Wodehouse Philosophy

a throwback post about a favorite author

This article was originally published at The Mad Genius Club on December 5, 2020. Life got interesting just a few months after this, but Wodehouse is about due for a re-read I think.

All this year I've been writing consistently. Not daily - I started out slowly, and then started on daily goals - but my wordcount for the year has drawn very close to a quarter of a million words. That stopped cold this week when I came down with a cold. Only, it's 2020, so it's not as easy as rest and recover. No, it meant I had to come home from work the moment I felt a symptom, and be in quarantine until I tested negative. Between the stress, and being sick, I haven't written much at all. Some days, nothing. After months of careful cultivation of the habit, I'm worried I'll lose it again.

As I write this, I'm curled up in a warm blanket with the laptop, because ugh. And you are reading something that isn't peak essay performance because I haven't had coffee or tea yet. But I like to live up to my obligations, and I take that seriously. The daily fiction? It's a commitment to myself. The blog? Well, my own blog has been sadly neglected. I could prioritize the fiction, or the nonfiction, but I cannot manage both.

I've been binge-reading (I do this when I'm sick, I fall upon one author and rip through all their work) PG Wodehouse. I've read his stuff before, of course. Jeeves and Wooster are a scream. But I hadn't read all of his work, and in doing so (ok, maybe not all of it. But I am through well over a dozen of his novels and collected stories at this point) I have discovered a few things. There is something to be said for binging one book after another to find out the author's patterns and tropes. Some people binge-watch, I binge-read.

I was unaware, prior to this session, that Wodehouse has written several of what I'm going to call schoolboy books. They are stuffed as full of cricket as fruitcake is fruit, and I can barely follow what's going on in a game of cricket, but... they are still charming. If you haven't had the pleasure, you might start with Mike and Psmith, which follows two young men (in their early to mid teens, I think) as they come to a new school together and form a bond over that. The story is a fun read, although I did skim through the crickety bits. The boy's friendship is a joy to read, and their commitment to one another, and loyalty to friends, is a warm antidote to much of the creeping dreadlies in modern YA fiction. There's no hint of sex here. Action, adventure, some intrigue and a fair bit of sportsmanship, yes. A hilarious description of a dog that made me laugh out loud and read it to my husband...

Wodehouse is better known, I think, (at least by me) for his romantic comedies. He wrote many of them, absurd, repetitive, and so full of coincidences that one stands atop another's shoulders like a circus act. It becomes apparent that you can't avoid them, so you laugh and accept it and just enjoy the tart and risible humor of the man's pen. Attempts to win fair maiden go far astray, but this is Wodehouse. It will come right again in the end, so you never worry too much. And something I appreciated: his characters are not perfect people. His male figures, in particular, are frequently not the brightest (although rarely quite so dim as Wooster's brain glows), and sometimes lazy. Which leads to the philosophy that Wodehouse slips into his work here and there.

I'd say that quote from A Damsel in Distress sums up his writings neatly. And perhaps that's why I like reading his stuff, although I will say that binging on a writer is really only good if you're a writer looking for the patterns. It can spoil your appetite for certain books as surely as too many sweets can.

Even in comedic pieces there is something to learn. I don't just mean about writing. I doubt I will ever attempt anything close to a Wodehouse homage, I just don't work that way. I do use comedy in places in my work, and it can be fun to write a rollicking story without any cares for the possible literary values, as I did with The Case of the Perambulating Hatrack. So who knows, I might have learned some useful little trick. Besides which, who doesn't want to read a master of snark? Look at this!

Of course, it's also nice on the pocketbook that Wodehouse is pretty much all free on Amazon if you seek out the Project Gutenberg versions. If you have to be stuck at home in quarantine with the mood to binge-read, Amazon is a life-saver. And free books? Well, there's a reason money is a recurrent theme in Wodehouse's work. Although it's not always about getting rich. There's a wonderful series of stories about a man who wants to get rid of all his money because it keeps trapping him with women he can't say 'no!' to. His attempts to lose it all go wrong in multiple ways. Uneasy Money, that's the title. Even when you know what is coming - or think you do - you will still want to keep reading.

But if I keep rambling on, I'll be late with this. I've got my coffee now, so I could... but I won't. I'm supposed to be resting, my dear First Reader insists on feeding me whether I want it or not, and I really ought to try to get a few words on the, er, screen while I have laptop in hand. Until next week, then.