Scoop

Well, if I’d thought Black Mischief was racist, it’s almost woke compared to Scoop. And yet Scoop is the Waugh novel which appears on so many best of lists, including “Best British Novels of All Time”. Of course, the people putting together these lists are not the ones who are troubled by the casual everyday racism embedded in them, but things have changed – for the better – and these works really should be re-evaluated in light of present-day sensibilities. And yes, I’m happy to call any right-winger a fascist, even if their views don’t fit the dictionary definition of fascism, let’s not forget taxonomy is a derailing technique and the only people who derail arguments are people who don’t want their views held up to show more public scrutiny. Because they’re probably fascist. Or racist. Like Scoop actually is. Its story is apparently inspired by real events, but it’s still a story about a white man – a hapless white man, it must be said – who goes to an “uncivilised” African country. Because all brown countries are, of course, uncivilised. At least to 1930s white people. But then, to add insult to injury, the text is filled with a number of racial slurs, not just spoken in dialogue, but in the actual descriptive prose. I lost count of them. The big joke is that a newspaper magnate has picked the wrong man – due to some confusion over names – to be his foreign correspondent covering a civil war in the invented African nation of Ishmaelia, but the Ishmaelians are too stupid and indolent to actually fight and all that happens is a series of contradictory communiques by government agencies. It’s a variation on Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, but written from a British colonialist perspective of the 1930s. Waugh was a terrible snob and a horrible person – it’s well-documented, he was deemed “officer most likely to be shot by his troops” during WWII – but he had a wonderful prose style. It’s a dilemma. His command of English is a joy to behold, but he wrote horribly racist and snobbish books (the latter allegedly presented as “comedy”). Read him and then throw his books away, that’s my strategy. show less

As he was gaining fame as a novelist, Evelyn Waugh spent time as newspaper correspondent in Africa covering the Ethiopian-Italian war. That experience was essential in forming the basic plot of Scoop, which above all else is a fierce satire of the state of journalism in Great Britain of the 1930s. In the book, the owner of a London-based tabloid newspaper who is always in pursuit of the next hot story, charges his foreign editor to hire an up-and-coming writer to cover an emerging conflict in the African country of Ishmaelia. The editor erroneously taps the writer’s cousin, an introverted man who produces a minor nature column from his village home. This case of mistaken identity sets in motion an unlikely, but often amusing, series show more of events that fall somewhere between screwball comedy and a bitter indictment of how Fleet Street went about its business at that time. After many travails, the impromptu reporter is successful in uncovering news of an attempted coup-d’etat—sort of, anyway—which represents the “scoop” of the novel’s title. After that experience, the fledging correspondent happily returns to his country home, while a different relative of his benefits from yet another instance of switched identities.

I am somewhat torn as to how to evaluate this book. On one hand, I appreciate its skewering view of a subject that certainly invites considerable lampooning and scorn. Indeed, while technology has evolved greatly over the ensuing decades, the basic complaints in Scoop as to how journalism sometimes functions could still be written today. Also, the novel gives the reader a keen, if scathing, insight into British culture as it existed just before WWII. As much as anything, that is likely the reason why the book continues to be so well regarded in critical circles (e.g., it is rated on Modern Library’s list of the top novels of the last century). On the other hand, despite its farcical style, it is not always a pleasant book for a present-day audience; the dismissive colonial perspective that Waugh adopts is considered by many to be overtly racist. In fact, by some accounts, the author himself was a rude, cruel, and snobbish man—he supported fascist causes early in his career—which makes it hard to separate the fiction from the artist. So, while I certainly enjoyed the glimpse the book offers into the British mindset of a long-passed era, it does not rank among my favorite reading experiences. show less

