We Are All Cyborgs – ‘Paradigmatic Shifts: Narrative and Semantics Now’

Before getting up this morning I surfed the internet on my smartphone, roaming from Facebook to Twitter and from Twitter to the Huffington Post app (a ritual I partake in every morning). After reading several banal articles, most of which focused on bogus political manifestos and the weekend’s reaction to Manchester United FC defeating their English rivals Liverpool, I stumbled across a composition that reminded me of a research seminar I attended last October. The article told of how Taylor Swift reportedly purchased some adult web domain names to prevent porn sites misusing her name in the future to sell or promote their sexually explicit content. The reason the singer/actress felt so compelled to purchase a piece of the internet is because, in June 2015, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will release domain names ending in ‘.porn’ and ‘.adult’. Now, to Swift’s relief, no one can use the domain names ‘TaylorSwift.porn’ and ‘TaylorSwift.adult’ in the future. The article further tells of how Microsoft followed suit, purchasing ‘Office.porn’ and ‘Office.adult’ before anyone else could acquire those particular domains. The anxiety about such perverse usages of the World Wide Web is now characteristic of contemporary society.

The seminar that was fortuitously brought to my attention through my morning readings was Dr Orla Murphy’s ‘Paradigmatic Shifts: Narrative and Semantics Now’. I had taken pages of notes during her talk that needed revising so as to enable me to write this blog some five months after the seminar took place. Particular words and sentences stood out and I will attempt to write both from these notes and my memories of the seminar. To paraphrase Dr Murphy loosely, we are all cyborgs: that is, we (humanity) are digitally connected beings. Although a choice ten years ago, this digital connectivity is almost an indispensable capacity of modern man. On hearing the word cyborg I automatically think of Robocop or the movie I Robot, a sci-fi thriller set in the year 2035 where highly intelligent robots fill public service positions throughout the world. But, of course, why compare myself to a robot when I am already hypothetically a cyborg whose daily life centres on technological advances such as the internet? In the preceding sentence, I deliberately chose to use the word ‘centred’ instead of ‘advanced’ for the reason that the internet’s life-enhancing qualities are persistently exploited for malevolent purposes. Mentioned in the seminar was the poignant actuality that people now live a binary existence that runs parallel with each other. Not only do we exist in the real world but we now have a place in a virtual one, which often takes precedence over the former. In modern society, most people live in the virtual world and usually inhabit two houses – that of Facebook and Twitter. Apparently happy places, these dwellings harvest more lies than the Obama administration, but remain the primary method of communication between individuals in the twenty-first century. Facebook is to communication as McDonalds is to food. Although fast, cheap and convenient, it also is terribly unhealthy and innutritious. I would be a fool and a hypocrite were I to say Facebook does not have its uses but its shortcomings eclipse many of its benefits. Yes, Facebook enables one to communicate with a brother, father or friend half way across the world, but what should be measured is the quality of such communication; more often than not, it is poor and usually comprises of hitting the ‘like’ button under-neath a picture or commenting on an exceedingly exaggerated post (God forbid anyone thinks we are anything other than perpetually happy). We live in a virtual reality that is becoming much more important than our real lives and, subsequently, we are lonelier than we were before the invention of the internet.

Access to information is considered a basic right and is one of the many liberties that are exhibited in the United Nations charter of Human Rights. However, what about multinational corporations extracting peoples’ personal information in order to widen their profit margins?  Again to paraphrase Orla Murphy, we are being traced, tracked, and traded for profit. Imagine you are walking home from a night’s partying and you suddenly find that someone is watching you because they want all of your valuables – watch, mobile-phone, rings, money and credit cards. You would either run to safety or confront your stalker and call the police. So what are you to do when you open your browser and go to Facebook.com, only to find your personal information is being collected without your consent via cookies and tracking databases? The panoply of corporations harvesting your personal information make sure that every step you make along your internet trek is monetised. It is important to remember that often these corporations create or help construct your digital profile. Although they often dispense with names, you become a marketable number and your anonymity is cast to one side.

