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Cynical Distraction

Journalists:

Lads on Tour

  • 'The Voice and the Daily Excess become, respectively, the Beast and the Brute'.

(Stannard, Evelyn Waugh: No Abiding City, p. 475)

  • 'I have got to hate the Ethiopians more each day, goodness, they are lousy'.

(Waugh and Cooper, Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch, p. 79)

  • 'It is quite without romance

or heroism to be here, but it

will make a funny novel'.

(Waugh and Cooper, Mr.

Wu and Mrs. Stitch, p. 79)

Bibliography

'There are 83 journalists here now and it is too many. When we were drunk that night we locked the Times correspondent in his room'.

(Waugh and Cooper, Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch, p. 79)

  • Stennard, Martin, Evelyn Waugh: No Abiding City, 1936-1966 (London: Dent, 1992)
  • Waugh, Evelyn and Cooper, Diana, Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diano Cooper (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)
  • Salwen, Michael B., 'Evelyn Waugh's Scoop: The Facts Behind the Fiction', Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78 (2001), 150-171

'Waugh never witnessd battle. Consequently (...) he turned much of his attention to critiquing journalistic practices and criticizing the correspondents'.

(Salwen, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, p. 152)

Background

Monkey Business

  • Mussolini about to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
  • Evelyn Waugh, an ambitious novelist
  • War correspondent for the Daily Mail

'The English minister's daughter, who married a rival wop [WithOut Papers - a slur for Italians - stereotypically illegal immigrants], so he tried to murder her, failed, shot himself, failed & now has gone home'.

(Waugh and Cooper, Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch, p. 79)

A Playful Parody?

'I have bought a very low-spirited baboon & he masturbates all day. We took him to the Peroquet, that is our 43 [nightclub] last night and he pulled a whore's hair'.

(Waugh and Cooper, Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch, p. 79)

  • 'The book was intended to delight and to amuse the discriminating, not to educate or confess'.

(Stannard, Evelyn Waugh: No Abiding City, p. 474)

  • Waugh did not take his journalistic adventure seriously
  • Coronation of Haile Selassie

  • 'He [Waugh] missed reporting the coronation story, the primary reason he was hired'.

(Salwen, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, p. 152)

  • Waugh's response: 'The coronation of an emperor means little to him [the reader]. He may read about it on Monday or Tuesday'.

(Salwen, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, p. 152)

Any questions?

Evelyn Waugh's Scoop

The Realistic Absurdity of a Truthful Parody

By Alex Santema

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