RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy guru, once boasted how he had created an “echo chamber” in the press corps to publicize the administration’s foreign policy moves: they were just a bunch of 27-year-olds who know nothing about foreign policy, he said.

With war booming between Russia and Ukraine, and our foreign correspondents brushing off their flak jackets and camouflage gear, it might be time to return to the definite study of how the foreign policy elite cover a war, Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop. “

“Scoop” appeared in May 1938 — if you are interested in coincidences, or  what Chesterton called “God’s way of punning” — it was published less than two weeks after George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia,” which was a failure at first, but now like “Scoop” is considered a classic.  “Scoop” was largely based on Waugh’s experiences covering the Italo-Ethiopian war for the Daily Mail in 1935.  The experiences in that war left Waugh with unpleasant memories, and he particularly came to detest the cynicism, outright distortions and lies of the journalists covering the war.

“Scoop” subtitled “A Novel About Journalists” — was the fourth and, in my view, the funniest and most savage of his satiric novels — “Decline and Fall” runs a close second in my view.  The protagonist William Boot writes a nature column, “Lush Places,” for the Daily Beast, the largest newspaper in England. Lord Copper, the all-powerful owner of the paper mistakenly orders the wrong Boot to cover a civil war that is supposed to have broken out in the mythical country of Ishmaelia, a thinly veiled version of Ethiopia. The editor, Salter, a comic foil for Copper is told that Boot possesses a high-class style, and checks out his latest column: “Feather-footed through the plashy fen the questioning vole…”  “That must be good style,” he observes, “At least, it doesn’t sound like anything else to me.”

A story of corruption

Ishmaelia, Waugh notes in one of his classic barbs, has hardly been touched by the European powers. “Various courageous Europeans in the ’70s of the last century came to Ishmaelia … as missionaries, ambassadors, tradesmen, prospectors, natural scientists. None returned. They were eaten, every one of them; some raw, others stewed and seasoned …”

The country is run by a corrupt family, the Jacksons, whose leading figures are named after various English progressive types Waugh enjoyed poking fun at: Huxley Jackson, Pankhurst Jackson, General Gollancz Jackson.  As in most of Waugh’s novels there is always a disreputable character named after his tutor at Oxford whom he hated: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell.  It is said that Cruttwell dreaded the appearance of a new Waugh novel fearing how he would be portrayed.

The character of Lord Copper, loosely based on Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express, is surrounded by yes men who fear correcting any comment he makes. If he is right then it is: “Definitely Lord Copper;” if wrong, “Up to a point, Lord Copper.” He sends Boot to Ishmaelia telling him it is “a very promising little war” between Black fascists who claim that Ishmaelians are really white and must “purge themselves of the Negro taint” and red communists who claim to be inspired by that great negro, Karl Marx. Lord Copper insists that he “personally requires victories.”  Boot is the perfect naïf, a 20th-century Candide, which enables Waugh to score off the highly flawed figures of the journalist trade which he knew so well, heaping scorn on their belief that what they write is the first draft of history.

The corps of disreputable correspondents includes Corker who serves a representative figure for the lot.  An Englishmen, who despises foreigners especially the French, he takes Boot under his wing and explains what foreign correspondents really do.  “I can’t see that foreign stories are ever news … News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read … After that it’s dead.”

Disdain for journalists evident

Waugh also makes fun of the way journalist’s cable.  Sprinkled throughout the book are telegrams that Boot can’t decipher. OPPOSITION SPLASHING FRONTWARD SPEEDIEST. STOP ADEN REPORTED PREPARED WARWISE FLASH FACTS BEAST. Even Corker has trouble explaining that one.

Waugh’s view of the journalist profession, never high, is made clear when Boot and Corker go to the press bureau to get their identity cards. “They were small orange documents, originally printed for the registration of prostitutes.”

“Scoop” is filled with racial stereotypes and language that wouldn’t pass muster today. When I taught English history in the past, I would often assign one of Waugh’s comic novels including “Scoop.” Imagine what would happen to me today if I had students read it. I would be hauled before my school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion committee and never heard from again!

This book will make you laugh out loud

For all his racist language and portraits of the African characters as crooks, forever cheating the Europeans, it is the journalists who are the most disreputable characters in the book, trying to “scoop” each other and in the process blundering stupidly around the country.

Boot stumbles on his scoop proving that the civil war is a farce and returns to England a hero, rejects all honors and only desires his to return to his “Lush Places” column.

Scoop has a quality different from Waugh’s other comic novels — Christopher Hitchens described it as “limber and light as a feather.” Boot is a more likeable figure than some of his other comic characters and the reader enjoys his well-deserved triumph.

“Scoop” holds up well and is one of the few books you read and find yourself laughing out loud. One foreign correspondent wrote of “Scoop:”  “The older I get and the more wars I covered —and I have done about 18 — the truer it became. Everything is there.”

Pretty soon be prepared for the Christiane Amanpour’s and Bob Woodward’s of the press to be telling us the inside story of what is happening in Ukraine. I can’t wait.