Typically, the internet was a space where we could express ourselves freely but such is the paradox of freedom that our expressions are monitored and surreptitiously confined to ticking boxes. The internet’s infinite capacity for storing information has been a source of consternation among people. These trepidations were heightened after Edward Snowden, a computer professional formerly employed by the CIA and NSA, leaked classified information to the public revealing numerous international surveillance programs. In other words, the National Security Authority, whose core responsibility is global monitoring for counterintelligence purposes, was spying on ordinary people and collecting their data. The internet does not embrace the freedom of individuals: rather, it allows powerful organisations to stretch their hegemonic boundaries. Why does this happen? A general misconception is that the internet is not owned or controlled by anyone but is somewhat owned and controlled by all of its users. This, however, could not be further from the truth, as Professor George P Landow states on discussing hypertext and the effects of digital technology: “technology always empowers someone, some group in society, and it does so at a certain cost” (Allen). This concept is explored in detail by Lawrence Lessig in his book The Future of Ideas. The book is very accessible and Lessig uses real-world metaphors to explain the computer details for the non-technical. He helps us understand the internet by using the concept of a ‘commons’, traditionally understood as a space or resource not owned by any individual or private institution. The internet began as a type of ‘commons’, public property accessible by all. However, currently people have been trying to control intellectual property through copyright, among other means, and Lessig explains that such desire for control is debilitating innovation across the virtual spectrum. I will now briefly return to Facebook for my last point. The internet has become one of the most powerful weapons in modern warfare, with the British army creating a special force of Facebook warriors. Social media has become an unconventional tool for combat in the information age and its prevalence in assisting ISIS recruit members from inside enemy territory reveals the damaging capabilities bestowed to those with access to the internet. The 77^th Brigade or Facebook warriors’ primary objective is to monitor social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and 24-hour news channels. This way they will attempt to control the narrative and, again (similar to the NSA), will likely invade people’s privacy to do so. The internet is a modern invention comparable to pre-historic discoveries such as the wheel and fire, and the future of this invention will change our lives in unthinkable ways, whether they be for better or worse. What all humans must endeavour to remember is that the internet is a tool and we must not let it control and dictate the direction our lives take.

Works Cited

Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Vol. Revised. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. Book.

Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2002. Book.

Welsh, Daniel. “Taylor Swift Buys Porn Sites’ Web Domains So They Can’t Missue Her Name.” Huffington Post. 23 March 2015. Online.

Murphy, Orla. ‘Paradigmatic Shifts: Narrative and Semantics Now.’ University College Cork. 30 Nov.        2014. Seminar.

‘The Unempty Wasps’ Nest and Kubrick’s The Shining: Rethinking Adaption’

