February Author Read: P.G. Wodehouse

What ho! I say, time to start the Wodehouse thread, eh, old bean?



Welcome to P.G. Wodehouse month! Whether you're a longtime fan of his ridiculously witty stories or a newcomer stumbling upon them for the first time (lucky you!), join us to discuss what you're reading! I am using this opportunity to read a Jeeves & Wooster omnibus that's been on my shelf for years, The World of Jeeves. What about you?

I'm listening to Joy in the Morning.

I will be reading Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, which I borrowed from the library last year but didn't get around to reading.

Thanks for starting the thread! I love the Jeeves books but will be reading a non Jeeves book this month - Cocktail Time.

Thanks for getting the thread started, Christina. I am a Wodehouse newcomer and I will be reading My Man Jeeves. I hope to start it around the middle of the month.

5>Me, too. I need to finish a couple of other group read e-books first.

I just finished Something Fresh in January. I might try Love Among the Chickens this month.

>VivienneR, I just finished Something Fresh yesterday! I had forgotten how much I like the Blandings books, so I think that I will continue with Lord Emsworth and Others…

And I also want to read The Swoop! which I haven't read before but was recommended to me.

I'm not as familiar with the Blandings books - how are they similar/different to Jeeves?

Similar in style but a different cast of characters

I've stuck my copy of Much Obliged, Jeeves into my bag. It is my theory that Wodehouse wrote exactly the right number of Bertie & Jeeves books, so that the right length of time goes by before each reread.

I didn't enjoy Love Among the Chickens as much as my last Wodehouse - Something Fresh. In this one Jerry Garnet is talked into joining an old acquaintance in starting a chicken farm. All they need is one hen: eggs, chickens, money will all come rolling in. All sorts of mishaps occur and Garnet falls in love.

I have a few more Wodehouse on the shelf but don't think I'll get to them this month.

> 8 - leslie, I'll look forward to hearing about The Swoop!. I haven't heard of that title before.

Vivienne - too bad about Love Among the Chickens; I have this audiobook checked out from the library :(

I'll let you know about The Swoop! but it will be a little while as I have several other books to read...

>13 leslie.98: It wasn't bad, just not as good as some other Wodehouse I've read. I'm sure you will find it fun.

Finished and absolutely loved Cocktail Time. Apparently it's an offshoot of the Blandings series as it includes Uncle Fred who I understand is a major character in the Blandings books. There are lots of romantic problems, misunderstandings, humor, and outrageous situations for all the characters involved. He definitely knows how to tell a good story.

I will take a look at my shelves and pick one too!

I am really enjoying The World of Jeeves! I've been reading 1-2 stories per night so that I can properly savor and appreciate them. For being such a dim bulb, Bertie comes out with some very imaginative similes and metaphors! I cracked up when he described one character as "looking like a sheep with a secret sorrow."

Ok, so I dug my hand (with my eyes closed) into my back-shelves, where a lot of my Wodehouses are stashed and came up with Jeeves in the Offing, the book has been duly added to my February TBR.

I finished listening to Love Among the Chickens, which I agree with Vivienne about - it was fine just not as good as some of his other books.

Now I am onto Piccadilly Jim also as an audiobook.

I've started The Inimitable Jeeves - my first-ever Jeeves book - and am loving it so far. If there is time later in the month for another Wodehouse, I also have Something Fresh checked out of the library.

I finished My Man Jeeves. It was a bit uneven. Half the stories didn't have Jeeves in them, odd given the title. I haven't seen very much of the TV show, but I kept hearing Hugh Laurie's voice as I read. Good casting, there.

I bought Thank you, Jeeves from a bookshop near uni this afternoon after finishing my read on the train this morning (the train was 130 minutes late!). It is very funny, though the "blacking up" episode was rather uncomfortable reading. All I can see and hear are the great actors Fry & Laurie, the throw away lines are great.

I just had to share this exchange from "Comrade Bingo," in which Bertie's friend Bingo Little has fallen in love with yet another unsuitable woman:

"Jeeves, Mr. Little is in love with that female."
"So I gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage."
I clutched the brow.
"Slapping him?"
"Yes, sir. Roguishly."
"Great Scott! I didn't know it had got as far as that."

I read French Leave over the weekend. A good light-hearted romp of three American sisters (owners of a chicken farm!), several other Americans (including a millionaire), and an impoverished French nobleman & son converging in a French resort town. More smiles than laughs but a good way to spend an afternoon.

I love the conversations between Jeeves and Bertie.

22> I know what you mean about this episode. I recently watched some Fry and Laurie episodes from their Wooster and Jeeves TV series and found it even more appalling to watch than to read. Given that the series was as recent as the 90's one wonders at the insensitivity of including that story.

I am surprised it was in the TV series, as you said they were filmed in the '90s.
I did enjoy the book as a whole, especially the unflappable Jeeves.

