My First Wodehouse
Recently all my spare minutes added up, and they took the form of the novel “Ring for Jeeves” by P.G. Wodehouse. Actually, these were mostly stolen minutes, in the way that I made them work double-time, I was actually working on a database while I listened to this book. It is narrated superbly Martin Jarvis on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC3eSQBCavs he does a lovely job and all the voices, it’s really fabulous. Perhaps I even got triple value out of these 5 hours, as the job of cutting and pasting material into the database was so mechanical that I could listen to something at the same time as I got paid, and the entertainment was FREE.
It made me think that I will someday search out other audio versions of Wodehouse novels, but I didnt exactly run to do this. These novels (well, there are 90 of them so they may not all be the same! Although quick Google searches suggest otherwise) are, as one critic has said, “saccharine sweet.” In a good way, like candy is good, but too much makes your teeth ache. This novel is one that you could hear while getting ready in the morning, with half an ear, for some very pleasant background babbling. Perhaps they deserve more attention, but they don’t demand it.
It’s a bit like kindness, an experience so easy to overlook or forget, great humour, which makes you snort through your nose (this book provided that for me) is probably hard work to construct and maintain; what lies behind he lightness might have been rigorous chiseling.
I really appreciated it, as I love word play and a general sense of madness. The characters in this one (actually a novel with Jeeves the Butler who most people will recognise even if they have never read or seen a Wodehouse work, but one in which Bertie Wooster does not appear) were BONKERS. It was so enjoyable, but very hard to describe. It was a collision of silliness, a pile of send-ups, stacked to the sky.
For example, there is a character named Rory, who is a toff who now cheerfully works in a department store, he is the joke of a stereotype, and used to send-up everything from the aristocracy to hot-water bottles. Yes, he defames hot-water bottles, before moving on, in a split second, to be egregiously ridiculous in another vein.
Basically, think of a really good conversation with a couple of friends, maybe you’ve had a bit to drink and EVERYTHING is funny, you are all a bunch of real CHARACTERS, and you hold forth on various topics, piling insincerity on truth, creating hilarity, and everyone is laughing a LOT. Really good conversations like this can be rare, unless you practice with other equally verbose characters often, until you trust the other members of the troupe to rise to the occasion and egg it on further. But in real life jokes only hang in the air as long as smoke, they float away and die, as if they’ve never happened. Well, Wodehouse was there with you, on your best and funniest night, and he preserved your wit. He polished it up a bit though, perfected it and now it sings.
I was not a bit surprised to learn from Wikipedia that P.G Wodehouse had written musical comedies in the thirties and forties. Ring for Jeeves is just like watching a stage play, I’m not even sure that reading more of these novels in print is the right way to experience them. However I do want to order a few, and keep them in my medicine cupboard. If you feel depressed there is no better cure. Just don’t overdo the dosage!