“Fleet Streets
Finest: From Waugh to Frayn”
Hitchens’ ramble through the English novels about journalism
(Waugh, Wodehouse, Greene, Frayn, et al). His point seems to be that the old
world of Fleet Street (1900 to 1960’s?) is gone and a great source of satirical
fiction gone with it. He says of the novels, “the literature of old Fleet
Street was to a very considerable extent written by journalists and for
journalists.” Sort of what House of God
is to internists. He writes in the next to last paragraph, “the lure of
television is already beginning to exert its anti-magic.” Very snobbish.
Television has, it turns out, created quite a bit of magic over the years
including dramatizations of some of the novels he praises in this essay…Scoop, Brideshead Revisited, Jeeves and
Wooster…
New Learning: Very funny quote of a reporter’s cable from
Waugh’s Scoop, “ LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING”. Even better,
real New York Post headline, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”
Here's a picture of the headline and a link to the book about headlines.
New word: tartarean = from the part of the underworld where
the wicked suffer for their mis-deeds
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