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.
