P.G. Wodehouse, Management Specialist

Oddly enough, the book in which Wodehouse talks in great detail about the nitty-grity hassles of the working world is set in a school.  Instead of focusing on the faculty, the prefects are the main characters.  There are a lot of Wodehouse novels that focus around work, either in its procurement or loss.  There are also a lot of his novels that concentrate on money-making schemes, but these are never sustained endeavors or anything that can be described as a career.  Up until now, I had not encountered any that presented such a clear picture of the dangers of a micro-manager. 

The action in The Head of Kay’s revolves around an upstart house, or hall of residence, in an English public school.  Each house is named after its headmaster, in this case, Mr. Kay.  He is not someone I would ever want to have in charge of anything involving humans, least of all a house full of teenaged boys.  He is inflexible and unwavering in his approach to discipline, and blames his head prefect, Fenn, for discipline infractions that occurred while he was not present in the house.  There are many time when Kay ticks off the head of house in front of the other students, which is never the way forward.  He is the sort of maddening individual that thrusts his nose into things and makes pronouncements without knowing their full background.  Instead of thinking that he is the problem, Kay is convinced that it is Fenn’s issue and summarily has him replaced by a prefect from another house. Kennedy.  Complicating matters is the fact that the two boys are friends, and at first their relationship is strained under the new management structure.

I have been very lucky in my professional career to have had some excellent supervisors and have been mostly spared form the scourge of micro-management.  Sadly, many of my friends have not been so fortunate, and so hearing about the lack of trust that abounded in Kay’s house was uncomfortably familiar.  The dramatic change of head rang in my head as a prime example of the toxic workplaces that I have read about in the occasional management book that I peruse. 

Part of me was hoping that the two friends would concoct a scheme that would put Kay in his proper place.  The management crisis is only solved completely by Kay leaving the school to become the headmaster of another (good luck to them, I say).  This feels like a much more realistic conclusion that one finds in later Wodehouse books.  The Head of Kay’s was written in 1905, only a few years before Wodehouse left formal employment at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (now known as HSBC, possibly, although don’t hold me to that because it’s difficult keeping abreast of these banks and their name changes).  I had the feeling while reading this book that Wodehouse had a few managerial demons from his professional life to exorcise.  Would that such an easy solution be had by all of my friends facing challenging managers.

A Wodehouse by Any Other Name

February’s Wodehouse selection, Company for Henry, is a solid enough book.  Not one in the superior rank, but amusing enough to keep me from drifting off into slumber on the morning train.  The plot is not as tight as other efforts, in fact, I detected a sort of late-career malaise had crept in, as though Plum dashed this off to pay a tax bill.

What caught my eye about the book is that it is one of the many Wodehouse novels that has both a US and UK title.  On this side of the pond, it appeared on the shelves as The Purloined Paperweight, while in Blighty it was Company for Henry.  The other noticeable tid-bit is its publication date: 1967.  To my ears. The Purloined Paperweight sounds vaguely old-fashioned.  Even though it was almost 50 years ago, I can imagine it sounding just as square to the habitués of the swinging 1960s.  The title sounds as though it should be headlining a short story written by an early 20^th century Conan Doyle poseur.  I spent the better part of last week, that is, when I was not saving my cats from my toddler’s Reign of Terror, wondering about the publishing house’s intent.  Did they want to appeal to an older crowd, who might have been waxing nostalgic about the good old days whilst being confronted by miniskirts and hippies?  Or was their intention to launch an ironic advertising campaign, akin to today’s hipsters embracing facial hair that not long ago would have condemned them to the lunatic fringe?  So many questions, particularly when Company for Henry works better as a description for a book.*

The vogue for different titles in the US and UK seems to have diminished considerably in recent times.**  Perhaps it can be attributed to the sheer number of British imports that are flooding into this country.  Dr. Who just would not be the same if it was called something like The Adventures of the Tardis.  The internet has also helped to close a number of cultural gaps: I was well and truly spoiled for the most recent series of Downton Abbey, which is admittedly handy because the little television-viewing time I have had seems to be disappearing at an alarming rate (no bad thing that).  Perhaps the next sign of cultural proximity will come when books originally written in different languages will have directly translated titles, meaning that instead of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo history will remember Men Who Hate Women.  Somehow, though, I think that it will take a little while before the American market is quite so progressive.

*It must be said that Company for Henry strikes me as being the title of a folk-song that would be on the B-side of a Kinks single. 

**The most recent example I have seen is the British spy series, which over here is called MI5 and was originally entitled Spooks.  I can envision many a face at PBS blanching upon encountering that potential PC nightmare.