Scoop

Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
1937 (reprinted 1999) • Back Bay Books
321 pages / 9780316926102 (paperback)

There are few, if any, signs of the later Evelyn Waugh - the conservative, Catholic, and tradition-loving Waugh - in his fifth novel, which dates between A Handful of Dust and Put Out More Flags.  Waugh, who observed the Western World as it continued its march into bedlam during the 1930s, was in a satirical frame of mind and decided to take aim at politics and the surrounding journalism industry. These were two areas he experienced directly when covering the Second Italo-Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail in 1935.

Published during the months when Germany annexed Austria and was granted the Sudetenland by a desperate Europe, Scoop takes no prisoners in flogging the zeitgeist. Waugh was always antagonistic to world leaders and a profession he turned to for money more than anything; he accordingly gives an unflattering but painfully accurate view of their deceptions that blanket life even today. Scoop says plenty about modern politics, the modern industrial state, and working class culture that egalitarians won't be so keen to hear.

Waugh's 321-page satire is divided into three parts ('books'), which are themselves split into brisk chapters and subsections; the first and last parts serve as a prologue and epilogue in England while the bulky middle section takes place in Ishmaelia, a fictional east-African state obviously modeled on Abyssinia, the forerunner of Ethiopia ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie. The atmosphere of other countries such as Liberia and Britain's involvement in African politics also heavily color Waugh's thinking.

William Boot, a country life writer for The Beast newspaper, becomes Waugh's focus entirely by accident. We won't ruin the plot by explaining how; suffice it to say that Boot, a naive writer who shares an estate with his decrepit family and servants, has been called upon by Lord Copper, the newspaper's owner, to travel by plane, ship, and train to this obscure country on the brink of war. Ishmaelia, a remote, poverty-stricken land thought to have untapped potential in oil and precious metals, is also known for its cannibal population ('They were eaten, every one of them,' Waugh reflects on earlier missionaries) and long rainy season.

Don't get too excited, because nothing is really happening in Ishmaelia. It is a country that underwent European intervention in the past and has turned into an oligarchy whose family, the Jacksons, have maintained power across several generations. Apparently, insiders of the government have decided to lead Marxist opposition and are plotting a coup. But in ways similar to the British military of Put Out More Flags, most of the action features journalists waiting, heading out to remote locations where news is thought to be, and more waiting.

While the press sits around and wires made-up stories to Fleet Street, Boot has his own random agenda. He catches up with an old friend, Bannister, who has become an employee of the British Legation; falls in love with Kätchen, a young woman of vague European origin; and carries along supplies that include a fold-up canoe, three months of rations, and a Union Jack for what appears his first trip away from home. One message to The Beast from Boot, who is totally unschooled in reporting, ought to sum up his journey well:

NOTHING MUCH HAS HAPPENED EXCEPT TO THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS BEEN IMPRISONED IN HIS OWN PALACE BY REVOLUTIONARY JUNTA HEADED BY SUPERIOR BLACK CALLED BENITO AND RUSSIAN JEW WHO BANNISTER SAYS IS UP TO NO GOOD THEY SAY HE IS DRUNK WHEN HIS CHILDREN TRY TO SEE HIM BUT GOVERNESS SAYS MOST UNUSUAL LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING SACK RECEIVED SAFELY THOUGHT I MIGHT AS WELL SEND THIS ALL THE SAME

Scoop is English literature at its wryest, most deadpan, and most tragicomic. Waugh puts together a seemingly endless chain of scenarios that are bizarre yet not at all impossible. Consider the taxicab drivers in Ishmaelia who always take English-speaking passengers to a Swedish consul because they don't understand the language and can only rely on him for translation. Or the rope-tethered goat who attacks anyone entering a German hostel where Boot is staying. Or those press credentials issued by the Ishmaelian government that were crudely converted from prostitution licenses.

Besides his lacerating views of society and politics, Waugh seems to have a clear perspective on journalism and the people who make it tick. In the late 1930s, he has already written off the newspaper industry as sensation-driven and a maker of headlines regardless of their truth and value to the readership. Lord Copper is thought an amalgam of men like Beaverbrook and Rothermere, omnipotent names in the Fleet Street scene of Waugh's day. Has the digital media of today changed very much from the newspaper industry of eight decades ago?

Waugh writes in his fluid style that would've been impossible without an upper-middle class background. His storytelling has an aloofness that can pass for snobbery but is redeemed by the dry humor. Most of Scoop's characters are one-dimensional, sometimes two; they are satirical typecasts intended to linger in the mind and draw a reaction that always seems to come off. William, in fact, is about the only character with noticeable depth and perhaps the only tolerable one, even though he is not free from grating on the nerves, either.

Waugh's knack for scenarios causes his novel to last a bit too long; the love story between William and Kätchen is unnecessary and could be fully removed without causing the plot any harm. There also seems to be an attempt at the epic (prologue-main story-epilogue) but Waugh's treatment of the material can't fully accommodate this. Scoop could certainly have been tightened up, though it's a quality novel as is. Aside from slightly excessive length and clear indications of Waugh's racist streak (he called Abyssinia 'a savage place which Mussolini was doing well to tame'), Scoop is by far one of the twentieth century's notable books.

Scoop has been adapted to film multiple times and is one of the more widely read of Waugh's novels. In the U.S., it circulates through Back Bay Books, a division of Little, Brown and Company. Back Bay's 1999 edition uses appropriate printface and sports eye-catching cover art by Bill Brown. There is a photo of Waugh on its bio page that...well...fits the novel. Trust me on that one.

The House of the Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1851 (reprinted 1995) • Signet Classic
288 pages / 0451524365 (paperback)

I've always harbored suspicion for the literary canon of academia, but The House of the Seven Gables is the first novel to make me stare it in the face. While by no means a bad novel, Gables is one of those classics that is so lacking in certain areas that it really shouldn't be deemed a 'classic' at all; rather, it is a decent novel that happens to be written by one of America's great authors.

The novel was written in 1851, on the heels of Hawthorne's masterwork, The Scarlet Letter. Just one year out from Letter's publication, The House of the Seven Gables could not be expected to reach those heights so soon afterward and Hawthorne certainly doesn't. Gables is an uneven affair that looks to combine his familiar gothic themes with the emerging naturalistic school in which anything beyond common experience is stripped away. Hawthorne, as a member of the group trying to make this epistemological advancement (did I just say that?), at times looks stuck on old material. His technique also suffers a great deal; the narrative becomes disjointed and there are chapters that feel as if they've been written separately, perhaps for magazine publication or as an afterthought. And, to top it off, there is a ridiculously contrived 'happy' ending that brings the sugar to diabetic levels.

Using The Scarlet Letter's setting as an influence, Gables is a tale (Hawthorne calls it a romance) that combines 19th-century naturalism with supernatural elements found in stories like his Twice-Told Tales and Young Goodman Brown. It is a chronicle of the Pyncheons, a family of landowners who have boasted political and economic power in colonial Massachusetts. Hawthorne briefly takes us through the Pyncheons' rise to prominence, including their seizure of land from a commoner, Matthew Maule, who was eventually hanged on charges of witchcraft. The House of the Seven Gables, a shadowy gothic mansion, was built on the property where a curse was thought to have been cast by Maule and maintained by his descendants.

After this account, the main story begins in then-modern days with the Pyncheon family split into two groups: its Gable residents and a remote branch living in another part of New England. The house has become a dark, dingy tomb occupied by Hepzibah, an elderly woman with an unremitting scowl, and her brother Clifford, who had been sentenced to prison for a vague crime but was released with help from their cousin Jaffrey, a judge with political connections. Its other tenant, the photographer and writer Holgrave, is an idealistic young man who quietly observes the family's plights. Gable's characterizations and setting reflect the decline of elite American families who have failed to keep up with modern trends; Hepzibah and Clifford are penniless hermits who have withered in a vault of social convention.

Hawthorne takes an increasingly materialistic approach as Gables passes through the years when superstition begins to wane. However, he seems to lack confidence with the subject matter since those dark forces that come into play early are what make Gables the romance Hawthorne wants it to be. On the one hand, Hawthorne needs to be consistent with his social commentary and writes off supernaturalism as mere imaginings that have led to moments like the Salem Witch Trials, those 17th-century proceedings in which John Hathorne, a Hawthorne ancestor, served as an unrepentant judge.

Yet on the other hand, Hawthorne wants the occult to play its part in this grim story. A spooky atmosphere is one of Hawthorne's great talents and he succeeds in giving the house a dark, forbidding texture that makes for true suspense. Hawthorne leans on the mysterious forces continuously, long after regarding them as a delusion. He seems in a dilemma similar to that of Melville and Emile Zola, who resort to faintly mystical references in order to give their work life.

Outside of the suspense, Hawthorne's finest point in Gables is his psychological insight; he has a knack for bringing out truths of our psyche that crop up in everyday life but we are loathe to acknowledge. Unfortunately, this insight is brought out at the expense of story. In describing the mental processes and reactions of characters, Hawthorne drags out moments in the plot that should be jogged through. Incidents that are only momentary can last for paragraphs in his verbose style. Hawthorne's novel bears his usual elegance but its structure is overwrought and often congested. Though Gables seems to last for a prolonged amount of time, its intimate setting, single plotline, and limited characters don't offer any type of wide scope. In other words, it feels much longer than it should.

Gables would perhaps be a success if Hawthorne kept to the supernatural element. While his social commentary would've suffered, the overlying moral - that sins will be unto thy sons and daughters - is inherent. Hawthorne, however, sought to move his gothic themes in a different direction and he is caught between two opposing poles. The Scarlet Letter, a work of superior focus and intent, was a difficult novel to follow up and Gables comes nowhere close to its height of achievement. But Gables continues to enjoy prestige and will remain on the list of essential classics, regardless of its obvious flaws.

While reading the plays of Shakespeare, I have wondered if quality is always the determining factor in giving a work classic status. Romeo and Juliet would certainly deserve it, but the flawed Hamlet and the self-mocking Antony and Cleopatra, in my opinion, would not. Yet all three are accepted by critics as unquestionably great. The House of the Seven Gables is another work of this type. It's on the list of 'masterpieces' for most of the critical establishment and a regular item of high school and college syllabi; but it only seems to have renown because Nathaniel Hawthorne had written it. And why go on about it? Gables will be forever flipped through by students and academics (who keep on looking for symbolisms that aren't really there) because the powers that be said so.

Signet Classic's paperback edition of Gables is 288 pages long and with a somewhat elucidative essay by Cathy Davidson of Duke University. Signet has a reputation for cramming lengthy novels into half their usual page counts, as if a book of this reading level isn't enough to grapple with. I bought the Signet Gables while in high school before finally breaking it out this year; although my eyes are still in fair working order for the small type, my patience as a decaying old man isn't. There are plenty of better-formatted editions available, such as from Barnes & Noble and Dover Publications. The Scarlet Letter should be first choice for anyone new to Hawthorne, but Gables is a half-worthy piece of interest for enthusiasts of American literature.