Laugh a minuite!
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Scoop made me laugh out loud so many times! I love it when a book wholly engages you and you get drawn physically into the readng process (ie laughing, crying)and Waugh made me do this!
This is the first of Waugh's novels that i have read but i do intend tp pick up some more on my holiday this year. Although confusing and disorientaing by nature you do get pulled along by the plot nicely which means it is always hard to choose a spot to put the book down!
A book full of oddities of character and setting with mistakes and faux pars a plenty! - Just remember not to try to put it into todays context - as then you may find it a bit offensive!
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A funny book set in a politically incorrect era
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First published in 1938, Scoop is billed as one of the funniest novel ever written about journalism. Which says a lot: have you seen how many fiction books revolve around the Fourth Estate?
In this book, which is essentially a comedy of errors, we meet William Boot, who is mistaken for John Courtney Boot, an eminent writer, and is sent off to the African Republic of Ishmaelia to report on a little known war for the Daily Beast.
With no journalistic training and far out of his depth, Boot struggles to comprehend what it is he is being paid to do and makes one blunder after another all in the pursuit of hot news. In fact Booth is so out of his depth he does not even know how to write a telegram -- the main means of filing his reports to the London office (remember, this is long before the days of email or the internet or even decent telecommunications) -- much less what constitutes a news story.
The entire book is littered with examples that not only demonstrate one man's incomprehension when it comes to news gathering, but highlights the extraordinary games that editors and newspaper proprietors play to beat the opposition.
But Scoop is not just a scathing satire on journalism, it also pokes fun at the upper classes and their eccentric ways (the final chapters when Boot's boss visits him at his family's rural estate are uproariously funny). And given the time in which it was written, it also says much about the English Empire and the treatment of her colonial subjects, not in a very positive light I might add.
All in all, a funny book set in a politically incorrect era that will undoubtedly appeal to journalists and anyone interested in the news media.
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Is the review finished? Up to a point
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Waugh is both appreciated and reviled for much the same qualities. The same caustic wit and social observation that sliced through the ridiculous class structure of his time also brought a flippancy and 'carelessness' which in our politically correct age reads uncomfortably. Scoop is a classic example, essentially involving a mix up in the assignment of a plum overseas journalism posting to cover the Ishmalian civil war. This is written in the age of Goebbels and Stalin, and so it is no surprise to see that the power of the press is essentially responsible for destabilizing the otherwise unassuming African state. Where the journalists decide there is a story, a story will exist. Is it really that different today? Waugh uses his social observation skills to almost ludicrous extremes, with portraits of Lord Copper, Boot of the Beast and the other journalists in the pack being both ghastly and stunningly incompetent. The novel retains its comic touch, although has dated slightly more than some of Waugh's other works. Essentially many of the caustic barbs would be more suited to an age familiar with the excesses of Beaverbrook and Rothermere. This is essentially classic Waugh, and thus should be approached with a little prior knowledge of his style. If you like him, you'll love this - I devoured it in a day.
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Classic that has lost none of its relevance
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Scoop is a classic that has long none of its relevance since Waugh satirised the haphazard process of news gathering and reporting. With the rise of "television news", the crazy mix between internal agendas and accident has perhaps become more wayward. If readers and listeners only knew the half of it ...
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SCOOP: A Satirical Novel, Not A Racist Rant
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This is an incredibly funny novel, and a must read for anybody interested in the politics of the world during the 30's, or the farcical nature of the press. All the way through it is funny, and I can think of no novel similar to it. In regard to the novel being racist, I don't think it is. It must be taken in the context of it's time, much of the language is outdated, and would never be used now for fear of offence, but was, at the time acceptable. The African characters in the book are never criticised more than the white characters, and if anything, the African's end up fooling the journalists and being portrayed as intelligent, insightful characters. How this could be considered racist is a mystery to me.
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