The newspaper adds to his story despite never even being in the country.īecause the telegraph was very expensive, the third step is apparently how foreign news really did work.Īfter writing that story and becoming famous, William is met in London by a neophyte newspaper employee who practices his craft by imagining newsworthy events and writing about them.He makes up a story from the gossip despite never being there.The fluff must be added in again by someone at the paper, who has no idea what’s going on in Ishmaelia. He then transmits his report via telegraph, which necessary removes all the fluff. At the risk of giving away one of the better pieces, William Boot becomes famous by creating news out of the gossip from his non-girlfriend and basically making up the details. Waugh’s humor in this book is very, very dry.

That puts me in the camp of the non-war-correspondents who won’t admit that Scoop is very real. I can believe, however, that this is a near-perfect satirical sendup of news reporting, especially foreign news reporting. I can half believe Knightley’s analysis: I don’t myself believe that everything (or much) of what happens in fictional “Ishmaelia” happened anywhere near the same way in Abyssinia in real life. I found it at the local Half Price Books a few weeks later, then read it while traveling over the last few weeks.

This description intrigued me enough to add Scoop to my want list. What only the war correspondents present at the time knew was that Scoop was actually a piece of straight reportage, thinly disguised as a novel to protect the author from libel actions.

’s irreverent novel of Fleet Street and the hectic pursuit of hot news in “Ishmaelia” by the newly appointed war correspondent William Boot, was published in 1938, it was hailed as a “brilliant parody” of his experiences in Abyssinia.

because Philip Knightley, in The First Casualty had raved about it as the best kind of satire: that what Waugh writes about in Scoop actually happened, exactly as in the book, with only the names changed.

It’s likely I didn’t understand the humor certainly, the humor in Scoop Sometimes that works, but for me at least, A Handful of Dust The writing was good, but the plot meandered about pointlessly and didn’t really go anywhere.

several months ago, and found it mostly unimpressive.

William boot scoop