Scoop (1938) by Evelyn Waugh — novel #257

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh: imagine if Bertie Wooster were a foreign correspondent.

• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• Comic novel, British lit
• Published: 1938
• My edition: Little, Brown and Company (eBook)
• Setting: England and Fictional African country of Ishmaelia, Pre-WWII
• Also by this author (that I’ve read): Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, The Loved One

 

War is imminent in far off Ishmaelia and Lord Copper, owner of The Daily Beast newspaper, needs a top-notch journalist to cover the “promising little war". Meanwhile, John Courteney Boot a modestly successful writer is between novels and desires just such an assignment. Perfect! He applies to his close friend, Mrs. Algernon Stitch, socialite and wife of the defense minister, to leverage her considerable influence to get him the job. Julia Stitch happily obliges, drops his name to Lord Copper who instructs his foreign editor, Mr. Salter, to send Boot to Ishmaelia. Salter is not in the habit of questioning his impetuous and tyrannical boss. His responses generally take the form of: “Definitely Lord Copper”, when he agrees; or “Up to a point”, when he disagrees. Salter acquiesces to Lord Copper’s choice, up to a point, and Boot is practically on his way. Perfect! That is, until his name is passed down the bureaucratic ladder, John Boot’s name is confused with William Boot a staff writer already in the employ of The Daily Beast. William Boot’s only assignment is writer of “Lush Places” a rather pedestrian column regarding flora and fauna of England. It is now, a perfect setting for Waugh’s classic satire of the over-zealous pursuit of sensational journalism.

 

It's a wonderful farce; such as this description of Ishmaelia:

Various courageous Europeans in the seventies of the last century came to Ishmaelia, or near it, furnished with suitable equipment of cuckoo clocks, phonographs, opera hats, draft-treaties and flags of the nations which they had been obliged to leave. They came as missionaries, ambassadors, tradesmen, prospectors, natural scientists. None returned. They were eaten, every one of them; …

And much more along those lines. William Boot is eminently unqualified for the assignment…and yet…somehow.

 

Waugh is certainly a versatile writer. The first I read by Waugh, Brideshead Revisited is poignant and beautiful. The next, A Handful of Dust, is captivating and depressing and both are decidedly serious. And then I happened upon the overtly ridiculous The Loved One. And now Scoop. The puns start immediately, but it is still a bit slow until Boot is underway and in Ishmaelia. It’s a lot of fun, but also rather esoteric. I’ve never been involved in journalism, so it didn't completely resonate. I suspect those who have been associated with the profession will find this as brilliant satire. I understand Waugh served as a foreign correspondent covering a minor war, and I imagine it must have been great fun for him to write this. I understand many of the characters are mapped to, or composites of real persons from Waugh’s experience.

 

I'm certainly glad that nearly 100 years later, we've risen above sensationalism in news media. Overall, a fun read. I give it…

 

3 1/2 stars

 

 

What is your experience with Waugh? I think I prefer his serious novel, but a comic romp is a fun diversion now and then. What about you? 

 

This was title #26 of 50 for The Classics Club Challenge –Round IV 

 

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The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (novel #183)

The subtitle calls this, An Anglo-American Tragedy

I beg to differ. It’s a comic novel.

Waugh says of it…

The tale should not be read as a satire on morticians but as a study of the Anglo-American cultural impasse with the mortuary as a jolly setting.

But again, I beg to differ – which perhaps adds validity to the notion of an Anglo-American Cultural Impasse.

Waugh also said it was

...much the most offensive work I had done.

Dennis Barlow, a once successful poet, and an out-of-work British screenwriter in Hollywood takes work at a pet mortuary – The Happier Hunting Grounds. Dennis must make funeral arrangements for his fellow Briton, and roommate, a washed-up screenwriter, who committed suicide after being unceremoniously fired. Arrangements are handled by the Whispering Glades mortuary and cemetery, a thinly veiled portrayal of Forrest Lawn (Waugh’s inspiration), the over-the-top, opulent resting place for Southern California’s rich and beautiful. While making arrangements, Dennis develops a crush on Aimée Thanatogenos, Whispering Glades star cosmetician, who has also caught the eye of head mortician, Mr. Joyboy. Aimée is confused by her own emotions, and repeatedly writes a local advice columnist.

 

Empty-headed Aimée is further confused when she learns Mr. Joyboy lives with his overbearing mother, and Dennis’ love poems to her are not his own, but the work of England’s glorious dead poets. And although she never learns it, her advice columnist is a drunken, insensitive hack.

