The main character in April’s Wodehouse, John Carroll, seems to be rather an intellectual dullard throughout most of the proceedings. Towards the end (should one put a spoiler alert on a book that was written in 1928?), he shows an inner cunning that perhaps even he had not known he possessed. In fact, those who are witness to his ability to concoct a workable scheme are also surprised. The emergence of his intellect resolved a part of the construction of the book that had been bothering me. Wodehouse very frequently plays off someone who is not a brainbox with a brilliant schemer. The obvious example is Jeeves and Wooster, but I have noticed other such parallels. Maybe the explanation lies in the fact that this book comes rather early on in Wodehouse‘s career, when his style was a bit more changeable. Certainly, the minimalism I noted in the school tales had at this time been replaced by the more florid descriptions and dialogue, but there is still a feeling that he has not quite settled into the fiction-churning machine that he would become in his later years. All of which makes it plausible that the supposed no-hoper at the beginning of the book transforms into its hero.
Thinking about people who are not what they seem reminded me of one of my friends from college. We met in a writing class, and, at first glance, she seemed as though butter would not melt in her mouth. She has the wide blue eyes, conservative dress and innocent expression that would convince anyone that here was someone who was probably only sweetness and light, and perhaps someone who might be a push-over. Adding to the picture was that she hailed from Canada, the land of nice, polite people, or so the stereotype would have us believe. As I got to know her over the ensuing years, I realized that she had a wicked sense of humor and enough mettle to tussle in the ultra-competitive world of pre-med at our alma mater. I almost respect her more for having a deceptive façade.
I was reminded about the extremes of deceptive personality types in another book I read this month, The Psychopath Test. Mind you, I don’t normally go around reading about the mentally unbalanced, but this was for a book club. So of I went, going along with the rather neurotic author as he learned about the lists developed by psychologists to determine whether or not someone was a psychopath. The most startling observation he made was that there are a lot of people in power who could technically fit the profile. Then, he started seeing psychopathic traits in a lot of the people he met. Some of the members of my book club reported doing the same thing, and I caught myself playing the game once or twice.
I have met at least one psychopath in my life, and, let me tell you, I try to know where this person is for avoidance purposes. When I found that I was trying to identify more, I stopped myself. A few years ago, I watched a documentary about the effects of an eruption of the super volcano that is temporarily lying dormant underneath Yellowstone National Park. The description of the resulting devastation terrified me, not least because I learned that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. When the show ended, one of the friends I watched the show with turned to me and said something along the lines of, “For my sanity, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.” This is the attitude that I will be adopting about The Psychopath Test. It was entertaining enough, but it could be dangerous to my well-being in the long run. Far better to stick with plumbing the hidden depths of an innocuous Wodehouse character.
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