I am loving the stories that feature Wooster and Jeeves, I also can't help but hear Fry and Laurie in the parts. I love the flow of the words and all the wonderful slang. In My Man Jeeves some of the stories don't feature Wooster and Jeeves and I am less enchanted with those, but overall my introduction to P.G. Wodehouse went very well and I will definitely be reading more of this author.

I really liked The Code of the Woosters.

>29 hailelib: That is one of my favorites! :)

If you can find it, The mating season is also hilarious. It's a Bertie and Jeeves and it's a favorite of mine.

I just got Thank You, Jeeves from the library and oddly enough Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Faulks was also waiting for me.

I read the first chapter, 'Leave it to Jeeves', (in My Man Jeeves) last night, and really enjoyed it.

@ 32 -- Ooh, I'll be interested to see what you think of Jeeves and the Wedding Bells! That one caught my eye at the bookstore recently, but I was a bit wary of someone other than Wodehouse writing about Jeeves & Wooster.

33> Basically, I have enjoyed the Jeeves stories, but the others in this book were not as good.

I felt the same way about that collection, MarthaJeanne.

I am reading some of his "school stories" right now, in The Politeness of Princes and Other School Stories, and they are mildly enjoyable. I think that they might be a tad too British even for this Anglophile to really appreciate - especially the short story all about a school cricket match!

I've started Right Ho, Jeeves, and come across this lovely quote:

“People are always nettling me like that. Giving me to understand, I mean to say, that in their opinion Bertram Wooster is a mere cipher and that the only member of the household with brains and resources is Jeeves.”

Excerpt From: P. G. Wodehouse. “Right Ho, Jeeves.”

Hello, just stumbled across this thread, and here it is more than halfway through the month!

On the whole I prefer the Blandings stories to the Jeeves ones, though when the Jeeves stories hit they are very good. Each to his own sense of humour.

I also strongly recommend the Psmith stories. Psmith first appears in the book Mike And Psmith which was originally published in 1909 as part of a long novel called Mike. In 1935 the second half of the novel was republished separately as Enter Psmith and then in 1953 both halves were rewritten and published separately as Mike At Wrykyn and Mike And Psmith. I'm not sure how well I would have got on with Mike At Wryken had I not first read Mike And Psmith. Mike At Wryken is about Mike Jackson, the youngest of five brothers who are all talented cricketers. The three grown-up brothers regularly play first class cricket, and Bob, aged eighteen and in his last year at Wrykyn is trying to leave school on top cricketing form. Mike, fifteen, is the most talented of the family and is sent up to Wrykyn in Bob's final term, much to Bob's annoyance. Although a novel set in an English boarding school before WWI might not at first seem appealing Wodehouse does a fine job of bringing to life the anxieties of school life, struggling for a place in the official and unofficial hierarchies and balancing obligations. Somewhat surprisingly, this is a straightforward novel of school life. The glorious Psmith comes into Mike's life when he is forced to change school after a series of bad reports and is sent off to Sedleigh. Psmith is an old Etonian, 'a long thin youth with immaculate clothes' who affects an eyeglass and an elaborate and exaggerated old world courtesy. Psmith too has just arrived at Sedleigh (simultaneously deciding that he will from now on spell his surname with a silent P). Although Mike And Psmith is also a novel about school and cricket the introduction of the impossibly elegant and sophisticated Psmith puts quite a different spin on it and the Wodehouse humour blossoms. Psmith and Mike continue their friendship in Psmith In The City where Psmith continues to function as Mike's friend and support in the world of work, but in Psmith, Journalist the action moves to the States and Mike drops into the background. Psmith also makes an appearance at Blandings in, I think, Leave It To Psmith. Unfortunately when I read Leave It To Psmith I hadn't read the other Psmith books, so will have to re-read it to pick up on him again.

Ukridge, who I seem to recall is in Love Among The Chickens, is another thread altogether, so if Love Among The Chickens doesn't hit the spot for some readers it might be worth trying a different series. There are also the many novels set in the States, generally featuring a transplanted Englishman or two.

I find the short stories rather variable. Most of the Meet Mr Mulliner tales left me cold but Uncle Fred Flits By had me weeping with laughter. Interestingly I find that when I am on trains, in pubs, or wherever, helpless with mirth and making all those strange noises people make when trying not to make spectacles of themselves in public places, and someone asks what on earth I'm reading, if I say "P G Wodehouse" to a man I usually get a hail-fellow-well-met sort of nod and smile, but women generally just look puzzled. I don't know why he should have such a male skew. I think he has suffered rather from a perception that he just writes about daft toffs. No-one had told me how magnificently Wodehouse writes. His sentences are exquisitely crafted, and the little details splendid. There is a Wooster novel in which a whole succession of people pass through Bertie's room knocking things off his mantlepiece. (One of the very mixed pleasures about reading Wodehouse is that there is such similarity between books that I can seldom remember which is which or exactly what the plot was, so can endlessly re-read them.) There's also the slapstick - people careening down slippery staircases, etc. like something from the Marx Brothers.

