Comments on: Cold Comfort Farm

By: indy

indy — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:33:54 +0000

Cold Comfort Farm is one of my favorites. The bit where the patriarch comes home from a meeting of his “Quiverers” and talks about how some woman tried to preach, but she had a demon in her and he beat it out with his bible….

or demented old adam and his cute little scrub-brush.

By: bostoniangirl

bostoniangirl — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 17:05:37 +0000

I really like Waugh a lot too. Brideshead Revisited may be his only serious novel, but I enjoy the others a lot too.

During one of my college interviews I mentioned that I had been reading Scoop, and the interviewer asked me what I thought of its misogynism. I didn’t see any particularly strong misogynism. Did any of you?

By: paul lawson

paul lawson — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:25:39 +0000

Stella Gibbons, herself in the ‘trade’ at the time, and for some time after, also had this to say in ‘Cold Comfort Farm’.

“The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style.”

By all accounts, ‘nasty’ and ‘brutish’ could apply to Evelyn, particularly in the ‘ear trumpet’ phase.

‘Scoop’ is a trifle. The ‘Sword of Honour’trilogy remains substantive, and is stylish. Auberon was rather more the journalist; but he also had a way with words.

By: Gummo Trotsky

Gummo Trotsky — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 18:54:53 +0000

It’s obvious from your assessment of Scoop that you didn’t come to it an Evelyn Waugh virgin. I’d guess further that it was your second Waugh Novel. By the time you’re up to three, you’re up to the “I can see that this is supposed to be funny, but it isn’t doing anything for me” stage. Then you pass the book off to a friend and they come back and tell you it was hilarious.

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 17:51:40 +0000

One of my favorite methods of being outre is to refer to CCF as my favorite sci-fi novel. Along with the bits that fjm notes, there’s also the videophones and the reference to the Anglo-Nicaraguan war of 1946. I find that particularly melancholy—that in that world, the big war of the mid-century was between England and a Central American state.

I dearly love that book. I found the movie nowhere near as satisfying overall, although it’s worth seeing just for McKellen’s performance (and the church hymn): “There’ll be no butter in hell”

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:48:14 +0000

Scoop is far, far better than “OK”.

By: jim in austin

jim in austin — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:10:04 +0000

I have not read the book but definitely enjoyed the BBC film adaptation that has been playing recently on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) in the US…

By: roger

roger — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:48:20 +0000

I’m surprised that Scoop didn’t elicit equal enthusiasm. Surely the transpositions that project Boot from his rural paradise (where the servants are so old that they mainly stay in bed, and the main job of the family is to keep Boot’s funny uncle from London) are worth noting. And the Murdoch like newspaper proprietor whose statements, from nonsensical to outrageous, are greeted with “up to a point, Lord Copper,” by his assistant, is pretty funny. Plus the newspapers insistance that Boot report the “good news” about the war in Ismaelia, much like a certain ideological party today. Judith Miller’s great Iraq scoop of discovering the WMD, which all turned on an unnamed Iraqi scientist gravely pointed his finger at an undisclosed location in the middle distance and claiming that just out there was where evil Uncle Saddam had buried the WMD could easily have leaped from Scoop.

I, at least, am a big fan.

By: ben wolfson

ben wolfson — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 14:34:41 +0000

Utopia, bostoniangirl?

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 12:02:10 +0000

That’s part of it, but Lawrence is far from the only target being skewered there. Look at all the faux-Gothic horror-of-rural-life stuff she goes after… /and/ the “Human Bondage” wonders-of-rural-life stuff too!

It’s really a little gem of a book.

Doug M.

By: Tad Brennan

Tad Brennan — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 11:39:16 +0000

I have always assumed that CCF’s main target was the imbecilic D.H. Lawrence view that sex is the salvation of mankind, and the rawer and less refined the more salvific. Seth and Ruben are embodiments of Lawrentian sex-drive, unhampered by mere Victorian morality. And CCF does a wonderful job of showing that there are no Deep Truths to be found in barnyard mounting. Quite the opposite—the attitude endorsed by our heroine and the novel at large is that they should get out of the muck, try a bit more refinement, learn some manners, and quit being so self-centered. A warm reaffirmation of civilizing influences and domestic sensibilities; a modified Victorianism—made more realistic by the War, and slightly more feminist-friendly by the author. It’s not that Victoria wins by novel’s end, but I certainly think Lawrence loses. He never did have any defense against a well-targeted laugh.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 10:14:52 +0000

CCF is that rarity: a merciless satire that’s so brilliant that it still works even after the original object of the satire has been half forgotten. In this case, the object is the British social novel, rural subtype… a pest that infested British literature for half a century, and still pops up occasionally today.

CCF is a brilliant read by itself, but I imagine it would be even better if you read it after a course of the drearier works of Hardy or John Galsworthy. Though this would be a bit like saying “ice cream tastes even nicer after a week of eating raw oat husks and celery”.

Doug M.

By: fjm

fjm — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 06:59:12 +0000

Hidden in there is an sf novel. Private ‘planes are mentioned buzzing around London. And Brassieres were the cutting edge of technology at the time: the equivalent of ipods.

By: Anita Hendersen

Anita Hendersen — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 03:12:38 +0000

Cold Comfort Farm is one of my favorites. Everyone should read it.

By: bostoniangirl

bostoniangirl — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 01:54:53 +0000

My favorite part about Scoop was the bit where they send all the reporters off to the place whose name translates as “There is no such place” or something like that.