Let's face it: British comedy tickles us pink. We all have laughed our intestines out at Monty Python, Mr. Bean, Yes (Prime) Minister, and a number of other shows on PBS. Gilbert and Sullivan companies play to sold-out crowds all over the country. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett inspire cult fervor among their readers.
What's surprising is that P.G.Wodehouse (1881-1975), the greatest comedy writer English language has seen, is virtually unknown to our reading circles. Harold Bloom, writing about the Western canon, or the New York Times Book Review of Sunday Oct 6 celebrating last 100 years of books and authors, do not so much as mention Wodehouse (known affectionately to his fans as "Plum".) Diehard Plumheads would rather go with any one of his books to a desert island, than with ... [ok, then there's Liv Tyler.]
Wodehouse's greatest creation is the character of Jeeves, a gentleman's personal gentleman who embodies the quintessence of the English feudal spirit of a bygone era. Jeeves knows everything, and can divine a scheme to handle any situation, however sticky. In the words of his young employer Bertie Wooster, "[Jeeves] virtually lives on fish [...] if I had even half his brains, I would take a shot at being Prime Minister or something." Jeeves is a whale on proper dress code, and reads Spinoza at bedtime. Plus he is savvy enough to be the judge at a seaside bathing-belles contest:
Bertie: How did it go off?
Jeeves: Quite satisfactorily, sir, thank you.
Bertie: Who won?
Jeeves: A Miss Marlene Higgins of Brixton, sir. [...] All most attractive young ladies.
Bertie: Shapely?
Jeeves: Extremely so.
Wodehouse plots are about the idle rich in Edwardian England, where the worry-of-the-day in the life of a protagonist may be an impending visit from a ferocious aunt. Money changes hands over whose uncle is fatter, or whose infant is uglier, and what's more, such competitions are rigged! Hapless bachelors try to wriggle out of rashly made engagements. Friends purloin compromising letters and objet d'arte for other friends and relatives. Men woo with poetry, get caught kissing the wrong girl, and those "handed the raspberry" go on to drown their sorrows at the Drones Club. It is a tribute to Plum's technique that even with seemingly silly plots, his stories are as engaging page-turners as Agatha Christie who-dun-its.
Wodehouse is hardly ever included in the "literature" category, perhaps for the reason that his themes (thankfully !) lack the seriousness and gravity expected of literary writers. For the cognoscenti, however, the whole point about Wodehouse's writing is his superlative use of the English language. You read his prose, all perfectly plain English, and then you swear you'd never have come up with quite so amusing a way of putting it. Sample some Wodehouse construction:
'Drinking, sir? Me, sir? No sir. Where would I get a drink, sir?'
'You are as tight as an owl.'
This was a wholly unjustified slur on a most respectable breed of bird, for owls are as abstemious as the most bigoted temperance advocate could wish, and at another time George Cyril Wellbeloved might have been tempted to take up cudgels on their behalf.
'He is an assistant at a jellied-eel shop.'
'But surely,' said Lord Ickenham, 'that speaks well for him. The capacity to jelly eels seems to me to argue intelligence of a high order. It isn't everybody who can do it, by any means. I know if someone came to me and said, "Jelly this eel!", I should be nonplussed. And so, or I am very mistaken, would Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill.'
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the hotel at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.
Freddie had mooned about with an air of crushed gloom that would have caused comment in Siberia.
We will go as far as to say that after Shakespeare, Plum is the greatest celebration of the English language, and that Wodehouse's prose is better than the best poetry ever written. Innuendoes and digs at the Bard, Shelley, Browning, Poe, Hardy, Dickens and many others abound, often as misquotes in Bertie's narration. English majors take note!
Where to start? Make a beeline for the Memorial Library (2M South) or the nearest branch of Madison Public Library. Then ferret out all the volumes you can carry home. Start with Code of the Woosters, Jeeves in the Offing, Right Ho Jeeves, and Much Obliged, Jeeves. Continue with those gems of the short story genre, Fate, Uncle Fred Flits By, and others, in Tales from the Drones Club. Meet the Mulliners in Meet the Mulliners. Find out why Aunt's Aren't Gentlemen, or whether Pigs have Wings. Plum has left us with more than 70 titles, so there is no danger of running out too soon. Visit the web site http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~chandra/plum.html for more goodies.
Wodehouse is a most potent antidote to sorrow. If you are feeling down and out, don't spend the afternoon moping round the house, don't pick up that guitar and sing the blues, and don't reach for Prozac. Drop by the Drones Club smoking room, where "the conversation always touches an exceptionally high level of brilliance." Example:
'Do you know,' said a thoughtful Bean,'I'll bet that if all the girls Freddie has loved and lost were placed end to end--not that I suppose one could do it--they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.'
'Further than that,' said the Egg. 'Some of them were pretty tall.'
Satish Chandra ([email protected]) and Krishna Kunchithapadam ([email protected]) are graduate students majoring in computer science, sometimes wishing they weren't.
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Last updated: Sun Jun 27 17:00:19 PDT 2004
URL: http://www.geocities.com/krishna_kunchith/misc/pgw.html