Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
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Book Reviews of Scoop
Book Review: An appreciation of Evelyn Waugh's style.
Summary: 5 Stars
'Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.' That must be good style.Book Review: Hey Kevin - PLEASE read a biography of 'Ms. Waugh'
Summary: 5 Stars
She's a he. Pronounced EEEEE-velyn.Book Review: Stop the presses
Summary: 4 Stars
Call William Boot the Forrest Gump of the 1930s: oblivious to the process he is a part of, he continually finds himself in the right place at the right time, blindly stumbling onto the Big Story that made him a reluctant hero.
In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh -- one of the most famous curmudgeons of English literature -- produces an enjoyable and easy-to-read satire that will recall the novels of P.G. Wodehouse and Graham Greene's lighter efforts. In the book, Mr. Waugh points his razor wit toward the media, royalty, politics, warfare, and travel, all in the context of a fictional and fanciful war in the made-up Republic of Ishmaelia that is based on Italy's ill-fated war in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), which Mr. Waugh himself covered as a young reporter.
His sharpest barbs are saved for his one-time profession, which he paints as being populated by lazy and back-stabbing prima donnas incapable of independent thought and more interested in style -- or at least the appearance of style -- than in substance. The bland Boot, the story's protagonist who is a decent enough fellow but a hopeless journalist, manages to get far closer to the truth than any of his colleagues but does so only by chance.
Though the attitudes, language, and practices described in Scoop are more than a little dated, there is an element of truth in the picture Mr. Waugh paints of the Fourth Estate (as sad cases like the contemporary one involving one-time New York Times rising star Jayson Blair remind us). The descriptions are, however, greatly exaggerated: it is impossible to imagine a time when writers were sent into the field so poorly prepared, with unlimited expense accounts, and rewarded for sending in cryptic messages that are somehow turned into massive front-page reports. There is a slight element of sour grapes in Mr. Waugh's description of the newsgathering field he failed to excel in, something most obvious from the names he chooses for the fictional newspapers in the story (The Daily Beast, The Daily Brute, etc.).
More importantly, like most popular satires, Scoop is really less about its subject matter than about comforting those who don't move in the same circles as the rich and powerful the book dismantles between its covers -- remember that these are the same people who were expected to buy this book when it was published in 1938. Even critics at that time recognized this in an as-a-matter-of-fact way, referring to Scoop as a comedy of errors Mr. Waugh dashed off to pay the bills between more weighty projects.
But the most serious flaw of the book concerns the way the main character, Boot, evolves ... or fails to evolve. Characters are the cornerstone of any great story and even with a farce like Scoop (compare Boot to the bumbling Wormold in Mr. Greene's Our Man in Havana, another satire produced by a serious writer on a lark) the story is dramatically improved by illustrating the evolution of characters over the length of the narrative. But in Scoop, Boot returns home just the same as when he left. All of the characters, in fact, fail to change at all during the course of the story, with the possible exception of the compelling and shadowy Russian/Hungarian/Pole cum German love interest, Kätchen -- not the best possible work from an author known for producing noteworthy personalities in his more noteworthy novels like Decline and Fall and Brideshead Revisited.
Book Review: Banner Headlines
Summary: 4 Stars
"Scoop" was Evelyn Waugh's skewering of England's Fleet Street newspaper ways. Known for his wry humor and satire, Waugh presents a portrait of newspapermen who know the business too well or not well enough. Yet for all its humor, "Scoop" is somewhat of a disappointment, wandering off on tangents, with a profusion of oddities that can be difficult to follow.
William Boot lives a leisurely, if bizarre, life in the country, filling his odd hours by writing articles about animals and country life for the London paper, the Daily Beast. He is mistakenly believed to be John Courtney Boot, the famous novelist, and is pressured into the job of war correspondent for the paper. Boot is sent to Ishmaelia, a country in Africa that is about to be at war, or perhaps not. Nobody seems to know what is going on or even what side they should root for. Boot, with all his inexperience, must figure out how to be a foreign war correspondent with no acutal war going on in a country more backward than his family.
"Scoop" is a relatively quick-paced read, slowed down in the second section by the introduction to a plethora of newspapermen in Ishmaelia and all their idiosyncracies. There are genuine laugh-out-loud moments and Waugh does a commendable job in flaying the newspaper's business of selling paper no matter what; it doesn't matter if the story is true, as long as they get the scoop. The resolution is entirely fitting and very enjoyable for those readers who have followed every case of mistaken identity along the way.
Book Review: Clever
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall, a very satisfying read, but somewhat disjointed. The beginning and ending -- the two parts which take place at Boot Magna in the English countryside -- are laugh-out-loud funny. The middle section, which takes place with the protaganist, William Boot, in the mythical African nation of Ishmaelia, is more straightforward and serious. The portions of the book which chronicle Boot's relationship with Katchen felt like they were torn out of a Hemingway book, given the sparse dialog and direct emotions. I felt as if this book might have been started by a very young, impressionable Waugh during a time when he was experimenting with different styles, trying to find the one which best suited him... styles borrowed from Hemingway, Wodehouse, and Greene. Its slightly disjointed nature made me think that it was a book which he worked on in fits and starts... would write a little, put it back in the drawer, revisit it a couple of months later. Overall, it's a very good book by a writer a few years away from his peak.