Comical Side of Scoop

A detailed Summary of Comical Side of Scoop

"Evelyn Waugh was one of literature's great curmudgeons and a scathingly funny satirist. Scoop is a comedy of England's newspaper business of the 1930s and the story of William Boot, an innocent hick from the country who writes careful essays about the habits of the badger" ("Editorial Reviews"). "With this book England's wittiest novelist sets a new standard for comic extravaganza...the real message about SCOOP is that it is thoroughly enjoyable, uproariously funny and that everyone should read it at once" (The New York Times). This is just one example of the popularity of the comical relief hidden within the bindings of the book Scoop.

This book sets forth a new standard for comic extravaganza. The novel reads as though it had been formed with "slapstick", but it is architecture of amazement. For example, his delightful style of the keys of typewriters in the personal quarters of one of Fleet Street's greatest press lords made no more sound "than the drumming of a bishop's finger tips on an upholstered prie-dieu"; the buzzers of the telephones "were muffled and purred like wart cats"; the massive double doors, encased in New England rosewood, by "their weight, polish and depravity of design, proclaimed unmistakab

There are some that argue the weakness of its basic "farcical" idea is somewhat inadequate (Gleder 2). Basically he is saying that the broadly or extravagantly humorous remarks made throughout, are too many. Mr. Waugh does write with such mastery that the use of 321 pages of his prose or ordinary speech is practically useless because the current generation seems to miss the broadly humorous remarks, thus almost rendering it useless. Although it is argued I believe that the book itself is not peerless to this generation and it is well developed towards its slapstick humor written in the book.

The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk that would have been the death of an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it and so did Frau Dressler's guests. (Waugh 25)

Though the central humorous idea was hardly the strength needed as a base for su

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Approximate Word count = 1025
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels