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Scoop Revisited

Review by Sarah Stodola

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Scoop
By Evelyn Waugh
Originally Published in 1937

In order to create the kinds of characters that Evelyn Waugh did in Scoop, published in 1937, it would seem that one must possess, at the very least, a streak of cruelty. It has been said of Waugh that he possessed much more than just a streak. He enjoyed ruffling feathers, and he seldom let anyone off the hook in conversation with a straightforward, unloaded question or answer. Moreover, he was apparently a terrible father, and not much better of a friend. Waugh was known to proclaim that many of the people who read did not really deserve to be literate. He thought much more of himself than he ever thought of anyone else, and indeed had no qualms with the concept of a hierarchy in which he sat at the top.

Unfortunately, it is most likely that Waugh needed to be this type of person in order to write his brand of fiction, and so indirectly, he became revered as one of the great satirists of his time, and indeed of the entire 20th century, as a result of his brash personality.

They say that a piece of fiction should not be judged as any reflection of the person who happened to write it. However, it is nearly impossible to read Scoop without at some point asking oneself, What kind of person must it have taken to write such a book? Not because the book is outwardly morbid, but because it has no sympathy for any of its characters.

In a mix-up of two writers with the same last name, the good-natured simpleton William Boot is picked from his country home to cover a war in the fictional African country of Ishmaelia instead of the urbane travel writer John Boot. Having traveled outside of England only once, William is thrown into a world he does not understand, but through a series of lucky mistakes, he ends up scooping the hordes of experienced reporters who are also on the assignment. Waugh’s lack of sympathy with William is never more articulate than in the passages where William falls in love with a young woman whose husband is away, and who uses her influence over him to extract money and favors, only to leave with her husband when he returns – the ultimate cruelty occurs when William allows them to escape in his boat, leaving him behind with only an assignment that he neither understands nor cares about.

Scoop is a ruthless critique of the old Fleet Street of the early 20th century, when journalism was all about landing the most fantastic headline, and making sure that your headline reached the public before the competing publication’s.  William's editors at the Beast go so far as to dictate to him ahead of time what stories they are expecting from him.  The novel is most often mentioned with this critique in mind.  But in actuality, the newspaper business is only one of Waugh's targets.  Just as much as the press is a target, so is William Boot, and his rural family, and the very concept of war.

Waugh’s work also possesses that peculiarly British way of creating a farcical world all its own, and this, as much as the critique of the society and press of its time, is its appeal. In the years of High Modernity, Waugh refused to move out of the past, and in doing so he created new worlds in his fiction in which anything Modern was met with, if not utter failure, than unabashed ridicule. And still, everything turned out fine in the end.

Halfway through Scoop, though, the reader is learned enough in Waugh’s ways to expect the ridiculous. When it comes to providing the unexpected, Waugh never disappoints. And this is perhaps the one way in which his writing can be become tedious. Once we come to understand that certain characters are always going to make the wrong choices, as William Boot does in Scoop, and yet through a bizarre turn of events always come out the hero, we cease to be quite so impressed when it happens. In Waugh’s world, ignorance and incompetence are invariably rewarded. This is in no way a send-up of ignorance and incompetence, but rather a critique of a world that can’t seem to recognize it. Still, when life only works when it is excessively ridiculous, it becomes quite tiresome. Wouldn’t we rather that life meant something, that we could take life seriously and still have it work out for us? By letting William Boot scoop his numerous more learned and experienced contemporaries, Evelyn Waugh certainly doesn’t seem to think so.

Waugh’s world does not inspire confidence in the progress of society. It displays the workings of the press in a way that inspires one to never believe a word he reads again.  And yet, there is a charm in his happy-go-lucky world – a world that doesn’t need progress. Perhaps, if there is that ubiquitous “lesson” to be taken from Scoop, it is that life doesn’t have to be taken seriously – it can indeed turn out to be nothing more than a happy accident, as long as that happy accident is infused with a healthy dose of meanspiritedness. And one can easily imagine this being the way that Waugh viewed his own life, as well as his great satirical novel.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted here.

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