Scoop: A Novel About Journalists (original 1938; édition 1987)

Scoop is one of the funniest and most carefree novels of Evelyn Waugh. Its appeal lies partly in our own strenuous relation with the media. Above all, the plot of the novel is based on the classic ploy of mistaken identity, sending the wrong man for the job. As a result of misfired nepotism， a newspaper, "The Daily Beast" sends one of its reporters to a war zone. What follows is just purely hilarious, truly a very funny story.

Evelyn Waugh at his best! ( )

A fake reporter reports on a fake war. Journalistic satire. Its lot shorter than you might expect, or at least feels so because not a lot happens and it felt a bit pointless. It certainly wasn't as funny as i expected and the main character doesn't really get involved in events to any significant degree. Its ok but nothing to write home about ;) . ( )

I loved this book.
It has a special sophisticated sense of humour that tickled me. It felt intellectual, but easy to read. The characters were like beautiful complex works of art. The plot was light hearted and amusing. I was able to read a little each night without getting confused or having to read back to remember. It was a book that really came to life.
At first I was confused by it, it was almost like I didn't know how to read it. I think this might have been because the pacing and the flow were different to what I’m used to. However, actually I think that this was one of the books strong points. It drew you in. It didn't feel like anything else I had ever read.
( )

Evelyn Waugh published this satirical account of the unlikely success of a foreign correspondent just before the outbreak of World War Two, when the proxy war that the competing totalitarian dictatorships of Germany and Russia had waged in countries such as Spain became a direct confrontation.
The setting is the mythical northeast African country of Ishmaelia. Any resemblance to the nation that occupies this space in our world, Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia), is hardly coincidental since Waugh served as a correspondent there in 1935.
The book is divided into three sections. The first is hilarious, and the final section evoked a good number of guffaws from me. The middle section, set in Ishmaelia itself, wasn’t as amusing, no doubt because of Waugh’s recourse to national stereotypes. The posture of casual superiority that all Europeans in the book assume concerning all Africans is undoubtedly an accurate reflection of the late colonial period. It’s simply not funny anymore. Nor is the way that relatively harmless local quarrels are leveraged by the Europeans in the interests of competing ideologies. In the end, Waugh suggests that even these are fronts for claims to mineral rights. Something that didn’t end with the passing of the colonial era.
Still, I found the book enjoyable. Lord Copper, the press magnate who sets it all in motion, seems a send-up of Lord Beaverbrook, but his type lives on in the Murdochs of our day. One more thing lives on, the immortal name of the newspaper, The Daily Beast. ( )

A hilarious satire of journalism, I feel like a lot of the book's skewering of the profession haven't aged a day. From the hapless protagonist John Boot to the imperiously clueless Lord Copper, the characters are funny and plausible as they lie and blunder around trying to "cover the story" of political instability in a country they're completely unfamiliar with. The news media's willing to punch up or even simply invent stories for effect is obviously still with us, and the constant theme of miscommunication is exploited in full Wodehousian form. Waugh has a good ear for deadpan dialogue, as well as parodies of overwrought writing: the famous one is "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole", but my favorite is the Thomas Friedman-esque "A spark is set to the cornerstone of civilization which will shake its roots like a chilling breath." ( )