Tag Archives: P.G. Wodehouse

Fiction, Reviews

Something New, by P.G. Wodehouse

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In a 1948 letter, Wodehouse said he liked his Blandings Castle stories over his others because his character Lord Emsworth is his favorite. The dottering old earl, more content weeding in his garden than doing anything else, is introduced in the novel Something New (later published in the U.K. as Something Fresh (the two books are not exactly the same)), Wodehouse’s first story about the quirky folk of Blandings Castle.

The story gives us the young man Ashe Marson, a writer of monthly juvenile detective adventure novels, being challenged by a beautiful, new acquaintance to take his life in his own hands and try something new. This beauty, Joan Valentine, soon discovers that the Honorable Freddie Treepwood, reprobate son of the Earl of Emsworth, was once terribly in the love with her and would rather that part of his life never see the light of day. The reason is Freddie has proposed to Aline Peters, daughter of American millionaire J.P. Peters, who moved into a home near Blandings several months ago. (Mr. Peters is said to be “suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires.”) Aline intends to marry Freddie, perhaps more to please her father than herself, but she hasn’t given herself much time to think about it. Her father, Mr. Peters, is an Ancient Egyptian scarab enthusiast. When he decides to gush about them to the absent-minded Lord Emsworth, trouble broods.

I laugh easily with Wodehouse’s wonderful stories. The first time I got a head of steam behind my laughing was before the scarab-enthusing incident when Lord Emsworth visits the Senior Conservative Club in London. Here he demonstrates his lack of lucidity with the steward Adams, who attends the Earl professionally while soaking in his many utterances and expressions for imitation among friends later that evening. Adams has developed a reputation as a humorist, imitating the members of the Senior Conservative Club.

The next time I remember rolling along, like one of Adams’ friends, was in a very satisfying scene in Blandings Castle toward the end. It’s something of a climax, so I can’t reveal it for you, but I love when Wodehouse brings his characters together in ways that you may see coming for several pages and still cracks you up when it happens. Often such scenes begin with what you see coming and carry on with what you don’t.

Lord Emsworth doesn’t play much of a role in this character-rich story, but it’s still a great introduction to him. Wodehouse tells us, “His was a life that lacked, perhaps, the sublime emotions which raise man to the level of the gods; but undeniably it was an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled; but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated.”

Contentment, thy name is Emsworth.

Fiction, The Press

…and every postmodern family is a dead loss in its own way

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Jane Austen's PersuasionOur friend Dale Nelson sent me a link to this New York Times column by Ross Douthat, all about why many “literary” authors are turning to writing historical novels, rather than setting their stories in contemporary settings. His interesting conclusion is that modern culture just doesn’t present the kind of conflicts that made the family sagas of old work so well:

You can write an interesting contemporary novel based on the “Anna Karenina” template in which the heroine gets a divorce, marries her modern-day Vronsky, and they both discover that they’re unhappy with the choices they’ve made — but the last act just isn’t going to be quite as gripping as Tolstoy’s original. You can turn the Jane Austen template to entertaining modern purposes, as Hollywood did in “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” but the social and economic stakes are never going to be as high for a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet as they were for the Regency-era version.

I think he’s got something there. If you want to write a novel about, say, an unwed mother, you can suggest that your plucky heroine’s Neanderthal, Bible-thumping parents don’t want her to have an abortion, but there’s really nothing they can do to stop her. The only other problem her romantic passions are likely to get her into is that of sexually transmitted diseases. In that case, she either takes medication to get better, or she’s stuck with the problem for life. There’s little scope for her to heroically defy convention and shame the small minds; there is no convention to defy.
P. G. Wodehouse wrote stories about couples being kept apart by unsympathetic fathers and guardians, well past the point in history when such parental figures had “sunk to the level of a third rate power” (to quote “Uncle Fred Flits By”). He was able to get away with it because his stories were light confections, not intended to reflect real life in any serious way. If he’d been forced to be realistic, the fun would drained out like water from a lion-footed bathtub.
Is it an indictment of modern society to say that it doesn’t offer scope to certain forms of fiction? Probably not.
But I often think of the popularity of Amish stories in the Romance genre, as I’ve mentioned here before. I don’t think it’s unrelated to highbrow authors writing historical novels. I think there’s a hunger out there to be able to live in a society where people care enough about you to tell you when they think you’re messing up your life.
The autonomous life, in the end, is a pretty lonely one.

Reviews

P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters

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Bertie Wooster has had more than his share of trouble from well-meaning and ill-meaning aunts over the years, and while that sort of trouble disturbs him some in this novel, he must deal more with the sort of trouble that comes from beautiful young women wanting to marry his friends.

For example, Madeline Bassett, who is “undeniably of attractive exterior—slim, svelte, if that’s the word, and bountifully equipped with golden hair and all the fixings.” This beautiful thing plans to marry Bertie’s friend, Augustus Fink-Nottle or Gussie, which is not a settled matter owing to her father’s disapproval of him. If she cannot marry Gussie, however, she is resigned to marrying Bertie. Not that he wants to marry her, but somehow Madeline’s got it locked between the ears that Bertie wants to marry her and is only deferring to Gussie, who got to her first. If there’s one thing at which Bertie is extremely bad, it’s convincing women he does not want to marry them once they’ve decided he does.

And then there’s Stiffy, or Stephanie Byng, who wants to marry Bertie’s old college buddy, Harold “Old Stinker” Pinker. That arrangement isn’t looking good either, because her uncle, Madeline’s father, isn’t going to allow to two undesirable men marrying the girls of his charge in one weekend, if ever. So Stiffy asks Bertie to stage a situation for Harold to impress himself on her uncle, and those types of things never work out as planned. This one actually calls for blood, so Bertie isn’t eager to give it his all.

But Bertie could give them all up and leave the country or at least Totleigh Towers, if only his favorite aunt hadn’t forced him into a difficult task—he must pinch a silver cow creamer. If he fails to abscond with the ghastly antique, his aunt will bar him from her house and her famous chef’s delicious meals; but if he does steal the cow-shaped server, no lack of evidence to the deed will prevent him from being pounded by Roderick Spode, a close friend to the owner of the desired silver creamer.

“Don’t you ever read the papers?” Gussie asks. “Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if her doesn’t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator. . . . He and his adherents wear black shorts.”

“Footer bags, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“How perfectly foul.” Of course, such a man is more than able to deliver a good pounding to creamer stealers.

Through it all, Bertram Wooster lives up to his family code to never leave a friend in the lurch, even at personal cost. As with almost everything I’ve read by Wodehouse, this book doesn’t not take all the predictable turns, and even when you know what’s going to happen, it’s hilarious to follow it through. Though Lars has said this was the first Bertie and Jeeves book he read, I enjoyed remembering the references to earlier stories. More than once, Bertie says that we may remember the time when … and I enjoy remembering it too.