A Damsel in Distress ~or~ Bon Mots

 When I was writing my thoughts about A Gentleman of Leisure, I noted that there was a general lack of typical Wodehouseian turn of phrases.  To be honest, when I was in media res with that book, I was not thinking to myself, “This is sorely lacking in witticisms.”  It was more like, “This book is lacking something.  I don’t know quite what it is…”  It should be noted that by the time I get to read on the train in the mornings, I have only had one cup of coffee.  My mind is not at its keenest. 

One of the things that has been made apparent to me during the course of this exercise of reading the entirety of Wodehouse is that not everyone is familiar with his work.  There are those who have seen the televised versions of the stories, and even a smaller circle who have read one or two books.  So, to give you an idea of what I’m yammering on about, I earmarked a couple of examples:

“Reggie’s was a troubled spirit these days.  He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron.  He was practically a soul in torment.”

What is typically wonderful about the preceding quotation is its mixture of the sublime, that is, romantic love, with the mundane, which is golf.*  Then we have this little gem:

“He was, for a young man, extraordinarily obese.  Already a second edition of his chin had been published, and the perfectly-cut morning coat which encased his upper section bulged out in an opulent semi-circle.”

Having a second edition of a chin is something that I wish I had written.  Interestingly enough, the description of this man’s weight has a significant bearing on the book’s plot.  It’s a nice technique to keep the subject of obesity fresh in the reader’s mind. 

So, while there is a lot of zippy dialogue in a Wodehouse text, what I find myself cherishing more are the wry observations that come outside of the spoken word.  I’ve realized that I don’t have many more opportunities to read these lines; by my count, I have only 23 more Wodehouse books in the Overlook imprint to go.  Four of them are non-fiction, so I have no idea what they might be like.  There is the final Jeeves and Wooster book in that lot (I might have two left, I have yet to make a thorough inventory) and, of course, the last Blandings book.  In fact, Wodehouse was working on “Sunset at Blandings,” at the time of his death.  It is unfinished, and I am interested to see the witticisms are fully developed in a text that was not completely polished. 

*I realize that some people equate golf with sublimity, but I am not in that camp.  The fewer things I swing in the air, the safer the world is.  I know enough golfers who feel as though it trumps just about everything, and comes a very close second to love.  Maybe these people have a different reading of this selection. 

A Gentleman of Leisure

I recently read the memoir written by Carey Elwes about his time working on the set of The Princess Bride.  Aside from being a thoroughly charming book, I was reminded of the movie-related books that I read when I was a teenager.  The Princess Bride is a different case, because that was a book long before it was a movie.*  However, there was a time (perhaps this practice still continues, I don’t know) when publishing houses, or maybe it was the movie studios, commissioned books that were adaptations of movies.  When I was obsess by a certain movie, be it Labyrinth, Ladyhawke, Young Sherlock Homes, or any number of the assorted films that took my fancy when I was at a very impressionable age, I would immediately go out and purchase the soundtrack and the tie-in book.  The part I liked best about the books is that they almost always gave a little more history, a little more insight to the characters and the plot.  It was a nice way to replay the movie in my mind, this at a time when it would take months, if not over a year, for the VHS version of a movie to become available on the open market, thereby allowing me to watch it obsessively in the privacy of my own home.

This month’s Wodehouse, A Gentleman of Leisure, seems to have been an early ancestor of the movie tie-in book.  It was first a play that featured Douglas Fairbanks.  I wish I could say that it captured my imagination as much as those earlier books did.  Sadly, it feels as though Wodehouse was more than done with the story and he wanted to move on and write something different, but maybe he was contractually obliged to write the thing.  The text lacks any of the lunatic flourishes that make his work so universally appealing. 

The plot was all right, and involved the usual cast of characters including burglars, diamonds, the gentry, etc., which was about enough to speed me along.  But everything felt as though Wodehouse had been there, done that.  I don’t know much about the play’s history, but if Wodehouse had been involved with the rehearsals, after seeing the thing a million and one time, maybe rewriting substantial chunks when someone absolutely was unable to remember their shining piece of dialogue, maybe he was ready to wash his hands of it.  Certainly, there is a line in the text which implies a certain sense of the ridiculous.  Our heroine is told: “It isn’t the hero of the novel you want to marry, it’s the man who’ll make you a good husband.”  Of course, she goes on to do just that.  Maybe this was Plum breaking the fourth wall, or being silly, or, perhaps it was way of getting back at a world that was making him spend more time on something that, in his mind, was done and dusted. 

*I do have a slightly embarrassing story concerning The Princess Bride though.  For those who are unfamiliar with the book (and, if you are, I highly suggest that you drop everything post haste, procure a copy, and read it, because you will never spend a more delightful afternoon) it is meant to be an abridgement of a history of two fictional countries, purportedly written by one S. Morgenstern.  My friend Christine and I spent the better part of an afternoon in the late 1980’s searching for the original text, only to be told by some publishing maven, who was reduced to peals of laughter by our question, that it was a farce and no such original text existed.  Although I was mortified, I felt better about the entire episode when we received a mass mailing about the progress of the book’s sequel, Buttercup’s Baby.  Apparently, it is the one book that William Goldman has been unable to write.  This thought pleases me in many ways, because I honestly wonder how he could even begin to compare with his splendid work.  After all, I am one of those people whose high standards has led her to deny that Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull does, in fact, exist.  As far as I’m concerned, it was just a mass hallucination, and a horrible one at that.