For no particular reason I shall end with an arbitrary extract from Indiscretions Of Archie:

"Over the sill, with a graceful, leisurely movement, a green snake was crawling. As it crawled, it raised its head and peered from side to side, like a short-sighted man looking for his spectacles. It hesitated a moment on the edge of the sill, then wriggled to the floor and began to cross the room. Squiffy stared on.

It would have pained Peter greatly, for he was a snake of great sensibility, if he had known how much his entrance had disturbed the occupant of the room. He himself had no feeling but gratitude for the man who had opened the window and so enabled him to get in out of the rather nippy night air. Ever since the bag had swung open and shot him out on to the sill of the window below Archie's, he had been waiting patiently for something of the kind to happen. He was a snake who took things as they came, and was prepared to rough it a bit if necessary; but for the last hour or two he had been hoping that somebody would do something practical by way of getting him in out of the cold. When at home, he had an eiderdown quilt to sleep on, and the stone of the window-sill was a little trying to a snake of regular habits. He crawled thankfully across the floor under Squiffy's bed. There was a pair of trousers there, for his host had undressed when not in a frame of mind to fold his clothes neatly and place them upon a chair. Peter looked the trousers over. They were not an eiderdown quilt, but they would serve. He curled up in them and went to sleep. He had had an exciting day, and was glad to turn in."

Who but Wodehouse would dedicate such time, space, and comic detail to getting a snake from a window ledge to the floor beneath the bed?

Much of Wodehouse's humour is in the writing, which I think is the principal reason why attempts to transfer his work to the screen so often fail. The same goes for the exaggerated delivery in the sound recordings I've heard. I know that Fry and Laurie are great fans of Wodehouse, so I find their desperate mugging and hammy acting in the Jeeves and Wooster television programmes inexplicable as well as disappointing. These adaptations do the works a disservice. I think to be done successfully any translation to screen would have to be done straight to allow the humour to speak for itself instead of making grotesques of the characters. Bertie, for instance, takes himself perfectly seriously and tries hard; things just go wrong around him. I would like to see him acted as though he were a real person. A delivery much like the old black and white film of The Importance Of Being Ernest would do. The BBC is currently broadcasting a series of Blandings dramatizations, and although the characters are still caricatures of themselves and the scriptwriters have put in unnecessary additional details, (Emsworth's gardener improbably wears a kilt whilst working and everyone has mad hair) they are played rather more true in spirit. The chap playing Freddie is particularly good.

OK, now I really will stop.

Have just noticed that the Touchstones thingy gave a different Importance Of Being Ernest from the one I meant. I did, of course, mean Oscar Wilde's play.

You can edit your message and fix it.

I just finished Thank You, Jeeves (my first Wodehouse ever) and it was a fun romp. There are definitely parts that are severely dated but overall it was enjoyable. I am not sure I will read more though - it seems like something that is good in small doses but too much would get old fast (or maybe it was just that my face was getting tired from smiling too much).

I finished the audio version of Joy in the Morning and it was delightful. I've read (or listened) to enough Jeeves and Wooster stories to know what to expect, and it just makes reading/listening even more fun.

I finished Right Ho, Jeeves.

I squeezed in a re-read of Carry on, Jeeves and was rather surprised to find I didn't remember most of the stories. A nice re-encounter!

I am squeezing in one last audiobook before the end of the month -- Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin narrated by Jonathan Cecil. Apparently this is one of Wodehouse's last books, written in 1972. So far I am finding it enjoyable - not quite as good as his best but better than Love Among the Chickens!

Speaking of which, my daughter wants me to get some new chicks since her boyfriend has discovered how much better our eggs are compared to storebought.

I just finished The Inimitable Jeeves. I listened to it on audiobook (narrated by Frederick Davidson) and enjoyed it very much. I keep seeing Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in my mind, though. I don't think I'll ever be able to imagine another version of Jeeves and Wooster!

I finished Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin faster than I planned - very good! Better than Piccadilly Jim in my opinion.

Jeeves in the Offing - P. G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse was the chosen author for February, and while I rarely participate in the monthly Author reads, any excuse to return to the wonderful world of Wodehouse is a welcome one.

Picking a Wodehouse is generally a safe bet, picking one featuring Bertram Wooster and Jeeves is an even safer one. Jeeves in the Offing was no exception.

Despite not being one of the top Wodehouse works, Jeeves in the Offing, manages to entertain. There was a lot less of Jeeves, but the book was carried admirably by Bertie and Bobbie Wickham. It is surprising how well Wodehouse develops his characters, old and new, even in books as short as his usually are; with most of the characters being sketched and portrayed in conversations among the other characters.

This was a refreshing read and it made me get over the disappointment of my last Wodehouse, The Clicking of Cuthbert.

3/5

I read Much Obliged, Jeeves, which differs from the usual in that the offending item wasn't an article of clothing or even a banjolele, but the club book from the Junior Ganymedes, Jeeves' butlers' club. It was a fun installment in the Jeeves and Wooster saga.