UMRA’s Book Club 1 met on June 21 to discuss Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1903–66), an English writer known for his acute satire and dark humor. Scoop, a satire of foreign correspondents and sensationalist journalism, was published in 1938 and in 2009 was named “one of the 1,000 novels everyone must read” by the daily Guardian newspaper.

In the novel, William Boot, a young man who lives in the English countryside and contributes nature notes to the Daily Beast, is pressured into becoming a foreign correspondent when the newspaper’s editors mistake him for John Boot, a fashionable novelist. William Boot is sent to Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. Despite his incompetence, Boot accidentally gets the journalistic scoop. When he returns to England, the credit goes to the other Boot, and William happily returns to the countryside.

The novel is partly based on Waugh’s experience of working for the Daily Mail when he was sent to cover Mussolini’s expected invasion of Abyssinia. When he got the scoop for the invasion, he telegraphed the story to the newspaper in Latin for secrecy, but his editors discarded it. 

Overblown prose

Although the characters in the novel were thought to be based on real people of the times, Waugh was reluctant to acknowledge any models. This line from one of Boot’s countryside columns has become a famous comic example of overblown prose: “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.”

UMRA Book club members had mixed reactions to the book. Some found it humorous, but many were concerned about the racism and sexism in the writing. Some found it hard to follow the plot, with the two different Boots and large number of characters. 

Members also discussed journalistic ethics today, and recent concerns about the Washington Post potentially hiring an editor from England with a history of working on stories that appeared to be based on stolen records.

—Diane Madlon-Kay, UMRA Book Club I 

Editor’s note: On June 21, Washington Post Editor and Publisher Will Lewis announced that Robert Winnett, recruited by Lewis to be the Post’s new editor, had decided to stay in England and not take the job.