The Inimitable Jeeves

This book could very easily have been titled “The Many Loves of Bingo Little.”  It was extremely satisfying to me for a couple of reasons.  The first was that, although a Bertie and Jeeves novel, it heavily featured one of my favorite supporting Wodehouse characters: the aforementioned Mr. Little.  He is an old school chum of Bertie’s, and, in later volumes, tends to be a more stable presence.  The other aspect of the novel that I found enjoyable was its structure.  It felt like a series of interconnected short stories, with details and themes that at first appeared to be inconsequential being woven throughout and are ultimately crucial to the plot.  I always enjoy when an author does not mention something only to abandon it later.  I suppose that is why I’m always a stickler for continuity in television series writing (although, for some odd reason, I always give Doctor Who a pass, perhaps because all of the timey-wimey stuff sometimes boggles my brain.). 

In the course of the book Bingo falls in and out love perhaps a half-dozen times.  At one point, I began to wonder if this was almost meant as a piece of satire.  This came when Bertie was describing his idea of a good time as chucking dinner rolls around the dining room of his private club and then, in the same breath, thinking that Bingo was being more than a little silly due to the rapidity at which he became besotted with the female du jour.  You know you are in trouble when someone who counts the height of their day as food fight thinks you are a bit potty.  Wodehouse’s humor derives mostly from his elegant wordplay and observations.  There is almost no cruelty involved with his comic observations.  In this way, he differs greatly from Edward St. Aubyn, who wrote the Patrick Melrose novels.  I read the first four books of that series this summer (there are five altogether.  The last one was published this year.).  They are highly enjoyable and deeply funny, although the humor I cruelty at its most basic.  St. Aubyn has much in common with Bret Easton Ellis.  His bon mots almost feel like the first grenades being lobbed in a class war. 

The other thing that struck me about the Patrick Melrose character is that one of his guiding forces is lust.  The same could probably be said about Mr. Little, although Wodehouse never touches upon sex.  You know that it must happen, as babies emerge now and then, but, typically for this period, it is never mentioned.  He approaches Bingo’s infatuations from a very innocent point of view, making him seem more like the prisoner of his emotions that some sex-starved young man on the make.  Bertie’s amusement about Bingo’s romantic entanglements, I would venture to say, mirrors Wodehouse’s gentle mocking of what young men can be like.  It is affectionate, as though Wodehouse himself was relieved to be removed from such a period himself.  This gentle humor is one of the parts of Wodehouse’s writing that I really like.  It is such a relief from our modern times, which has such a rough edge it to.  Reading Wodehouse is like a vacation for one’s sensibilities.

My Man Jeeves ~or~ Déjà vu, Again

In my last entry, I alluded to the fact that, aside from pure enjoyment, there was another reason that I enjoyed reading My Man Jeeves.  There are a lot of writers who have issued lengthy statements about why they write, or how to write, but one rarely sees an example of a writer actually at work.  One could, I suppose, track down original manuscripts and do textual analysis between various drafts and the published product, but I don’t believe that my employers would consider that to be included in the “other duties as assigned” part of my job description.  Forget the weekends, as those are generally occupied by my family members on both extremes of the age spectrum. 

Having read Carry On, Jeeves in December, the stories were still freshish in my head, and I was able to notice differences.  The most striking one was Bertie’s allusions to his wealth in the earlier versions of the stories.  These references were not ostentatious, more comparisons where he would state that he had pots of dosh as oppose to some of his friends, who had to work to keep food in mouth.  I don’t remember seeing anything like that in later works.  Perhaps it has something to do with when the books were written.  My Man Jeeves was originally published in 1919.  From the little I know of the era, it reminds me of the go-go- 80’s, when people were not afraid to flaunt wealth, or even the late 90’s/early noughties, when those tech-fueled binges happened, mostly, I think, because the geeks were overwhelmed by the novelty of having massive amounts of credit at their disposal and the power to command attention (well, what they ultimately did was crash the economy- talk about a true show of power- but that’s a discussion for another time).  Certainly, although Bertie never became truly impoverished, he never did make the same references.  Perhaps Wodehouse felt that his simply not having to work and being able to employ a valet were evidence enough of his net worth.  As his writing career went on, and the Depression happened and then the privations that accompanied the Second World War, I am guessing that he consciously toned down the “I have money,” lines and let the circumstances speak for themselves.

The one thing that I noticed is that the second published version of the stories has more in the description arena.  From what my hazy memory tells me, the descriptive passages lengthened, moving away from the staccato nature of pages of rapid-fire dialogue that were the hallmarks of his earlier works.  It is something that makes sense, at least on an instinctual level.  Recently, I took up a book that I wrote about ten years ago.  After the initial cringes that always come on whenever I read something I wrote, I took out a pen and started re-writing.  Oddly enough, instead of taking things out, I added quite a bit. This is not to suggest in any way that my writing is at all comparable to Wodehouse’s, but I wonder if he felt the same way about his earlier works.  Certainly, there is a school of thought about writing that emphasizes the importance of revision.  Most recently, this was highlighted in an essay by Colson Whitehead that appeared in The New York Times.  One of the main observations about Plum’s work is that he merely re-wrote the same plot umpteen times.  While I do not entirely agree with this, it is becoming more apparent to me that he was an ardent revisionist, and simply could not stop, even if the work in question had been published. 

My Man Jeeves ~or~ Déjà vu

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?