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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
I loved this book.
It has a special sophisticated sense of humour that tickled me. It felt intellectual, but easy to read. The characters were like beautiful complex works of art. The plot was light hearted and amusing. I was able to read a little each night without getting confused or having to read back to remember. It was a book that really came to life.
At first I was confused by it, it was almost like I didn't know how to read it. I think this might have been because the pacing and the flow were different to what I’m used to. However, actually I think that this was one of the books strong points. It drew you in. It didn't feel like anything else I had ever read.
It has a special sophisticated sense of humour that tickled me. It felt intellectual, but easy to read. The characters were like beautiful complex works of art. The plot was light hearted and amusing. I was able to read a little each night without getting confused or having to read back to remember. It was a book that really came to life.
At first I was confused by it, it was almost like I didn't know how to read it. I think this might have been because the pacing and the flow were different to what I’m used to. However, actually I think that this was one of the books strong points. It drew you in. It didn't feel like anything else I had ever read.
I am such a huge fan of Evelyn Waugh. I absolutely adore his work. This book is perhaps one of his more recognized novels, so I was eager to read it. Unfortunately I was left a little disappointed, but perhaps only due to the hype. It is a lovely book, but just isn't as brilliant as some of his other novels, such as Decline & Fall, and Vile Bodies.
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
This half a great book and half a terrible one. The nice &humorous half is about a simple English countryman sent on a foreign journalistic expedition by mistake.
The terrible part is about the country in Africa he goes to... the author shows so much racism, intolerance, ignorance, mockery... it's very offensive, dated, and those parts of the book are really unreadable. Also he was writing in 1938 and he's joking about Soviet spies and overthrowing governments... this was the time of Stalin's Terror and it's really nothing to joke about.
There are authors about whom you can say "that was just a blind spot" or "he was just a product of his time" but not this one. This is egregiously bad.
The terrible part is about the country in Africa he goes to... the author shows so much racism, intolerance, ignorance, mockery... it's very offensive, dated, and those parts of the book are really unreadable. Also he was writing in 1938 and he's joking about Soviet spies and overthrowing governments... this was the time of Stalin's Terror and it's really nothing to joke about.
There are authors about whom you can say "that was just a blind spot" or "he was just a product of his time" but not this one. This is egregiously bad.
Set in the 1930s Lord Copper, a newspaper magnate and owner of The Daily Beast is persuaded by a socialite of his acquaintance to hire a novelist John Courtney Boot to cover a developing war in Ishmaelia but through a case of mistaken identity instead he hires William Boot, a naive and sheltered columnist who normally writes a column about country life.
I picked this book up in the library drawn by the blurb on the back cover “The funniest novel ever written about journalism ... a romping comedy of errors”. I should have realised when I read the intimidating introduction by Christopher Hitchins that I was probably barking up the wrong tree but I plowed on. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed it is basically a satire (which went completely over my head) and although I tittered occasionally it wasn’t often enough. Odd characters in odd situations who exploit the system and each other who don’t care about the news as making it up is just as effective as long as they send off stories to their editors. A very cynical view of journalism.
What also doesn’t help is that it is a product of its time as the language is very outdated specifically the racial stereotypes and use of offensive terms.
One good point it was very short.
I picked this book up in the library drawn by the blurb on the back cover “The funniest novel ever written about journalism ... a romping comedy of errors”. I should have realised when I read the intimidating introduction by Christopher Hitchins that I was probably barking up the wrong tree but I plowed on. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed it is basically a satire (which went completely over my head) and although I tittered occasionally it wasn’t often enough. Odd characters in odd situations who exploit the system and each other who don’t care about the news as making it up is just as effective as long as they send off stories to their editors. A very cynical view of journalism.
What also doesn’t help is that it is a product of its time as the language is very outdated specifically the racial stereotypes and use of offensive terms.
One good point it was very short.
I think Waugh's light satire is perfectly used to lampoon the press. The absurdities of journalism have apparently not changed much since the 30s. Waugh captures what Hitchens calls ' this world of callousness and vulgarity and philistinism.' Amen.
In the end, I keep coming back to Scoop as my favorite Waugh. Few satires can combine humor, complexity of story, and tragedy. Waugh combines them better than anybody other than perhaps Wodehouse at best. and Scoop is the Waugh at his best. You know you're starting something special given the immediate introduction to the first characters' captivating and outrageous yet credible posturing and dialogue. Then the story achieves a pace and complexity that allows it to forget its characters in England in order to take up new characters in Africa, then it circles back. Along the way, it gives you laugh-out-loud jokes, narrative surprises, memorable characters and catchphrases ("Up to a point, Lord Cooper"), and insightful satire of the ridiculous communist and fascist ideologies of his time (and our time now, unfortunately). The complexity alone probably wouldn't allow it to get published today, given how infantile, ephebophile, and ideologically reductionist publishers have become. Picking up Scoop again makes contemporary fiction look like high school pretensions. Of course, too many people in the comments on this page are ready to dismiss the book and Waugh generally as racist, sexist, and [insert fashionable ism of the moment], but the simplicism and convenience of such dismissal is easily refuted by noting that Waugh satirized everybody, and most of the characters he made to look ridiculous were upper middle class white Englanders like himself. The Africans he satirized deserved to be satirized, including, indirectly Emperor Haile Selassie, an incompetent, egotistical, slave-owning, ethnic minority leader and imperialist whom Waugh saw through from the beginning, even while almost all other Western journalists swallowed the propaganda that he was a Euro-centric liberal reformer. Ironically, every time today's critics fashionably fault Waugh for cultural relativism, you know Waugh is offering more reality than any of today's publications. Scoop succeeds on so many levels: satire, historical fiction, and even documentary. I doubt his fashionability will ever return, but that is the fault of our times, not his writing.
