The rear of the dust jackets of the Overlook editions of Wodehouse are very factual. They give almost a synopsis of the book, and, in some instances, come quite close to giving away the denouement. It must be a nice job to have, because it does seem that not only does the person (or persons) who writes them have actually read the book, but enjoyed it as well. The blurb on the back of My Man Jeeves makes it very clear that the stories it contains are the earlier versions of the ones featured in Carry on, Jeeves, which I read in December 2011. As I made my way through the book, it was with the comfort that I knew what twist the plot would follow to make certain that everything would come out in the wash for Bertie and Jeeves.
When I began the book, it occurred to me that I could mark it as already having been read on technical grounds. At this point, my over-developed sense of propriety and the hint of obsessive mania that lurks at the fringes of my personality joined forces and insisted that, if the early twentieth-century reading public had the band-width for two highly similar Wodehouse tomes, then so did I. I’m not sorry that I read it, for a very good reason that I’m going to address in my next blog entry. I am normally highly protective of my reading time. Since the birth of my son, it tends to be limited to my train journeys to and from work, meaning that I had better enjoy it. When I had unlimited reading time, I would make myself finish whatever I started (yet more evidence of my perfectionist strain). With age, I think I have become more critical, and as such, if I feel that a book is poorly constructed, I toss it to the winds and give it a poor review on Goodreads.
These books tend to be biographies, which surprised me when I reflected on this topic of abandoned tomes, since I have a high tolerance for things that can verge on the ponderous. The fact is that I am a lover of plots. One of the things I adore most about a biography is the sense that I am living through the remarkable figure’s life with them. My favorite biography of all times is a book on the Mitford sisters by Mary Lovell. If you have not read this, run to your nearest purveyor of books, be it Amazon, a bookstore or your local library, I promise not to judge. Two of the biographies I have stopped were beautifully written: Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton and Joan Schenkar on Patricia Highsmith. The problem with the Wharton biography was that, fifty pages in, the author was still warbling on vaguely about her literary heritage and going nowhere. While I expected something like that in an account of a literary titan by an eminent professor, there has to be a point where the editor says enough is enough and makes the author cut something to get to their childhood. The Highsmith was especially disappointing,. The writing style was lively and highly engaging. Unfortunately, the author chose to take a thematic approach. This meant that she kept referencing earlier and later parts of the book, which would have been fine if it were only about 300 pages or so, but this one clocked in at no fewer than 500, and I believe that is before one counts the appendices. Probably 50 of those pages could have been cut if Schenkar had followed a linear thought pattern. As it was, I threw up my hands at page 200.
Oddly enough though, I did not feel that my time was wasted by reading the first official version of now-familiar stories. For one, I whizzed through the volume in a few days. More importantly though, I found myself still enjoying them, which is rather the point of reading for pleasure, isn’t it?
No comments:
Post a Comment