in 1938. You have the same problem with Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn. Were Twain and Waugh racists? By today's standards of course but not for their time (and Waugh and Twain were from eras and cultures alien to each other) and racism was not their intent.
In the case of Waugh one needs to be clear that though he wasn't, for his time, racist he was someone who never regarded anyone outside the gilded little world he existed in as of any importance. His English working or middle class characters are as cliched and limited as the inhabitants of Ishmaelia. They aren't fully rounded people, or characters but collections of knee jerk reactions. You have only to see how limited and two dimensional the locals who meet Slater at Boot Magna are compared to the inhabitants of Boot Hall.
I find it interesting that so many reviewers will obsess over Waugh's antique put downs and ignore his staggering insouciance about war, revolution, deaths, murder, rapine and pillage. It isn't simply the reproduction of the attitudes of foreign correspondents. It is an attitude that pervades a certain type of English literature of those times. There were people that mattered, those of an infinitesimally small class and background, and then there were the 'little people' - comic cockneys, annoying strikers, bolshie workers, the women or servants who keep their well oiled and comfortable lives going - when this novel was written they were just there and didn't have to be taken seriously. After WWII they couldn't be ignored or dismissed and most of the novels post WWII by Waugh and his confreres (Nancy Mitford, Ian Fleming et al) are long rants about uppity oiks who expected to be paid decent wages.
The shocking thing about Scoop is not that Waugh is racist or antisemitic but that he, and so many other English people of his background and generation, viewed the world as a place full of funny foreigners doing silly things because they were neither English nor ruled by England. Waugh is not just nasty about Jews or blacks he is nasty about anyone who wasn't part of his circle and that nastiness can encompass plenty of blue bloods as well. Waugh observes the world from outside, he is not part of it, he despises it. For this reason English literary and cultural life for most of the post WWI years is so insubstantial compared to countries like France. Where are England's Cocteau or Radinguet? never mind Bernanos, Celine, Malraux or Gide?
The final question, the only question that matters, is whether Scoop is worth reading. It is.
*1 John Mortimer cheated in his 1981 TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited by having large chunks of the novel read as voice over - this was possible with eleven hour long episodes but no cinema film has that luxury.
August 6, 2024
What makes 'Scoop' such delicious, tongue-in-cheek reading even today, more than 80 years after it was first published? Obviously, it is more fashionable among the recent clout of readers to treat it as a quaint, albeit enjoyable, relic of those days when racial and gender stereotypes could be tossed up not so casually in English literature. Quaint, Evelyn Waugh's book is for sure, but I think that like all great satires which endure for generations, Waugh's hilarious farce of sensationalist tabloid journalism at its most outrageous feels even more relevant and prescient in today's times of 'fake news' and salacious gossip columns giving birth to trolls and eliciting much laughter in the social media circuits. News is no longer what we used to read to obtain the truth.
If there is any difference between the world of 'Scoop' and the world of today, it might be a slight one; today, leaders of nations and organised democracies are dictating their pressmen and yes-men to keep the grapevine of lies and exaggerated or even non-existent achievements blooming and thriving in the fertile heat of people's indifference or ignorance, something like what Squealer in Orwell's 'Animal Farm' did for Napoleon, something like what Goebbels did for the delusional Hitler. That is, of course, a sight more darkly comic and unsettling than seeing the hopeless buffoon Lord Copper, newspaper tycoon of London's Fleet Street, go about in absent-minded, delusional fashion, proud of his 'talent' at spotting ace correspondents and reporters who are obviously falsifying or even inventing entire truths to earn their pay as per the contract.
But then, haven't we already a spoiled brat of a business tycoon ruling a nation already manipulating the press and giving big, laughable speeches to his followers and fanatics on whatever pleases him? By that comparison, Lord Copper is an almost benevolent fool and I would not mind working under him as a correspondent too! At least, he will commission me to go to Africa or write lurid, dirty anecdotes and still earn my keep.
And so, Waugh's book is a cheerful, goofy lark of a novel. It is not meant to be taken seriously but it is hard to think of it in that way especially when the writer's notorious scathing sense of humour takes over. Orwell was more direct and brutally honest and Greene was more heartfelt and compassionate for the hapless men and women in the more comic of his entertainments. Waugh, on the other hand, is more of a direct descendant of the likes of his forebears Oscar Wilde, Hector Hugh Munro and P.G Wodehouse; like them, his humour has a take-no-prisoners ruthlessness that is yet elegant and beautifully precise. Mere words and turns of phrase and jabs aimed at the stifling conventionality of our hapless and dotty English old-timers can both tickle you and terrify you with their scalding wit.
It is primarily as a sleek, masterfully staged comedy of manners, in the vein of Wilde's plays or Wodehouse and Munro's instantly quotable drawing room comedies, that 'Scoop' works best, with a rich cast of doddering old-timers and bewildered youngsters, of the frequently nonplussed foreign editor Mr. Salter who is completely out of sorts in the country or the novel's unlikely hero, whose name should be kept a secret if one is to preserve the comic suspense intact, and his family of malicious aunts and quirky uncles, to amuse us for almost the whole of the book's length. The broader gags and sillier slapstick, too, make for a riotous time, reminding us just how wacky British comedy, known for its subtlety, can be.
It is only in Waugh's naive, somewhat even knee-high attempts at political satire that 'Scoop' feels
distinctly, though harmlessly, dated. His fictional West African wasteland of Ishmaelia, where a civil war might be brewing and which is crowded with American, English and European correspondents driven to the depths of despair, does not quite come alive very convincingly (by comparison, Greene's real-life backdrop of Havana at the wee-end of Batista's regime made for a more compelling and believable stage to the rich comedy of 'Our Man In Havana') and while the wild goose chase for the titular 'scoop' for news makes for a deliriously rib-tickling time, there could have been a more audacious payoff to the same.
That said, it was back in the 30s that Waugh was suggesting, boldly and presciently, that the whole of the West could go so far as engineering a coup in an African country to get privileges to its rich reservoir of resources. Many years after that, it would be Frederick Forsyth writing 'The Dogs Of War'. So, there is something to be said about how well the book has aged.
So, yes, I loved 'Scoop'. It is fun, without being unintelligent, and it really is worth buying for the brilliant, perfectly preserved slices of crisp British humour alone. I think too that there is more to Waugh than meets the eye, as it is with Greene, and I would love to discover his more 'serious' novels next.
My original rating for the book was a solid 4 stars, but I added an half because it made me think that it is not quite preposterous a premise, of journalism becoming a cheap effect as it is happening today. I can never be even slightly cruel to books that I have enjoyed and so, here is a full five stars, out of sheer generosity. Lord Copper would be glad with that.
If there is any difference between the world of 'Scoop' and the world of today, it might be a slight one; today, leaders of nations and organised democracies are dictating their pressmen and yes-men to keep the grapevine of lies and exaggerated or even non-existent achievements blooming and thriving in the fertile heat of people's indifference or ignorance, something like what Squealer in Orwell's 'Animal Farm' did for Napoleon, something like what Goebbels did for the delusional Hitler. That is, of course, a sight more darkly comic and unsettling than seeing the hopeless buffoon Lord Copper, newspaper tycoon of London's Fleet Street, go about in absent-minded, delusional fashion, proud of his 'talent' at spotting ace correspondents and reporters who are obviously falsifying or even inventing entire truths to earn their pay as per the contract.
But then, haven't we already a spoiled brat of a business tycoon ruling a nation already manipulating the press and giving big, laughable speeches to his followers and fanatics on whatever pleases him? By that comparison, Lord Copper is an almost benevolent fool and I would not mind working under him as a correspondent too! At least, he will commission me to go to Africa or write lurid, dirty anecdotes and still earn my keep.
And so, Waugh's book is a cheerful, goofy lark of a novel. It is not meant to be taken seriously but it is hard to think of it in that way especially when the writer's notorious scathing sense of humour takes over. Orwell was more direct and brutally honest and Greene was more heartfelt and compassionate for the hapless men and women in the more comic of his entertainments. Waugh, on the other hand, is more of a direct descendant of the likes of his forebears Oscar Wilde, Hector Hugh Munro and P.G Wodehouse; like them, his humour has a take-no-prisoners ruthlessness that is yet elegant and beautifully precise. Mere words and turns of phrase and jabs aimed at the stifling conventionality of our hapless and dotty English old-timers can both tickle you and terrify you with their scalding wit.
It is primarily as a sleek, masterfully staged comedy of manners, in the vein of Wilde's plays or Wodehouse and Munro's instantly quotable drawing room comedies, that 'Scoop' works best, with a rich cast of doddering old-timers and bewildered youngsters, of the frequently nonplussed foreign editor Mr. Salter who is completely out of sorts in the country or the novel's unlikely hero, whose name should be kept a secret if one is to preserve the comic suspense intact, and his family of malicious aunts and quirky uncles, to amuse us for almost the whole of the book's length. The broader gags and sillier slapstick, too, make for a riotous time, reminding us just how wacky British comedy, known for its subtlety, can be.
It is only in Waugh's naive, somewhat even knee-high attempts at political satire that 'Scoop' feels
distinctly, though harmlessly, dated. His fictional West African wasteland of Ishmaelia, where a civil war might be brewing and which is crowded with American, English and European correspondents driven to the depths of despair, does not quite come alive very convincingly (by comparison, Greene's real-life backdrop of Havana at the wee-end of Batista's regime made for a more compelling and believable stage to the rich comedy of 'Our Man In Havana') and while the wild goose chase for the titular 'scoop' for news makes for a deliriously rib-tickling time, there could have been a more audacious payoff to the same.