Some weeks ago, on the fourth of March, Professor Graham Allen presented a seminar on his paper ‘The Unempty Wasps’ Nest and Kubrick’s The Shining: Rethinking Adaption’. I thought myself lucky as the paper is yet to be published, so those who attended the seminar were given a taster as what to expect from the issued article. The seminar focused on the issues pertaining to Kubrick’s removing of the wasps’ nest in his film’s adaption of Stephen King’s literary masterpiece. Although only one of many differences between the two media, Graham suggests that the wasps’ nest is present in the movie symbolically rather than physically. In the novel, the wasps’ nest reminds Jack Torrance of how he has been stung by life with his uncontrollable anger, his alcoholism and his abusive father. Jack decides to ‘bomb’ the nest as he thinks it would make a great decoration for his son Danny’s room: “I had one in my room when I was a kid. My dad gave it to me” (King 133). That same night the nest bizarrely comes alive with hundreds of wasps that crawl over Danny and sting him with near-fatal consequences. In the novel, the recurring motif of the wasps represent the troubles of Jack’s past. Nowhere in Kubrick’s film do we see wasps or a wasps’ nest but an unusual, although apt, correlation between the wasps and the Overlook Hotel was made by Graham during the seminar. Wasps have lidless eyes, therefore allowing them perpetual vision, and in the movie the Overlook Hotel seems to be aware of everything that is happening to the characters. Kubrick’s use of the Steadicam was revolutionary and his camera floats through the hotel’s corridors like an evil spirit, a spirit we assign to the hotel’s malevolence. Similar to the wasps, the Overlook Hotel seems to be forever conscious and an insidious participant in Torrance’s madness. The single most thought-provoking element of the seminar (for me) was the discussion Graham and some lectures attending had regarding the adaption of a book onto the big screen. A point highlighted during the sprightly conversation was that once a literary work such as a novel is adapted to another medium, that of a film or stage play, it becomes a partially original creation, and should be perceived as such. It is well known that Stephen King loathed Kubrick’s adaption of The Shining and particularly points out the film’s inability to ‘grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook hotel’ and instead focuses on Jack’s character’s descent into lunacy. King describes the film as a ‘domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones’. However, The Shining is considered by most as a cinematic masterpiece whose innovative approach to the genre of horror transcends rather than conforms to conventions. The question asked is why an adaption should stay true to whatever it is that’s being adapted. The most iconic aspects of the film are not present in the movie and lovers of the book often consider the film inferior to King’s novel. The shining has become two stories and each is brilliant in its own explicit way. The rejection of the wasps’ nest in Kubrick’s The Shining portrays the director’s deliberate breakaway from King’s novel. In allowing the supposedly empty wasps’ nest to come back to life, King associates the unexplainable evil with the Overlook Hotel and not the character of Jack Torrance. In direct contrast, Kubrick portrays Jack as the film’s essence of evil, with the hotel acting as a complimentary backdrop to such perverseness. Therefore, the addition and omission of various aspects of the book becomes necessary and pivotal to the film’s success. The film tells a more realistic story and therefore is a more chilling tale than the novel. King portrays Jack as a character worthy of redemption and the happy ending of the novel strikes a false note with what is evidently more fitting to a Romantic novel than a horror story. Kubrick allows no room for emotional participation when watching the film and you feel instead as though you are experiencing the tribulations of Wendy and Danny. Such are the disparities between the book and the film that it almost feels unjust to compare and contrast them. The adaption of a book to a film is seldom considered the simple process of modification or adjustment but is more widely appreciated as the recreation of the old into the new, thus making it original in its own right. Although the concept of originality has lost its fundamental meaning since the avant-garde, I use the word only to emphasise the importance of a book or film’s adaption to be evaluated individually and not as an example of the direct imitation of a work dragged into another medium. In deliberately not staying true to King’s novel, Kubrick transcends the traditional concepts of horror in film. King was so unhappy with the film version of The Shining that he pushed for the production of a mini television series of his book. However, the TV-series was heavily criticised and demonstrates that novelists are not automatically the best choice when it comes to adapting their work into another medium. Writing a book and writing a screenplay are two very different undertakings and should not be assessed or categorised collectively. Mentioned in the seminar too was the influence Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny had on Kubrick’s film. The use of doubles, mirrors, repetition, numbers, and the familiar correspond with Freud’s understanding that ‘uncanny feelings’ arise when something familiar starts to act in an inexplicable and peculiar manner. This something might be a house, a pet, a neighbour, and in The Shining it happens to be Jack, a husband and father. Freud states that “Death and the re-animation of the dead are typically represented as uncanny themes…the theory of intellectual uncertainty is thus incapable of explaining that impression” (Freud). Images of death appear ubiquitously in the film – the dead twins, the resurrected caretaker and the corpse in the bathtub. What we never find out is whether the ghosts Jack sees are products of his imagination or real apparitions. Similar to Freud’s understanding of the ‘uncanny’, the viewer’s uncertainty of whether the ghosts are figments of Jack’s imagination exemplify the ‘uncanniness’ we experience in times of confusion and doubt. Whether you are a fan of the novel or the film, one must appreciate that the addition and omission of several features of the book (the wasps’ nest) becomes a necessary evil in making Kubrick’s The Shining the celebrated work it is today.

Works Cited

Allen, Graham. ‘The Unempty Wasps’ Nest and Kubrick’s The Shining: Rethinking Adaptation.’ University College Cork. 4 Mar. 2015. Lecture.

Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Peguin, 2003. Book.

King, Stephen. The Shining. London: Hachette, 2007. Book.

Strengell, Heidi. Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism. London: Popular Press, 2006. Book.

UCC Textualities Conference Reflection

In life, each and every one of us will have to partake in an event, occasion or experience that will test the very limits of our personal abilities. My D-Day for 2015 fell on the 27^th February: it was the day of the Textualities Conference held by the English Master students of UCC. Since learning the conference was due to occur a month earlier than previously thought, it had positioned itself insidiously at the back of my mind. For some, speaking in public comes as natural as walking your dog in the park; however, for others (like myself) it seems a near impossible feat comparable to climbing Mount Everest with a man-eating monkey strapped to your back. Nonetheless, public speaking is a fundamental ingredient an academic must either possess or acquire, and this very reality meant I had to shape up or ship out. As the weeks drew closer, the tension and excitement reached new levels of eminence. The easiest task of my presentation was choosing a topic, Evelyn Waugh being the number one contender and outright winner. It was my personal appreciation of this exquisitely eloquent and highly articulate writer that compelled me to speak about him, but, more importantly, I felt the need to share my experience of Waughism with my fellow academics. 