 

Does that sound like tragedy or comedy? I suppose I should defer to the author, but I thought it was fun and funny, reminiscent of Nathanael West or Kingsley Amis – quite unlike my other experiences with Evelyn Waugh. [Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust]

 

My rating: 3 1/2 of 5 stars

 

This book satisfies a humorous or satirical classic in Back to the Classics Challenge 2021, and book with “One” in the title for the What’s in a Name? 2021 challenge.

 

I’ll share one excerpt. The unofficial head of the British enclave in Hollywood attempts to admonish Dennis for his undignified job, and relates how a previous chap, embarrassed his fellow Britons:

 

Clever chap, be he went completely native – wore ready-made shoes, and a belt instead of braces, went about without a tie, ate at drugstores.

 

Now that’s funny.

 

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A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (85 down, 15 to go)

I will show you fear in a handful of dust – The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot (the source for the title of this novel)

This is the first time I’ve read A Handful of Dust and the second novel I’ve read by Evelyn Waugh. The book is a modernist, and/or humanist novel according to Waugh, and the third-person narrative of Tony Last, an English gentleman, set in 1930s England and Brazil.

My rating: 3 ½ of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies 2017 Back to the Classics Challenge category #10 – A classic set in a place I’d like to visit (Brazil).

Tony Last is an English gentleman, lord of the ancestral home, Hetton Abbey, a large country estate where he lives with his wife Lady Brenda and eight-year-old son John Andrew. Tony and Brenda seem happy together and a perfect match; John Andrew is being raised a proper British gentleman, and not terribly spoiled by his privileged life. Tony seems to love being guardian of the family legacy, though he is struggling to restore the decaying manor to what he envisions as its proper state. Tony and Brenda were considered by their friends as a pair who were – preeminently successful in solving the problem of getting along well together. It all seems a perfect picture of early 20th Century British nobility.

You probably caught the ominous use of the word “seems” – everything “seems” idyllic, but then – it all unravels rather quickly.

SPOILER ALERT – the following contains a spoiler.

Two events turn Tony’s world upside down. His son, John Andrew is killed in a hunting accident – no one to blame. Shortly after the funeral, as in later the same day, Brenda tells Tony she’s been having an affair and wants a divorce. The reader has known about the affair for a while, along with most of Tony and Brenda’s friends. The affair was so inexplicable, I at first thought it a severe weakness in the plot.

Brenda seemed genuinely to love Tony, and even to like him. The two were cute together. They were affectionate and playful. She didn’t seem bored or restless. The man she has the affair with, Mr. Beaver, is not handsome, accomplished, wealthy, or charming. In fact, he lives with his mother – every woman’s dream, right? Nor does fate does throw them together in some intimate way. Brenda just decides to have an affair, and Beaver is the closest man.

She is completely cavalier; all her friends and even casual acquaintances know, as do Tony’s friends, Brenda’s sister, and Mr. Beaver’s mother. No one is shocked, and no one tells Tony.

It just didn’t make sense to me. Until I learned that Evelyn Waugh received a similar shock from his first wife. He was the wronged and innocent party. It probably didn’t make sense to him, so I’ll give him some credit for what initially seemed a weakness in the plot. I believe, witting or not, he was expressing through Tony what he must have felt. It worked, because I was certainly hurt for Tony and rather disgusted with Brenda.

Tony is of course, staggered by these two blows coming in such short succession. He has lost his wife and his son. He might have struggled on with one blow or the other, but his whole existence:  lord protector of the Last family manor and legacy is in jeopardy. He has no heir and no mate to give him one.

In order to cope, Tony travels abroad and plans to be gone many months. He joins a jungle excursion in search of a lost city in the Amazon, grand adventure – all that, with a new acquaintance. The reader is dubious of Tony’s qualifications for such an adventure, and Tony’s companion does not inspire confidence either. Nonetheless, in intrepid British fashion they soldier on to the jungles of modern day Brazil.

It doesn’t go well.

But I’ll leave it at that. It is a terribly depressing story. I can get past that. I shouldn’t like every tale to be “happily ever after”. I didn’t like it much when I first finished, though, I have to admit I was engrossed. I read it in two sittings. I’ve been ruminating on it since and it has grown on me.

Waugh described Tony Last as "a Gothic man in the hands of savages…" The savages were not just those in Brazil, they were also the civilized savages back in England. It’s not clear which the worst were. As I say, it grew on me, but I didn’t like it as much as my previous experience with Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited.

Sometime after the initial publication, there was an alternate ending published – a happily ever after ending. I didn’t like it. I generally don’t like alternate endings in principle, but this one was completely incongruous.

A Handful of Dust is VERY reminiscent of American Pastoral by Philip Roth - a contented successful man, has it all - and then...

I liked the epigraph Waugh used from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland

…I will show you something different from either 

Your shadow at morning striding behind you 

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you 

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

References to Classic Literature:

All of the rooms at Hetton Abbey are named for characters from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.  One of them then is of course, Tristram – reminding me of the last classic novel I read: Tristram Shandy.

The library at Hetton Abbey had, among other works, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

There is a character who possesses the complete works of Charles Dickens – but he cannot read and must employ someone to read to him

Trivia:  Evelyn Waugh’s first wife – her name was Evelyn.

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Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder by Evelyn Waugh (22 down, 78 to go)

These memories which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me. ~ Charles Ryder

This is the first time I’ve read Brideshead Revisited or Evelyn Waugh. The book is a modernist novel, and the first-person narrative of Charles Ryder regarding his association with the Flyte family, 1920s England and leading up to World War II.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

Waugh’s writing is superb. I’m looking forward to my next read by this author, though it won’t be for a while.

There were a number of things that initially mislead me however. First, Evelyn Waugh is a dude. Ah the Brits, whatcha gonna do? Next, the novel begins with Captain Ryder's account of Army life. I confess that excited me a bit more than the English-Lit, Bronte-esque, romance novel I was expecting based on the title. However, the Army portions are reserved only for the prologue and epilogue. The intervening chapters are not quite Bronte-esque, though they do indeed include a romance.

In the prologue, Captain Charles Ryder, finds himself, and his troops quartered at Brideshead, the abandoned English manor where Charles spent much of his early adult life. The bulk of the novel is his reminiscing of those days.

Beginning when Charles befriends the young aristocrat Lord Sebastian Flyte in college, and is then introduced to Sebastian’s family: mother Teresa Flyte, the Marchioness of Marchmain; older brother, the Earl of Brideshead, known as Bridey, but whose true name is never revealed, younger sister Lady Julia Flyte, and youngest sister Lady Cordelia Flyte. Sebastian's father, Lord Marchmain, the Marquess of Marchmain, Alexander Flyte is estranged from his wife and living with a mistress in Italy.

The story is the long association of Charles with the Flyte family who are Roman Catholic. Lady Teresa and Cordeila are devout, while Sebastian and Julia have their doubts, but won’t quite abandon the faith. Julia even defends it to Charles who is agnostic. Lord Marchmain became a Catholic only to marry Teresa, but has by all appearances, forsaken religion along with his wife.

Sebastian is at first an amusing character, keeping a teddy bear in college named Aloysius, and other eccentricities, but he becomes a hopeless alcoholic, which ruins his relationship with Charles and family. Charles occasionally returns to his own home to reside with his father. Their interactions are quite amusing as Charles' Father uses the opportunity to chide Charles for living beyond his means. He is never unkind, but rather, very clever with his comments, and the chiding is well deserved. Charles and Julia both have unhappy marriages, and turn to each other, but the final scene of the novel, not counting the epilogue, changes everything.

Religion, which has been a theme throughout, becomes paramount in the end. Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead to die. Cordelia, and Julia with new found faith, are determined their father will have the last rites, but he refuses. Charles is critical of the notion, and it creates obvious tension between him and Julia. Lord Marchmain lingers for a while, but then takes a very serious turn. The priest is again called, and a great moment of truth evolves, with surprising attitudes exhibited by a number of those present. I was prepared to dislike the ending. I am not Catholic, but I did not like the obvious contempt that Charles had for the faith of Julia and the Flyte family. But then, another surprise, and I was relieved.

The epilogue: Years later, Charles revisits Brideshead, now as an army officer. Though he is not terribly happy, neither is he unhappy. While visiting the old Brideshead chapel he says a prayer, 

...uttering an ancient, newly –learned form of words. 

Upon returning to the Army quarters, a fellow officer notes: You’re looking unusually cheerful today. 

Other excerpts:

Charles description of one Mr. Samgrass: 

He had… an over-large head, neat hands, small feet and the general appearance of being too often bathed.

Charles on New York City: 

...for in that city there is a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

Anthony, a friend of Charles: 

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear my dear Charles, it has killed you.

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