He made a noise like a pig swallowing half a cabbage, but refused to commit himself further.

In the pantheon of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, the novel, Thank You, Jeeves holds a unique and equivocal place. It’s unquestionably a clever book, full of pratfalls and twists, with a plot nearly as tight as that of The Code of the Woosters. It features, however, an inherent problem for the modern reader. More of that later.

The setup goes like this. Bertie Wooster has taken up playing the banjolele. Not only do his neighbors object to the noise, but Jeeves himself finds it intolerable – to the point where he gives notice. Jeeves departs, Bertie acquires a substitute (and much inferior) valet, and he heads off to his friend “Chuffy” Chuffnell’s seaside estate, to spend a holiday in a cottage on the property. To his surprise, Bertie finds that Jeeves has now found employment with Chuffy.

Meanwhile, Chuffy is engaged to Pauline Stoker, the daughter of an American millionaire who’s interested in buying Chuffy’s estate (which he’s eager to unload). Pauline, as it happens, was briefly engaged to Bertie himself, some time back when he was living in New York. Also on hand is Sir Roderick Glossop, an old nemesis of Bertie’s, who has a plan to manage the estate as a mental hospital.

In Wodehouse’s world, it’s inevitable that Chuffy and Pauline must break up, and Pauline announces that she’s going to marry Bertie on the rebound. Under the circumstances, Bertie is desperate to heal the rift in the lute (as Jeeves might have put it), but what hope does he have without Jeeves’ assistance?

Thank You, Jeeves is fast-paced and funny and implausible and irresistible like all the best Wodehouse. The big problem with it is that it is perhaps the supreme example among the list of Wodehouse works that people are talking about “cleaning up.” The sad fact is that it features a subplot involving a “minstrel band” of black (or black-faced, I wasn’t sure) musicians, and what we call “the ‘N’ word” gets used multiple times.

For the record, I’m against revising it. We live in history, and must deal with our ancestors, as we do with foreigners, as representatives of a different culture. Get used to it. You don’t have to approve to understand.

Otherwise, highly recommended.