Petcha-kucha was the order of the day, a most frightening confinement to how one would usually present an academic exhibition. However, my trepidations about using such an unfamiliar technique seem to have been unfounded. Instead of debilitating my presenting abilities, the use of Petcha-kutcha facilitated me in concentrating and compacting my thoughts and ideas to twenty slides, each lasting 20 seconds. In preparation for the event, I practiced relentlessly until my words correlated unerringly to each and every slide, a characteristic one must be ever so proud of.

Once the day finally arrived, my nerves took a back seat, a marvel consequential to me enjoying the other speakers’ varied and interesting presentations. Contrary to expectations, the conference room was replete with enthusiastic students all encouraging one another. ‘Evelyn Waugh Revisited: Vile Bodies and Modernism’ was the title of my presentation and I must say, once behind the lectern my enthusiasm for Waugh took over and the six minutes and forty seconds elapsed too quickly. My topic involved discussing how and why Waugh’s Vile Bodies should be considered an example of modernist literature. Satire and the use of individualism were the focal points of the presentation. My lecture posed two or three extremely pertinent questions relating to my topic which were answered competently, I hope. The level of efficiency present throughout the day’s events was due to the meticulousness of all the students involved. I took great pleasure in chairing the final group of speakers, whose varied and dynamic presentations concluded the day’s events superbly. During the weekend following the conference, my thoughts were dictated by the little Everest I had overcome, and the eruditions shadowing such an achievement revealed themselves accordingly. On reflection, the three principal accomplishments obtained from the conference were: (1) learning about new topics on which my fellow classmates presented, some leading to a renewal of past interests; (2) newfound confidence in speaking academically in front of more than two people; (3) furnishing an interest in Evelyn Waugh among my classmates. All in all, what I formerly thought to be a daunting and suffocating occurrence transpired to be terribly enjoyable, and the feeling of achievement following the culmination of the day’s events was invigorating.

Anne Enright’s “The Gathering”: A Fictional Reality

At the end of January Anne Enright was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. In light of her recent achievement I have decided to write a blog pertaining to her Booker Prize novel The Gathering. I will outline reasons as to why fictional writing becomes an effective method of narrative, as opposed to non-fictional writing, when depicting painful past experiences.

The Gathering is narrated in the first person by a woman named Veronica Hegarty, whose family has gathered in Dublin for the funeral of their brother Liam, an alcoholic, who committed suicide in England. Whilst giving a testimony of why Veronica believes her brother killed himself, the reader is led to believe that Liam and to some extent Veronica herself are victims of sexual abuse. Although, this aspect of the story is not revealed immediately, Veronica makes her intentions clear at the beginning of the novel, “I need to bear witness to an uncertain event” (Enright 1). This event is of course the molestation of Liam by her grandmother’s Landlord, Lamb Nugent, an event witnessed by Veronica herself. The story centres on Veronica’s attempt to uncover the truth of both her and Liam’s traumatic experience by delving into past events and supposing to write down her findings. By reconstructing her past, Veronica’s present day life comes under self-scrutiny and she begins to question her very existence within society. Anne Enright’s The Gathering portrays a comprehendible understanding of child sexual abuse both personally and in a wider social context by fictionalizing her protagonist’s narrative.

          By fictionalizing a story about child abuse, it allows such events to be expressed, explored, and examined in a way which is more meaningful and understandable than, for example, a report on sexual abuse. The reason why is victim’s like Veronica often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and in order to overcome this must give testimony to the event or events causing their distress. However, testimonies involving traumatic events are often laden with uncertainties and riddled with gaps (Amico 60). Veronica bears witness to this herself “I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. This thing may not have taken place” (Enright 1). In the next page Veronica goes a step further and decides to tell the reader that “she does not know how to tell the truth, and that all she has are stories” (2). Thus Veronica is left with no other choice but to reconstruct the traumatic events of Liam’s molestation, from fragmented memories and imaginings, therefore fictionalizing her ordeal.Now that Veronica finally finds the need to bring these memories to the fore, due to the death of her brother, she reconstructs such events by making them up. She begins by reconstructing the story of how her brother’s abuser Mr Nugent, first entered the Hegarty family circle by falling in love with their grandmother, Ada Merriman. In relation to their relationship, many of the scenes concerning Nugent and Ada are made up and consist only of speculative events. This is apparent in veronica’s use of language, “We read of what Veronica thinks might have happened, of what could have happened, or of what to her somehow feels like the truth of what happened” (Amico 61). Fictionalizing these stories help Veronica believe in her power of reconstructing her past, and make it easier to part some blame on Ada for allowing Nugent molest Liam while under her care. Furthermore, owing to Veronica’s reconstructing of such events she essentially encourages the reader to consider that Nugent either abuses Liam in revenge against Ada for withholding herself from him, or because he enjoys demonstrating his power over her and Charlie as their landlord. Due to her sense of having been betrayed by her grandmother, Veronica imagines that Ada was a prostitute before marrying Charles. Although the reader acknowledges this to be more fantasy than fact, the image helps the reader adopt the same feelings of animosity Veronica has towards her grandmother.

