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A review by doug_whatzup
The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology by P.G. Wodehouse
5.0
“Too little has been written about vaudeville bird-imitators and their passionate devotion to their art: but everybody knows the saying, Once a Bird-Imitator, Always a Bird-Imitator. The Mabel Potter of today might be a mere lovely machine for taking notes and tapping out her employer’s correspondence, but within her there still burned the steady flame of those high ideals which always animate a girl who has once been accustomed to render to packed houses the liquid notes of the cuckoo, the whip-poor-will, and other songsters who are familiar to you all.” If you find this paragraph, from “The Nodder,” a hoot, you’re going to love reading Wodehouse.
I read the above paragraph to my wife, who found it “weird.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing, and now have it practically memorized. Everything Wodehouse writes is like this – okay, the humor of his Jeeves stories is slightly less broad – so you’re either going to find his writing constantly amusing or constantly weird.
Obviously, my wife and I are in different camps.
This anthology makes for a nice introduction to Wodehouse's brand of humor, but it hardly does justice to one of the last century's most prolific writers. While I particularly enjoyed the short stories, of which there are 14 here, and the sections from the autobiographical "Over Seventy," I was a tad overwhelmed by the anthology's two full-length novels, The Code of the Woosters and Uncle Fred in the Springtime. The novels are on the short side, which is good, because they are best read in one sitting, with a few breaks as possible, at least for a guy of my advance years whose synapses don't fire like they used to. They're a sort of literary whack-a-mole, with characters popping in and out and complications piling up one after the other until the reader begins to lose faith that it can somehow be sorted out. I'm not certain that, in the end, Uncle Fred actually did sort everything out in the springtime, but no matter. I found myself constantly amused.
Ideally, immediately following "one after another" above, a footnote would be added explaining how managed to keep all those balls simultaneously airborne. In "Over Seventy" he explains that he spends months outlining and refining his plotlines before actually putting pen (or rather pencil) to paper.
I'll be reading more Wodehouse, I'm sure, and my wife will simply have to tolerate the chuckling emanating from the next pillow over. I may, however, be making notes as I go.
I read the above paragraph to my wife, who found it “weird.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing, and now have it practically memorized. Everything Wodehouse writes is like this – okay, the humor of his Jeeves stories is slightly less broad – so you’re either going to find his writing constantly amusing or constantly weird.
Obviously, my wife and I are in different camps.
This anthology makes for a nice introduction to Wodehouse's brand of humor, but it hardly does justice to one of the last century's most prolific writers. While I particularly enjoyed the short stories, of which there are 14 here, and the sections from the autobiographical "Over Seventy," I was a tad overwhelmed by the anthology's two full-length novels, The Code of the Woosters and Uncle Fred in the Springtime. The novels are on the short side, which is good, because they are best read in one sitting, with a few breaks as possible, at least for a guy of my advance years whose synapses don't fire like they used to. They're a sort of literary whack-a-mole, with characters popping in and out and complications piling up one after the other until the reader begins to lose faith that it can somehow be sorted out. I'm not certain that, in the end, Uncle Fred actually did sort everything out in the springtime, but no matter. I found myself constantly amused.
Ideally, immediately following "one after another" above, a footnote would be added explaining how managed to keep all those balls simultaneously airborne. In "Over Seventy" he explains that he spends months outlining and refining his plotlines before actually putting pen (or rather pencil) to paper.
I'll be reading more Wodehouse, I'm sure, and my wife will simply have to tolerate the chuckling emanating from the next pillow over. I may, however, be making notes as I go.