Thursday, August 08, 2013
No conversion needed
Been reading Waugh's 1936 novel 'Scoop'. It's a sloppily told story with several interesting surplus characters who play no part in the plot. Still, the main theme shows in a frightening way how the evils of 'journalism' and international politics have remained perfectly constant for 80 years.
The central character, William Boot, is an English countryman from an old dissipated family, who writes 'lyrical but accurate' nature notes for a London paper. The paper is owned by a Lord Beaverbrook type (Rupert Murdoch in modern currency). By mistake Boot is sent as Foreign Correspondent to Ishmaelia (Bongo Bongo Land in today's money). Ishmaelia is clearly Liberia: it's been run continuously by the Jackson family (no conversion needed!) ever since the country was formed by returned slaves in 1840.
Boot is supposed to cover a civil war which is nominally between Soviet proxies and Nazi proxies (= China and India). Beaverbrook/Murdoch gives Boot a lecture on the high calling of journalism: "With respect to Policy, I expect you have your own views. I never hamper my correspondents in any way. Remember that the Patriots are in the right. They are going to defeat the Traitors. This paper stands foursquare with the Patriots. But they must win quickly. The British public has no patience with a war that drags on indecisively."
Boot is hopelessly confused and asks an experienced reporter which side is the Patriots. He learns that Beaverbrook/Murdoch was simply defining an implicit function: The winning side is the Patriots. The journalist's job is to give the winning side a political flavor that will please the readers.
A bunch of stuff happens, and Boot writes the best story about the war because he has enough common sense to avoid the crowd-mind of the real journalists. In reality there's no civil war, only a squabble among factions of the Jackson family. At the end we find out that the whole mess was engineered by a mysterious financier who needed to disrupt the Jacksons and the international proxies long enough to establish a gold mine in Ishmaelia. (Again no conversion needed.)
The real journalist jackals scramble en masse to a nonexistent location where the nonexistent Revolution is supposedly going to happen, and Boot stays in the capital where the real family squabble quietly ends after serving the financier's purposes.
Underneath the parody, the book is just a classic City Mouse - Country Mouse story. Boot the countryman outwits the city idiots, refuses knighthoods and money, returns to his ancestral home where things make bloody sense. I understand completely.
I'd never read Waugh before. It's clear that Percy (who I've read intensely) followed the same format: City Mouse - Country Mouse, overlaid by hard prophetic parody, seasoned with silly surplus characters.
¶ 3:12 AM 
Been reading Waugh's 1936 novel 'Scoop'. It's a sloppily told story with several interesting surplus characters who play no part in the plot. Still, the main theme shows in a frightening way how the evils of 'journalism' and international politics have remained perfectly constant for 80 years.
The central character, William Boot, is an English countryman from an old dissipated family, who writes 'lyrical but accurate' nature notes for a London paper. The paper is owned by a Lord Beaverbrook type (Rupert Murdoch in modern currency). By mistake Boot is sent as Foreign Correspondent to Ishmaelia (Bongo Bongo Land in today's money). Ishmaelia is clearly Liberia: it's been run continuously by the Jackson family (no conversion needed!) ever since the country was formed by returned slaves in 1840.
Boot is supposed to cover a civil war which is nominally between Soviet proxies and Nazi proxies (= China and India). Beaverbrook/Murdoch gives Boot a lecture on the high calling of journalism: "With respect to Policy, I expect you have your own views. I never hamper my correspondents in any way. Remember that the Patriots are in the right. They are going to defeat the Traitors. This paper stands foursquare with the Patriots. But they must win quickly. The British public has no patience with a war that drags on indecisively."
Boot is hopelessly confused and asks an experienced reporter which side is the Patriots. He learns that Beaverbrook/Murdoch was simply defining an implicit function: The winning side is the Patriots. The journalist's job is to give the winning side a political flavor that will please the readers.
A bunch of stuff happens, and Boot writes the best story about the war because he has enough common sense to avoid the crowd-mind of the real journalists. In reality there's no civil war, only a squabble among factions of the Jackson family. At the end we find out that the whole mess was engineered by a mysterious financier who needed to disrupt the Jacksons and the international proxies long enough to establish a gold mine in Ishmaelia. (Again no conversion needed.)
The real journalist jackals scramble en masse to a nonexistent location where the nonexistent Revolution is supposedly going to happen, and Boot stays in the capital where the real family squabble quietly ends after serving the financier's purposes.
Underneath the parody, the book is just a classic City Mouse - Country Mouse story. Boot the countryman outwits the city idiots, refuses knighthoods and money, returns to his ancestral home where things make bloody sense. I understand completely.
I'd never read Waugh before. It's clear that Percy (who I've read intensely) followed the same format: City Mouse - Country Mouse, overlaid by hard prophetic parody, seasoned with silly surplus characters.
¶ 3:12 AM