The Ferns Report published in 2005 gives vivid details of clerical sexual abuse on young children, and presents facts in the form of data, rather than fictional narrative. Unlike, the Ferns Report, Enright’s novel explores a personal voice that connects the writer, the reader and the novel’s protagonist on a level more compelling than any report could. By continually exposing the reader to Veronica’s attempts to define herself through all the confusion of traumatic memory, Enright actually invites the reader to partake in the protagonist’s gruelling struggle to make sense of it all (Harte 192), thus making the experience a more personal one.

          Roland Barthes believed that “narratives did not directly represent reality” (Allen, 59), this conception can be compared to Enright’s notion “that language was already an act of translation from the real” (Bracken and Cahill 31), and that “once you’ve made that leap anything goes” (31). By comparing both statements, a direct connection can be made as to why Enright might have chosen to write fiction rather than non-fiction. The reason being she believes both fiction and non-fiction to be similar in that both narratives generate the illusion of reality, rather than portray reality itself (59). Narratives, whether fictional or non-fictional do not reach the reader directly, nor do they directly represent the world, because language has already gone through the act of translation making a narrative at best an indirect representation of reality. So the question remains, why choose fiction over non-fiction? Since Enright probably sees no real differentiation between the two, at least in relation to representing reality and searching for the truth, we must look at the advantages fiction has over its counterpart. The Gathering deals primarily with issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, as seen in the character of Veronica. It can be argued that when Veronica fictionalized parts of her past that were hard for her to process, it became possible for her to understand and remember details of her past that otherwise would have remained inaccessible and unprocessed. She believes persons whose lives fall apart early on are lucky in the sense that they can put it back together again. But those who are always on the brink of crisis, who don’t hit rock bottom, are the ones in trouble. Here, Enright’s personal experience is fictionalized, so as to allow the reader access the conscious mind of a person who has gone through a breakdown in the same way Veronica has. The fictionalisation of a traumatic narrative allows greater scope for widespread understanding owing to the fact that fictional characters are under no restrictions to truthfully represent a particular individual.

          An author does not have to produce a history or a biography in order to portray the truth. Veronica’s telling of day to day activities like interacting with her children, sleeping with her husband and driving her car help the reader to relate to the fictional world created by Enright. Within this fictional world, a reader will often obtain a better understanding of reality, than they would from a text such as an actual testimony or memoir, which purport to reference reality directly, a concept thought fraudulent by Enright.

Works Cited

Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. London: Routledge, 2003.

Amico, Carol Dell. “Anne Enright’s The Gathering: Trauma, Testimony, Memory.” New Hibernia Review (2010): 59-73.

Bracken, Claire and Susan Cahill. “An Interview with Anne Enright.” Bracken, Claire and Susan Cahill. Anne Enright. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011. 31.

Enright, Anne. The Gathering. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.

Harte, Liam. “Mourning Remains Unresolved: Trauma and Survival in Anne Enright’s The Gathering.” Literature Interpretation Theory (2010): 187-204.

Who’s got the Scoop

The lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives – has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

Carl Bernstein

This week I had the pleasure of reading Scoop, a book written in 1938 by the English author Evelyn Waugh. The book took me on an exciting journey through the musings of Fleet Street in the 1930s, the home of British national newspapers until the 1980s. In typical Waugh style, the novel ridicules journalistic endeavours in the most humorous manner imaginable. It seems pertinent to have finished reading Scoop this week having watched Brian Williams’s career deteriorate precipitously into almost non-existence. For those of you unaware, Brian Williams is (or was) a news anchor for NBC whose fabricated story about a life and death escape in Iraq has made international headlines over the last few days. Contemporary examples of Scoop’s characters facilitated my understanding of the goings-on at Fleet Street. Lord Copper effortlessly mutates into Rupert Murdoch, Corker transforms into Brian Williams, with William Boot becoming any of the thousands of journalists waiting anxiously for their big break. These metamorphoses empowered me to become knowledgeable in understanding how Scoop’s characters were portrayed and perceived by persons of that time period.

