Scoop

Evelyn Waugh was a snob, a racist, an anti semite and a fascist sympathiser whose attitude was, in the words of his biographer David Wykes, Waugh s racism was an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness and rightness of hierarchy as the main principle of social organisation He was also jealous, personally nasty and malicious, had been a bully at school, and as James Lees Milne said, the nastiest tempered man in England Waugh was, however, absolutely devoted to his adopted religion, Ca [...]

2.5 starsI ve read little Waugh apart from Brideshead Revisited, which I loved Waugh is writing there about the decline of the upper classes and writing about people he knew This is a comic novel about Journalism and the newspaper industry and is a very effective satire Lord Copper, the tyrannical and megalomaniac newspaper boss was said to be based on Lord Northcliffe, but was probably also part Beaverbrook and Hearst The story is based on Waugh s experiences working for the Daily Mail as a for [...]

Second time reading.File this under guilty pleasures I m, well outraged isn t the right word, made weary by the dreariness of the other reviews of this book plot summaries, gestures towards its transhistorical narratives or towards its capturing that peculiar moment before the Nazis invaded Poland , and hamfisted comparisons to P G Wodehouse different sort of writer entirely, although, hilariously, Wodehouse does get a shoutout as the plot winds down And then, well, there s the fact that the boo [...]

Review was first posted on BookLikes brokentuneoklikes post For nearly two weeks now, the bent and creased copy of Scoop sitting on my desk has been staring at me Patiently Waiting whether I was going to write a review or not On finishing the book I had exactly two feelings about it 1 As far as satire of the press goes, Waugh created the most delicious and entertaining spoof I could have imagined However,2 This book contained so many openly racist and chauvinist remarks that even Fleming s Live [...]

This book made me laugh out loud, something that books rarely do Then again, I don t read comical fiction Still, I suspect that, were I to look into the genre, Waugh would stand out in the crowd.This is the third book that I ve read from Waugh s work, and of the three it is the clear favorite Along with his usual talent for razzing British societal mannerisms, Waugh adds his satirical take on foreign policy in a small, developing country that is, ostensibly, under threat of civil war What starts [...]

Waugh followed the near perfect Handful of Dust, with Scoop, an absolutely perfect Newspaper Adventure that satirizes journalism, especially as practiced by foreign correspondents This was the perfect topic for Waugh not only did he work throughout a career as a foreign correspondent, journalists are a recurring stock character in his fiction Inevitably, Waugh portrays journalists as drunk, fast talking adventurers, who are not above making up a story in their pursuit of fame and fortune the bas [...]

Journalists seem to love this guy He s awfully snarky for a writer from the 1930s but oh so good A quick read, Scoop is about a man named John Boot gets accidentally sent to Ishmaila as a foreign correspondent The fellow manages to report some news after blazing through his budget and falling in love with a married gold digger named Katchen Meanwhile Waugh paints a hilarious portrait of foreign correspondent idiots creating fake news and running around chasing ridiculous leads It s not the nices [...]

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It is an old Penguin book, the orange and white one, a reprint from 1951 This book, these musty papers are 8 years older than i am It was a 50c find, among boxes of old books for sale at the school fair last month Maybe it was even just a quarter Cheap as anyway And still in good enough condition for reading the pages arent falling out, there s no water damage etc And it has that marvelous musty old book smell Aaah.And what a surprise of a treat to read Having read only Brideshead Revisited many [...]

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Add me to the list hilarious Sort of a British salt of the earth comedy, where the common man is wiser than his supposed betters.

Orwell said Waugh was almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be while holding untenable opinions Outside the owls hunted maternal rodents and their furry brood funny how he mercilessly speared sentimentality, given that it s such a fundamental part of the fascism that he seemed quite partial to But then internal logic was never the strong suit of bigots.

From BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation by Jeremy Front of Evelyn Waugh s satirical 1938 novel.Episode 1 Hapless journalist William Boot is mistakenly sent to report on a war in Africa.Episode 2 William finds life as a war correspondent somewhat tedious, but he does fall in love and find himself in the middle of a revolution.

Delightful, old fashioned, smart , funny, not at all politically correct In fact Evelyn Waugh at his best It is a very short book but I enjoyed every minute of it The main character fumbles his way through outrageous situations but always has the fates on his side and he always comes up a winner I loved it

There is a story that has long since entered into the mythology of journalism It concerns William Randolph Hearst, among the most unscrupulous of the press barons, for whom newspapers were not so much a source of information but an expression of his personal power After the beginning of the Cuban struggle for independence against Spain in the mid1890s he was active among those pushing for American intervention, seeing war as a way of selling even newspapers The artist Frederick Remington was se [...]

