Scoop

Literary fiction · Comedy · Farce · Satire

First published: 1938
Print length: 321 pagesBack Bay Books, 1999

Description

William Boot, a rural nature writer living in genteel poverty, is mistaken by newspaper editors for his novelist cousin and dispatched to fictional Ishmaelia in East Africa. The paper's proprietor wants a highly publicized war story, but William arrives wholly unprepared to interpret a political crisis already being shaped for distant readers. As editors demand dramatic developments whether or not events supply them, reporting becomes an exercise in manufacturing certainty, urgency, and conflict. William's unlikely success in obtaining the scoop the paper desires deepens the joke rather than validating the system that sent him. The novel uses mistaken identity and institutional chaos to satirize foreign correspondence, sensational journalism, and the gulf between events on the ground and the headlines owners expect.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dialogue-driven · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Humorous · Irreverent · Playful · Satirical

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Ideas · Plot

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

ClassColonialism and empireKnowledge and truthPolitics and ideologyPowerWork

About Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh was an English novelist, biographer, travel writer, journalist, and reviewer whose controlled, sharply comic prose made him one of the most distinctive stylists of twentieth-century English literature. His early fiction established him as a satirist of the Bright Young People, presenting fashionable society through farce, brisk dialogue, grotesque reversals, and deliberately simplified characters. Vile Bodies turns parties, scandal, and financial insecurity into a picture of social futility, while A Handful of Dust brings the same pitiless comedy to marriage and the country-house ideal. Waugh repeatedly tested institutions and inherited forms against vanity, incompetence, and modern publicity. Scoop applies that method to journalism, following a political crisis as newspapers manufacture it for readers elsewhere; The Loved One directs it toward Hollywood and the funeral business. His later work could be more reflective and emotionally textured. Brideshead Revisited uses memory, friendship, an aristocratic Catholic family, and a great house to explore the pull of faith and a disappearing social order. Catholicism and conservative politics also became prominent in his nonfiction and journalism.

The Loved One Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Back Bay Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780316926102

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