Scoop

What Hacker News says

1. motohagiographyDec 2022
   Gatsby, like most officially great novels, is the least good of Fitzgerald's books. Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and the Damned were way better. There was something about critics of the time who needed to suffer to appreciate anything and it was good of Mencken to hold Fitzgerald to his own standards, but what made authors of the era great were the books that were actually enjoyable. When you look at other authors of the era, where W. Sommerset Maughm is known for his miserable slog, Of Human Bondage, when The Razors Edge, Cakes and Ale, and the Painted Veil were way better, and he's even credited with being the precursor of the spy novel with his Ashenden stories. Hemmingway was a short story writer, but somehow he is remembered for the fawning reception of Farewell to Arms. Evelyn Waugh was savagely funny if you have read Scoop, Decline and Fall or Black Mischief, but Brideshead Revisited was the critical success that got made into a sappy miniseries.

   It's like critics take your least spectacular and most vulnerable work and tag you with it as your best so as to ensure you are never known for the great stuff that got you on their radar and that might put their own work to shame. However, it doesn't matter, their lives are absurd. Quite a number of them make a living criticising food now, mostly because it can't defend itself.

   The era of great criticism that began with characters like Mencken and, earlier, Bierce ended with the death of Christopher Hitchens I think. None of them, including Vidal, or Hunter S. Thompson would survive the culture today. I think it's too bad that the idea of a literary rivalry now seems as dated as fighting a duel with sabres, and it's as though there is nobody writing today who is capable of putting down a challenger when instead they can claim to be the victim of harassment to attract a mob. Mencken was great, and given Fitzgeralds other work, his Gatsby review was an act of mercy, but I bet he would be banned from social platforms and probably have trouble getting a bank account if he were writing today. Hard to say what we lost, but reading Mencken now, it's definitely gone.

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2. motohagiographyApr 2022
   Both were such a pleasure to read. It's like I have a new favourite author without ever having read anything by him. Deep, blistering satire that bordered on the kind of cruelty that could only have started as love, for me, was Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop," and W. Sommerset Maughm's "The Magician," but Gaddis sounds like someone to take a week off and rent a cottage somewhere to read it. I read a couple of Pynchon books but the thing about post modern writers to me was I always got the sense that if it didn't grab you, it was about you and that kind of put me off.
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3. mturmonDec 2011
   Such a sharp thinker, with unbelievable wit and depth of memory.

   You can get a sense of his political style from his fascination with the remark from Israeli peace activist Israel Shahak, "there are beginning to be some encouraging signs of polarization". Meaning that usually, well almost always, you have to choose sides. Draw the line between the sides yourself if necessary.

   It's Hitchens' writings that introduced me to the early, dry, humorous works of Evelyn Waugh (best known is "Scoop", but also Decline and Fall, and the Sword of Honour trilogy). Some of Hitchens' best writing was literary appreciation, not polemics.

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4. ggmFeb 2026
   "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole"," is Evelyn Waugh's take on the gentleman naturalist in "Scoop" (1938) a role which Peter Matthiessen seems to have taken to heart.

   It's a job. Somebody has to note the first cookoo of spring.

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5. cafardApr 2025
   Up to a point, Lord Copper.

   [Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh]

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