That said, it was back in the 30s that Waugh was suggesting, boldly and presciently, that the whole of the West could go so far as engineering a coup in an African country to get privileges to its rich reservoir of resources. Many years after that, it would be Frederick Forsyth writing 'The Dogs Of War'. So, there is something to be said about how well the book has aged.
So, yes, I loved 'Scoop'. It is fun, without being unintelligent, and it really is worth buying for the brilliant, perfectly preserved slices of crisp British humour alone. I think too that there is more to Waugh than meets the eye, as it is with Greene, and I would love to discover his more 'serious' novels next.
My original rating for the book was a solid 4 stars, but I added an half because it made me think that it is not quite preposterous a premise, of journalism becoming a cheap effect as it is happening today. I can never be even slightly cruel to books that I have enjoyed and so, here is a full five stars, out of sheer generosity. Lord Copper would be glad with that.
November 1, 2024
Evelyn Waugh es un escritor británico que se caracteriza por un humor ácido y una crítica subyacente en sus libros. Aquí el humor británico expande sus fronteras y deja de ser correcto para volverse irreverente.
En esta historia en particular explora los entresijos que se esconden tras la fachada de cualquier diario prominente en especial la particular área de corresponsalía extranjera, un lugar donde se han creado grandes carreras, periodistas encumbrados por sus crónicas, al hacerlo desde un punto de vista muy personal, al haber formado parte de ese gremio, se desmenuza sin tapujos las cosas sin sentido y absurdas que hacen unos y otros por la fama, el estatus y el dinero.
Todos los personajes son hilarantes, desde la influyente Mrs Sticht, que manejando su minúsculo carrito es capaz de llegar literalmente a cualquier lugar, o Lord Copper dueño entre otras cosas de un periódico, del cual desconoce cómo se maneja pero cuyas ordenes son más que ley, y nunca se ha escuchado a algún empleado osar contradecirlo o negarle algo.
En medio del continente africano existe un país que a nadie le importa y menos a Inglaterra pues no tienen nada de valor, pero hay rumores de que estallará una guerra, lo que hace que todos los diarios del mundo manden corresponsales a este lugar remoto y pobre.
“No es en absoluto rico. Si fuera rico, ya pertenecería a Inglaterra. ¿Por qué quieren ustedes conquistarlo?”
A partir de ahí se da un sinnúmero de situaciones que parecen absurdas y risibles pero que solo exhiben a lo peor de la humanidad, las ansias de poseer y de ser son examinadas a través de una lupa, que es el ojo del escritor, y para ello echa mano de un protagonista totalmente contrario, una persona que ha vivido protegido en un pueblito de Inglaterra viviendo con sus múltiples parientes y sin casi salir a la calle, por un disparatado error es arrojado literalmente a una aventura peligrosa pero sobre todo absurda.
A partes iguales el libro te hace reflexionar y te hace reír, la manera en que desgrana y da sentido a los hechos más ilógicos es sencillamente magistral.
Por otro lado al final te quedas con un gusto amargo de saber que los que mueven el mundo realmente nunca han sabido cómo hacerlo, solo se dejan llevar por los impulsos y por la corriente siempre y cuando los sitúe en el mejor lugar.
En esta historia en particular explora los entresijos que se esconden tras la fachada de cualquier diario prominente en especial la particular área de corresponsalía extranjera, un lugar donde se han creado grandes carreras, periodistas encumbrados por sus crónicas, al hacerlo desde un punto de vista muy personal, al haber formado parte de ese gremio, se desmenuza sin tapujos las cosas sin sentido y absurdas que hacen unos y otros por la fama, el estatus y el dinero.
Todos los personajes son hilarantes, desde la influyente Mrs Sticht, que manejando su minúsculo carrito es capaz de llegar literalmente a cualquier lugar, o Lord Copper dueño entre otras cosas de un periódico, del cual desconoce cómo se maneja pero cuyas ordenes son más que ley, y nunca se ha escuchado a algún empleado osar contradecirlo o negarle algo.
En medio del continente africano existe un país que a nadie le importa y menos a Inglaterra pues no tienen nada de valor, pero hay rumores de que estallará una guerra, lo que hace que todos los diarios del mundo manden corresponsales a este lugar remoto y pobre.
“No es en absoluto rico. Si fuera rico, ya pertenecería a Inglaterra. ¿Por qué quieren ustedes conquistarlo?”
