Wodehouse
Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 8:24PM | by Otter My son's football team played today on a hundred-degree Fahrenheit field, and I, obliged as one of the coaches to endure the heat, am nicely crisped, with ragged tan lines that make me look like the flag of Barhrain.
A two hour drive home, and the world sort of resolves around (1) a shower to wash the grime away; (2) something flannel and loose; (3) a gin and tonic, on the stiffish side; and (4) P.G. Wodehouse's The Mating Season.
I've had occasions to refer to Wodehouse's nearly-perfect prose before.
I was once reading Wodehouse in a bar during a football playoff game. The bartender asked me what I was reading, and I said, "P.G. Wodehouse. The best stylist in English since Shakespeare."
"Bold claim," said my angel of whiskey. "Can you back that up?"
"Lemme see that," said a guy doing Irish car-bombs. "Lemme see that book. I can tell from first sentences."
"Oh, yeah," said a stout man deep in his Guinness. "Wodehouse is the best."
The bartender, not to be deprived of the price of a novel easily, asked for proofs from the text.
I read a few out loud.
She pursed her lips dubiously while I read, and when I finished, the Guinness howled with laughter, the car-bomb nodded intelligently, and a few random Pabst Blue Ribbons had stopped watching the game to listen in.
My bartender remains unconverted. In these sad, rapid days, who has time for Wodehouse? Who has time for style in the age of the text?
But I stand by my judgment. Consider this sample from the book I've just finished, in which an otherwise-lordly young man is beset by a house full of snobbish aunts who, like the Greek fates, would tell him just how it's gonna be. Having triumphed as a singer at a village concert, he is quite elevated, and is announcing his cousin Gertrude's betrothal to his own fianc e Corky's brother Catsmeat:
The aunts were a bit on the incoherent side, but gradually what you might call a message emerged from their utterances. They were trying to impress on Esmond the fact that the accused was Corky's brother Catsmeat merely deepned the blackness of his crime.
Their observations would have gone stronger with Esmond if he had been listening to them. But he wasn't. His attention was riveted on Catsmeat and Gertrude, who had seized the opportunity afforded by the lull in the proceedings to exchange burning kisses.
"Are you and Gertrude going to get married?" he asked.
"Yes," said Catsmeat.
"Yes," said Gertrude.
"No," said the aunts.
Naturally, we can get this stuff across more directly, in a more Hemingway-friendly manner, in text even.
HEMINGWAY: Esmond wasn't listening to the aunts. He watched Catsmeat seizing Gertrude and kissing her. "Are you marrying?" he demanded. Catsmeat stared at him. He nodded with his head.
TXT: Smond sez Gert&Ctsmt getting married omg!!!!!! aunts bichin
Economy is all very well in its place, but some things can't be properly enjoyed at pace. Wodehouse lingers over language with a deep love, like a person who doesn't slug his Courvoissier but who savors his wine. When one of the aunts, Gertrude's mother Dame Daphne, comes downstairs, she demands:
"Will someone be so kind as to tell me what is the reason for this uproar?"
Four simultaneous aunts were so kind.
The "transferred epithet," such as "four simultaneous aunts" or "I lit a thoughtful cigarette," is an application of an adjective to the wrong word in the sentence. (It's one form of a rhetorical device, the formal name of which, in case you need to impress somebody at a cocktail party, is hypallage.) In Wodehouse's arsenal it's one powerful weapon. But (to change metaphors in midstream) his bag of tricks is incredibly deep.
In any case, I've been reading him, and just enjoying him. A better voice from a better time, maybe, if I can go all curmudgeony, a time when things were slower, when the pace was better, when we had to describe what we meant, before all we had to say fit into one hundred and forty characters, and our range of feeling could not be comprehended by typing :) and :(.
Reader Comments (3)
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(Do I get bonus points for setting Facebook to make me click "Mihi placet" instead of "Like"?)
Love it, old friend. This hearty sip has me thirsting for more! Off to find some Wodehouse.... and perhaps some cider, the good kind.
Wodehouse and scotch, go together like milk and cookies. Perfect.