Waugh is a realist His voice in Scoop is flippant, nonchalant, and gregarious Yet, between the lines, in the subtext, in implication or whatever way is best to put it the book is a hard nosed spoof, at points verging on satire proper I d be embarrassed to be a journalist, were I one, after reading Scoop the book is a caricaturization of the occupation itself It s funny in points, and ridiculously so e.g the description of the goat head butting the officer It s borderline touching and metaphorica [...]

Rereading this after many years, I m less impressed than I was with it when I first read it mainly because the racism jars than it did then, but also because at times the plot seems too slight and to hinge too much on an improbable deus ex machina.The character of William Boot is a delight, however, and the naif thrown into a bearpit scenario works very well Boot Magna is drawn in an endearingly dotty fashion and the romance with the manipulative Katchen, though underwritten, is compelling Larg [...]

Due to a case of mistaken identity, a mild mannered columnist on country life, William Boot, is sent as a war correspondent to Ishmaelia, an independent African nation where dissent is brewing between long time ruling family the Jacksons and anarcho communist upstarts prompted by German and Russian interests Boot, though utterly stymied by the lackadaisical and corrupt Ishmaleian government as well as his fellow journalists , and through no merit of his own, scoops everyone and returns to an unw [...]

This was quite a ride I started this when my brain felt a little fried but I was gripped from the beginning and couldn t stop reading it I had no idea where this book was going to lead me.I got into a good conversation with my roommate about the media and it was funny comparing the satiric depiction of journalists in the novel to news sources today as to how much of what is reported is factual It is all rather absurd Not that it isn t a serious problem but it is so nice to be able to laugh about [...]

Funny and fanciful, Scoop does not really feel nearly 80 years old reading it now The various Boots are all hilarious as is Ishmaelia and the Jacksons Incredible that this was written before WWII but still accurately depicts what I imagine of modern Beastly vs Brute journalism as represented by CNN Domestic vs Fox News in the US,TF1 vs M6 here in FranceI think that unfortunately, there are two many Jacksons still devouring Africa except that are Chinese rather than European now In any case, Waug [...]

Odd book really Very dated language and ideas Didn t see any of the humour, but the irony was laid on in spades

Never before has there been such a great takedown of the press, especially of foreign correspondents William Boot, columnist for The Beast, is mistaken for another writer named Boot and sent as a foreign correspondent to Ishmaelia, an unstable country in East Africa, which has recently been inundated by journalists All of them have experience than poor William Boot.One day, the journalists are sent to a place that doesn t exist their destination, Laku, means I don t know in Ishmaeli While they [...]

Part 1 amusingPart 2 soporific unfortunately Part 3 I did have to laugh at portrait of British publishing elite Review

This is hands down one of the funniest, most enjoyable books I ve ever read A send up of journalism with the trademark Waugh biting wit, involving foreign correspondents, a case or two of mistaken identities, and abundant with laugh out loud moments If you haven t read any Evelyn Waugh books recently or ever , it s not too late to re discover this master satirist I ve only just started reading him in August 2014, and he s already become one of my favourite writers Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, [...]

I started Scoop in winter 2008 I finished Scoop in spring 2010 That should probably explain my meh feelings about the book I pretty much only finished reading it so that I could get it off my bookshelves once and for all.Admittedly, the satire about corrupt publishers and incompetent journalists is something that I can appreciate as a journalist But it gets old fast And the 1930s, British humor gets cheesy really fast It s predictable The jokes make you smirk, but they re not really ha ha funny [...]

Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite authors He was a highly skilful satirist who masterfully rapped his contemporaries on the knuckles whenever he saw their actions as being selfish, their thinking as superficial or their behaviour as irresponsible Waugh however basically believed in and loved England, so his barbs were never met to cut deeply just to remind the English of their faults which he felt they really aware of underneath.In Scoop Waugh is in top form A journalist is selected for an assi [...]

In this diverting comedy of errors, Waugh satirizes African politics, British society, and world journalism Retired country gentleman William Boot, through a series of misunderstandings, finds himself suddenly bound to Ishmaliea as a foreign correspondent, but he doesn t know quite how to invent the news Somehow, he manages to bumble his way to journalistic stardom, while falling in love and being played a fool This short novel is an easy read, and will inspire, if not outright laughter, a numbe [...]

The book might have gone better for me if I had not read it in fits and starts I had a hard time connecting with it I never really engaged with the book or its characters There were humorous moments but mostly I was rather bored.

This uproariously funny novel is an example of what happens when someone uses their imagination and their experience to the best possible outcome In the mid 1930 s, Waugh was sent without experience as a correspondent to cover the war in Ethiopia against the Italians, and that informs his work here In our contemporary world, we are used to bumbling foreign correspondents whose knowledge of the world is limited but who are experts in their field It is not a new phenomenon, and this book is a help [...]