Evelyn Waugh published this satirical account of the unlikely success of a foreign correspondent just before the outbreak of World War Two, when the proxy war that the competing totalitarian dictatorships of Germany and Russia had waged in countries such as Spain became a direct confrontation.
The setting is the mythical northeast African country of Ishmaelia. Any resemblance to the nation that occupies this space in our world, Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia), is hardly coincidental since Waugh served as a correspondent there in 1935.
The book is divided into three sections. The first is hilarious, and the final section evoked a good number of guffaws from me. The middle section, set in Ishmaelia itself, wasn’t as amusing, no doubt show more because of Waugh’s recourse to national stereotypes. The posture of casual superiority that all Europeans in the book assume concerning all Africans is undoubtedly an accurate reflection of the late colonial period. It’s simply not funny anymore. Nor is the way that relatively harmless local quarrels are leveraged by the Europeans in the interests of competing ideologies. In the end, Waugh suggests that even these are fronts for claims to mineral rights. Something that didn’t end with the passing of the colonial era.
Still, I found the book enjoyable. Lord Copper, the press magnate who sets it all in motion, seems a send-up of Lord Beaverbrook, but his type lives on in the Murdochs of our day. One more thing lives on, the immortal name of the newspaper, The Daily Beast. show less

While the principal tool in satire is humor, it’s objective, ulitmately, is the dispensing of scorn. And Waugh has some level of contempt and scorn for just about every character in this book in varying degrees, including the central protagonist. You either find that exhilarating, or not so. What a shock that a novel about colonialist hanky pankies in Africa prior to WW2 would appear racially insensitive by today’s standards. Waugh hates everyone; he sees everyone’s shortcomings, no matter who they are. He writes his hilarious poison with an absolutely stunning turn of phrase. For someone who defined themselves as a devout Catholic, his writings can be pretty diabolic.
The whole end sequence of the book after the central show more character's return home, is very funny. show less

John Courtney Boot is a novelist of modest success, having published eight books, each of which sold about fifteen thousand copies and were read by a well-respected type. William Boot is the author of the Beast’s bi-weekly column Lush Places devoted to nature, a champion of “the questing voleand chronicler of the habits of the badger. Uncle Theodore is, well, someone else altogether. Boot, John Courtney not William, is backed by a lady of some repute in a conversation with Lord Copper, editor of the Beast, as a candidate to be the paper’s foreign correspondent in Ishmelia, where a revolution is breaking out. Boot, William not John Courtney, gets the assignment. William descends on the tiny and peaceful, it turns out, nation with show more dozens of other journalists, and they begin wagging the dog. William trips onto the a story while the rest of the foreign correspondents trek to a non-existent war-torn city. William returns to London Boot, John Courtney not William, receives a knighthood for the reporting, while Boot, Uncle Theodore neither John Courtney nor William, is feted by Lord Copper.

When I read [A Handful of Dust], my first exposure to Evelyn Waugh, I found myself chuckling through the tragic story. But [Scoop] had me laughing aloud. Waugh writes with a sharp comic timing and a keen eye for the absurd. Wild twists and crossed signals throughout the story mark Waugh’s smart imagination. And his characters, especially the hapless William, are quirky without being flat, eccentric without being stereotypical.

Waugh, himself a journalist for Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, does not have a very high opinion of journalists and the news media. The send-up of journalists, casting them as manipulative concoctors, makes the novel timeless – the world of news may have changed with the television and the internet but you can see the same kind of entertainment-minded, policy-driven manipulators at work in [Scoop] as must work at Fox News or CNN today.

Bottom Line: Smartly imaginative and very funny send up of journalism – a real comedy of errors.

5 bones!!!!!
A Favorite for the Year. show less

I absolutely loved this little book! Ridiculous from start to finish, but in a good way......exposing all of the befuddled disconnectedness of not only Fleet Street press, but upper crust London Society and the landed (but broke) gentry. One blunder after another in the most ridiculous set of circumstances finds our hero(?) William Boot yanked from the comfort of his run-down country estate and plunged headlong into a political war in Africa.....nothing is as it seems....and for once, lack of initiative actually saves the day. I cannot say how many times i chuckled out loud as i read this.....nor can i say when the last time was i read a book that caused me to chuckle out loud over and over! Waugh hits this with a biting wit and allows show more these absolutely ridiculous (yet believable) people to thrive in their self-induced chaos, and we are just along for the ride. So glad to have read this. Thank you Evelyn Waugh! show less

Very smart satire on the world's press as it was apprehended by Waugh in the Nineteen Thirties. Not much has changed ninety years later except that correspondents in war theatres now take themselves so seriously with their vests and silly helmets. The manipulation is even more rampant than it once was.
Anyway, I love Waugh's eviscerating wit, his piercing recognition of idiots on the loose, and a generalising attitude that human behaviour is bumbling at best.