I was surprised to learn a few years ago that it was also the favorite comic novel of the late Richard John Neuhaus. I reread it every five or ten years and surprise myself by occasionally laughing out loud. He wrote a number of comic novels but this one has always stood out. The book’s name is Scoop and the author is Evelyn Waugh. And one must doubt he ever read it, for if he had, he certainly would have quoted from it when he wished to lighten the atmosphere. In that eventful year he probably had other things to keep himself occupied besides a new British comic novel.
In 1938 Eric Voegelin slipped out of Vienna, without his boots, so to speak, just ahead of the Gestapo. Yet there might be a few books that test the rule. Rather than laugh one is more likely to be bemused that our parents or grandparents found them funny.
Things that seemed funny 60 or 70 years ago seldom make us laugh today. London and New York: Chapman & Hall, Penguin Books, 1938.
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