A partir de ahí se da un sinnúmero de situaciones que parecen absurdas y risibles pero que solo exhiben a lo peor de la humanidad, las ansias de poseer y de ser son examinadas a través de una lupa, que es el ojo del escritor, y para ello echa mano de un protagonista totalmente contrario, una persona que ha vivido protegido en un pueblito de Inglaterra viviendo con sus múltiples parientes y sin casi salir a la calle, por un disparatado error es arrojado literalmente a una aventura peligrosa pero sobre todo absurda.
A partes iguales el libro te hace reflexionar y te hace reír, la manera en que desgrana y da sentido a los hechos más ilógicos es sencillamente magistral.
Por otro lado al final te quedas con un gusto amargo de saber que los que mueven el mundo realmente nunca han sabido cómo hacerlo, solo se dejan llevar por los impulsos y por la corriente siempre y cuando los sitúe en el mejor lugar.
February 10, 2021
Great book, I don't know how I missed this one, but really enjoyed it.
Want to read
May 30, 2024The Guardian ranked this is the #60 of the 100 best novels written in English: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
October 21, 2024
"Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh has sat on my bookshelves for decades with other books by Waugh, "A Handful of Dust", "The Loved One", "Decline and Fall", and my favorite, "Brideshead Revisited". I have had it so long I assumed I must have read it. Just couldn't remember what it was about. I thought I would re-read it. After about a month of slow reading I discovered I had never read it and now I know why.
First of all, if you read the jacket cover there is talk about things like satire and Fleet Street. Okay, Waugh was known for satire. Fleet Street? London newspapers? What do I know about London newspapers? What do I care? A war has broken out in the fictional country of Ishmaelia. In a case of mistaken identity The Beast sends their nature reporter, William Boot, to cover the war. When he arrives his lack of experience would be considered acute except there is no war to report on. So he spends his time getting drunk with other reporters, following dead end leads to areas where there is no action, and falling in love with a German expatriate who bilks him out of money every time they meet. Because this is an English novel the humor is understated. Not exactly sidesplitting stuff.
Since "Scoop" was written in 1938 I suspect that the average British reader was jaded by the Great War and the worldwide turmoil of countries invading other countries. But since no shots were being fired in England it was okay to poke fun at the prevailing warlike atmosphere. But just like the real thing satires of war just aren't very funny. And that's the scoop.
First of all, if you read the jacket cover there is talk about things like satire and Fleet Street. Okay, Waugh was known for satire. Fleet Street? London newspapers? What do I know about London newspapers? What do I care? A war has broken out in the fictional country of Ishmaelia. In a case of mistaken identity The Beast sends their nature reporter, William Boot, to cover the war. When he arrives his lack of experience would be considered acute except there is no war to report on. So he spends his time getting drunk with other reporters, following dead end leads to areas where there is no action, and falling in love with a German expatriate who bilks him out of money every time they meet. Because this is an English novel the humor is understated. Not exactly sidesplitting stuff.
Since "Scoop" was written in 1938 I suspect that the average British reader was jaded by the Great War and the worldwide turmoil of countries invading other countries. But since no shots were being fired in England it was okay to poke fun at the prevailing warlike atmosphere. But just like the real thing satires of war just aren't very funny. And that's the scoop.
February 4, 2013
It is an old Penguin book, the orange and white one, a reprint from 1951. This book, these musty papers are 8 years older than i am!
It was a 50c find, among boxes of old books for sale at the school fair last month. Maybe it was even just a quarter. Cheap as anyway. And still in good enough condition for reading; the pages arent falling out, there’s no water damage etc. And it has that marvelous musty old book smell. Aaah.
And what a surprise of a treat to read. Having read only Brideshead Revisited many years ago, when i was too young to really appreciate it, but old enough to like it anyway, it felt like my introduction to the satire of Evelyn Waugh. It does make me wonder, where are these types of writers today?
The book has lively eccentric characters, you can see the old movie in your brain. Yet i am surprised that i cant find if a movie has been made of it. Some sassy comedy with fast talkers, smooth suave fraudsters, Claudette Colbert, or Cary Grant.....surely something must have been done on film with this....
(read several years ago, came across the jottings today)
It was a 50c find, among boxes of old books for sale at the school fair last month. Maybe it was even just a quarter. Cheap as anyway. And still in good enough condition for reading; the pages arent falling out, there’s no water damage etc. And it has that marvelous musty old book smell. Aaah.
And what a surprise of a treat to read. Having read only Brideshead Revisited many years ago, when i was too young to really appreciate it, but old enough to like it anyway, it felt like my introduction to the satire of Evelyn Waugh. It does make me wonder, where are these types of writers today?
The book has lively eccentric characters, you can see the old movie in your brain. Yet i am surprised that i cant find if a movie has been made of it. Some sassy comedy with fast talkers, smooth suave fraudsters, Claudette Colbert, or Cary Grant.....surely something must have been done on film with this....
(read several years ago, came across the jottings today)
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