Scoop (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Evelyn Waugh 1940, photograph by Carl van Vechten . Waugh processed his own experience as a foreign correspondent in the novel.

Scoop is a 1938 novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh , in which he caricatures sensational journalism and the life of foreign correspondents. The novel was first published in German in 1953 with the title The Big Message and was published in 1988 with the title Der Knüller . The current German-language edition appears under the English original article. All publications use the translation by Elisabeth Schnack .

The novel is now considered a classic of 20th century English literature. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel together with Waugh's first work Verfall und Untergang as one of the most important British novels .

action

Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast, is tricked into sending the novelist John Boot to Ishmaelia, where war seems to be imminent, through an elaborate intrigue. A mix-up leads to the fact that not the novelist, but William Boot, author of a nature column in the Daily Beast, goes on the trip to Ishmaelia.

William Boot is part of a now impoverished family of the landed gentry and lives with eight family members and ten servants who are now very old on the family seat of Boot Magna. The wealthiest member of the household is former nanny Nannie Bloggs, who has been bedridden for thirty years and keeps her savings in a red flannel bag. His post as the author of the column, which shines with sentences such as “The stalking vole wanders lightly through the chuckling moor ... ”, was once bequeathed to Boots by the widow of the priest of Boot Magna. Although the column is carelessly relegated to the last page of the newspaper and appears between bedtime stories for children and recipes, it earns him a guinea with every contribution. Given the choice of either leaving as a special correspondent for the Daily Beast or being fired, Boot accepts the assignment.

Boot is supposed to report from a country that is marked by a conflict between communists and fascists. Even when obtaining a visa in London, he has to contact the consulates on both sides, which leads to difficulties. The trip is also chaotic because of his excess baggage, which contains completely pointless survival aids. He experiences his stay in Ismaelia as a confused sequence of events. However, he manages the “scoop” - reporting an event before other foreign correspondents pick it up. Returning to Great Britain, he finds himself showered with honor. Yet another misunderstanding leads to John Boot being raised to the nobility instead. William Boot accepts this with relief. Satisfied, he returns to Boot Magna to write his nature column again.

History of origin

Waugh, who called journalism the enemy of the novel and forced all journalists with literary ambitions to change careers, drew on his experience as a foreign correspondent in Abyssinia for Scoop . In 1930 he reported from there on the coronation of Haile Selassie and in August 1935 he was there as a correspondent for the Daily Mail to report on the impending war of aggression and conquest by the fascist kingdom of Italy . In his foreword, Waugh writes about his work there:

“I had little talent for it, but I enjoyed studying the quirks and debauchery of my colleagues. The geographical position of Ishmaelia, but not the state, corresponds to that of Abyssinia, and the life of journalists in Jacksonburg roughly corresponds to that of Addis Ababa in 1935 "

Bill Deedes , a British journalist and later ennobled politician, is widely regarded as the person Evelyn Waugh developed his unfortunate protagonist William Boot from. Deedes, who was only 22 years old when he and Waugh reported from Addis Ababa where he had arrived with a quarter ton of luggage, later noted in his memoirs that Waugh, like most good writers, his fictional characters from more than developed by a real person. However, Deedes admitted that his oversized baggage and naivete found in William Boot.

Other characters are also easily identifiable, such as Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock as Sir Percival Phillips , who also scored a scoop in 1931 . Lord Copper is said to be modeled on Lord Northcliffe , the first publisher of major tabloids, and Lord Beaverbrook , the owner of a press empire and war propagandist.

Adaptations

  • Scoop has been adapted for television twice in the UK. There was a television series in 1972 and a television movie in 1987, both based on the novel. Michael Maloney and Denholm Elliott played in the television film . The script was written by William Boyd . Directed by Gavin Miller .

expenditure

literature

  • Margaret Drabble (Editor): The Oxford Companion to English Literature , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
  2. ^ Foreword by the author to Scoop. Translation by Elisabeth Schnack
  3. ^ William Francis Deedes: At War with Waugh: The Real Story of "Scoop" , Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 1-4050-0573-4 , p. 102
  4. ↑ The 100 best novels: No 60 - Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938) , in: theguardian.com, November 10, 2014.
  5. ↑ Tina Brown Launches Much-Awaited News Site . The Huffington Post. October 6, 2008.