Scoop centres around a young writer whose bucolic life in rural England is abruptly interrupted, after being shipped off abroad to cover a civil war in Africa. Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast, in a case of mistaken identity, sends the wrong man for the job. William, a nature columnist for the paper is inexperienced and rather clueless about the journalistic endeavours necessary to succeed in such a cutthroat industry. However, Waugh satirically explores the daily undertakings of a foreign correspondent. After arriving, William – along with countless other journalists from France, Switzerland, Germany, and America – find no discernible war, so they simply go about inventing a conflict to please their tabloid masters back home. From misinformation to completely fabricated events, the journalists behave more like fiction writers than news correspondents, a misperception skilfully conveyed to the reader.

As mentioned before, the bulk of the novel takes place in fictional Ishmaelia, a country we might associate with Ethiopia today. Waugh himself departed for Abyssinia in 1930, representing several English newspapers, to cover the coronation of Halle Selassie. He reported the event as “an elaborate propaganda effort” to convince the world that Abyssinia was a civilised nation. This, of course, was untrue as Selassie triumphed over his adversaries using the most barbaric and inhuman means imaginable. Similar to those in Scoop, journalists and News Corporations continue to manipulate and distort stories to widen their publicity and increase ratings. Through a series of hilarious fumbles and bewildering encounters, William manages to pick up the scoop of the year, steering him towards prominence amongst his colleagues.

The fictional journalists in Scoop are bambi-like compared to those who have made international headlines (for all the wrong reasons) in the last decade. Police bribery, the hacking of personal information, and the unlawful tactics used to pursue a story have become commonplace among journalists today. The defunct News of the World has led the facade in such malpractice until its closure in 2011. Hacking a dead girl’s phone was to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, an unearthing that resulted in the resignation of senior News of the World employees and several high-ranking officers of the Metropolitan Police Service. A direct, although less sinister, correlation can be made with these shocking transgressions and various incidents in Waugh’s novel. The corruption that greases the wheels of society is effortlessly illustrated in Scoop. William’s first assignment for the Daily Beast is to report on a story involving the Minister for Defence’s wife driving her car into a male public lavatory. On trying to access the scene, William is stopped by a policeman.

“Press”, William tells him. “I’m on the Beast”.“So am I”, the sergeant replies. “Go to it”.

This rather amusing dialogue extracts a giggle from the reader but is pervaded by unsolicited truths about newspaper associates. A more recent story is that of a freelance journalist, Ian Bailey who had been falsely accused of murdering a French national at her holiday home in West Cork. Bailey became a suspect in the murder while reporting on the case for the Sunday Tribune newspaper. Although acquitted of any wrong-doing, Bailey supposedly told the news editor of the paper: “It was me, I did it, I killed her to resurrect my career”. Such frightening remarks propel us to think of how far one would go to succeed in his/her career. The 1996 editor of the Sunday Tribune told the court of her shock at the time of the murder: “probably the single biggest fiasco I had ever encountered, that the reporter I had on a story was in fact the suspect”. This remark is more fitting to the character of a fictional crime thriller than that of an actual newspaper editor. In Scoop, no journalist is killed to acquire a story, but all other opportunities are seized upon, such was the extent to which a journalist desired to report a big scoop.

Christopher Hitchens’ refers to Scoop as a “novel of pitiless realism: the mirror of satire held up to the catch the Caliban of the press corps, as no other narrative has done…”. Although I have mused over the parallels one can deduce from Scoop and present-day journalism, the narrative complies with Waugh’s usual satirical panache. Eloquent dialogue assisted by genteel jargon magnifies the characters’ attraction to the reader. A close aide memoire of a P.G Wodehouse novel, with all its flippancy and joviality combined.

Mr. Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent.  When Lord Copper was right he said, “Definitely, Lord Copper”; when he was wrong, “Up to a point.””Let me see, what’s the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn’t it?””Up to a point, Lord Copper.””And Hong Kong belongs to us, doesn’t it?””Definitely, Lord Copper.”

The above excerpt from Scoop is a hilarious example of Waugh’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the hierarchal inequity present in Fleet Street society. This is a little taster of what to expect from the rest of the novel. If you are searching for a better understanding about the workings of journalism, and want to laugh while doing so, I recommend you read Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. “I am Tim Collins, reporting from behind my desk. Thank you for reading, Goodnight and God bless”.

Works Cited

Waugh, Evelyn. Scoop. London: Peguin, 2012. Book.