Over the past year, pundits and journalists alike have desperately trying to answer the question of why the reading of newspapers is in decline. But if you've ever read Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel "Scoop," which mercilessly satirizes the entire journalism industry, you've realized the question they should be asking is not why newspapers are declining, but what took so long? Perfectly weaving together slapstick comedy with biting satire, Waugh stylishly skewers everyone from incompetent foreign correspondents to gossiping society women with equal vigor, making this hilarious, breezy novel the perfect summer read.
The novel begins with grandiose newspaper magnate Lord Copper, owner of the wonderfully named Daily Beast, and his search for a foreign correspondent to represent his great newspaper in what Copper hopes will be the war-torn country of Ishmaelia, a fictional African nation. Meanwhile, writer John Boot, having been rejected in his latest quest for love, enlists the help of well-connected society woman Julia Stitch to help him get the prestigious position at the Beast.
After hearing about Boot from Mrs. Stitch and her friends, Lord Copper orders his underlings particularly his droll secretary Mr. Salter, who sets the standard for groveling assistants to get Boot at any price. Fortunately for the hilarity of the story, Lord Copper neglects to mention he wants John Boot the novelist and not William Boot, minor country gentleman and writer of the Beast's comically overwritten gardening column. Not wanting to disappoint Lord Copper, Salter finds the closest Boot he can get his hands on and sends William Boot off to Ishmaelia with a fabulous expense account and without any thought that the author of the "Lush Places" column may not be the man to cover impending war.
"Scoop" is very much in the tradition of Voltaire's "Candide" or, for a more recent example, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat," in that it chronicles the travails of the naive traveler. As we follow William Boot through the world of competitive journalism, we can't help but laugh at the result of the innocent lamb mingling with the pack of wolves.
The reason for Scoop's enduring magic is in its characterizations of the manners of the press, where Waugh is at his most wicked. We cringe as we read a conversation between William Boot and a journalist Corker concerning the exploits of super-journalist Wenlock Jakes:
"Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals," Corker says. "He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn't know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spread-eagled in the deserted roadway below his window you know."
That brief two-word closing gives the whole passage a sense of casualness and regularity that confirms our worst fears about journalists that they've been making it up the whole time.
Waugh is often unsubtle in his critique of the press naming his morally hollowed-out hacks Shumble, Whelper, Pigge and Corker in a blunt, Dickensian manner but at other moments demonstrates an ability for more pointed satire.
Waugh throws us into the world of the absurd but makes it feel oddly familiar. We laugh at how preposterous the whole description is but can't help but realize that the characterization could be applied to many post-colonial African nations. Waugh's ability to mask reality under the veil of the absurd is what puts him on the level of Jonathan Swift or George Bernard Shaw as a satirist.
"Scoop" does suffer at times from being a novel of the 1930s. Waugh occasionally falls into lazy ethnic stereotypes of Africans that make modern readers cringe. Waugh does not use these terms to wound or sting but because he lacks the courage to move beyond the prejudices of his time. His view of Westerners is not much better the fools of his novel are Swedish, French and, above all, ordinary Englishmen.
The real genius of Waugh lies in his ability to create timeless characters that existed in the '30s and continue to exist in modern society. There will always be pompous Lord Coppers and gossiping Mrs. Stitchs in the world. You're liable to come across more than a few William Boots in your day and you'll always find yourself surprised at just how quickly things can go very wrong.