Farce about Fleet Street journalism. Country nature reporter William Boot is send to a war in Africa (instead of writer John Boot).
Still often fresh to read but many (inside) jokes went over my head.
A quote:
Mr Salter's side of the conversation was limited to ex pressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said. "Definitely, Lord Copper'; when he was wrong, 'Up to a point.'
Still often fresh to read but many (inside) jokes went over my head.
A quote:
Mr Salter's side of the conversation was limited to ex pressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said. "Definitely, Lord Copper'; when he was wrong, 'Up to a point.'
I'm generally a fan of acerbic British fiction and satire, but haven't taken the time to go back and read any Waugh until I picked up this longtime talisman of foreign correspondents. The story concerns the efforts of rival newspapers to "scoop" each other with regards to a possible war in the fictional East African Republic of Ishmaelia (which appears to be a kind of mashup of Ethiopia and Liberia). The central player in this satire is an impoverished member of the rural gentry named Boot, who pens a soporific "Rural Notes" column for a London paper called The Daily Beast. The book starts in London, where a charismatic society lady arranges to have one her proteges, an up and coming young novelist also with the surname Boot, sent to Ishmaelia by the Beast as a special correspondent (with a commensurately special salary). Alas, through a mixup worthy of P. G. Wodehouse, the paper ends up sending the other Boot, who would prefer to be left to rot in peace in the country, but can't turn down the large salary on offer. This first part of the book is a lot of fun, with lots of great comedy, a wonderfully funny country household, and the society lady, who completely runs away with the show.
Alas, she disappears from the narrative as the wrong Boot heads off by planes, trains, and automobiles to Ishmaelia. From this point on, the story is intent mainly on skewering the news business at every turn, along with businessmen, politicians, innkeepers, and pretty much any one else who comes into contact with the hapless Boot. Some readers may find the portrayal of the Africans to be offensive, although to my mind, they don't come off any worse than the European characters, and if anything, seem a great more clever. Unfortunately, like a lot of comic writing based on exaggerated behavior, the book reads a little too much like slapstick for my taste, than it does nuanced satire. Of course, humor is often a matter of taste, so others may find it vastly more amusing.
On the whole, it's a book that would benefit from a nice ten page introduction to give it some context. For example, the reason Waugh is able to paint these preposterous portraits of foreign correspondents is that he was one himself. Like the first Boot in the book, he was a shiny young novelist whose lifestyle demanded a larger income stream, one which the newspapers could provide. Several times, Waugh held his nose and traveled as a foreign corresponded for the Daily Mail, despite being an apparently indifferent journalist who thought the profession mere hackery. In that context, this book might be interpreted as a work of self-loathing, in which he pillories himself -- since, by all accounts, he really indulged in all the worst behaviors that he satirizes in the novel. In fact, he had a kind of formula, whereby he would get paid to go on a trip as a correspondent, then milk that experience for both a non-fiction travelogue and a work of fiction. His first trip to Ethiopia was the impetus for his earlier novel Black Mischief, while a trip in 1938 to cover the Italian invasion led to a widely panned travelogue called Waugh in Abyssinia and this book.
On the whole, if you like comic fiction it's worth the brief time it takes to read, if only for the opening and some great deadpan stuff throughout. Especially amusing are the cryptic telegrams Boot gets from the head office. But on the whole, it struck me more as a broad farce than a surgical satire, and thus was a little disappointing.
Alas, she disappears from the narrative as the wrong Boot heads off by planes, trains, and automobiles to Ishmaelia. From this point on, the story is intent mainly on skewering the news business at every turn, along with businessmen, politicians, innkeepers, and pretty much any one else who comes into contact with the hapless Boot. Some readers may find the portrayal of the Africans to be offensive, although to my mind, they don't come off any worse than the European characters, and if anything, seem a great more clever. Unfortunately, like a lot of comic writing based on exaggerated behavior, the book reads a little too much like slapstick for my taste, than it does nuanced satire. Of course, humor is often a matter of taste, so others may find it vastly more amusing.
On the whole, it's a book that would benefit from a nice ten page introduction to give it some context. For example, the reason Waugh is able to paint these preposterous portraits of foreign correspondents is that he was one himself. Like the first Boot in the book, he was a shiny young novelist whose lifestyle demanded a larger income stream, one which the newspapers could provide. Several times, Waugh held his nose and traveled as a foreign corresponded for the Daily Mail, despite being an apparently indifferent journalist who thought the profession mere hackery. In that context, this book might be interpreted as a work of self-loathing, in which he pillories himself -- since, by all accounts, he really indulged in all the worst behaviors that he satirizes in the novel. In fact, he had a kind of formula, whereby he would get paid to go on a trip as a correspondent, then milk that experience for both a non-fiction travelogue and a work of fiction. His first trip to Ethiopia was the impetus for his earlier novel Black Mischief, while a trip in 1938 to cover the Italian invasion led to a widely panned travelogue called Waugh in Abyssinia and this book.
On the whole, if you like comic fiction it's worth the brief time it takes to read, if only for the opening and some great deadpan stuff throughout. Especially amusing are the cryptic telegrams Boot gets from the head office. But on the whole, it struck me more as a broad farce than a surgical satire, and thus was a little disappointing.