ABSTRACT
Evelyn Waugh's Scoop (1933), a satire on modern journalism, contains a curious tale of escape from Western decadence. William Boot, the novel's simple and long-suffering hero, is a young man for whom the decline of English society has particular poignancy. As country squire and columnist for a major London newspaper, William's life is ensnared in both the decaying world of the country classes and the corrupt values of a new urban modernity, an existence, in other words, which absorbs the dual consequences of Victorian social transition. It is a predicament for which his newspaper, through a series of fortuitous blunders, presents a surprising means of release. He is sent to report on a civil war in Ishmaelia, a primitive African state whose medieval structures of power, and primordial stretches of countryside, suggest all the beauty, romance and adventure that had been absent from the drab society of the West. Yet the exotic potential of the country fails to materialize. After a month of general tribulation, and the unexpected 'scoop' of the title, William returns to the tedium and impoverishment of his former lifestyle as if nothing had been learnt from the journey, and no alternative to the malaise of Western society had presented itself.
