Additional Character ~or~ Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin*

The problem with writing a blog over a protracted period of years accompanied by the bleariness that is particular to the state of being a parent of small children is that you forget the subject of each and every post.  I could be a diligent author and look up topics but I would become distracted by taxes, a vomiting cat, or a screeching offspring and the result would be that I’d never be able to write the actual post.  So here we are, with me snatching a quiet half-hour to write, and I have the odd feeling that I am about to make comments that I already have before.  Then again, given that I’m writing about Wodehouse, who was not above recycling plays, plot structures, and short stories, I feel as though I’m in good company.

The point being that, littered as many Wodehouse tales as with a brilliant array of characters, there is always one constant presence: that of Plum himself.  It comes out the most when he writes in the third person and often takes the form that nowadays would be called meta.  For instance, on page eighty-one of this month’s selection, he starts out a chapter with an amusing reflection on the role of pacing in a story.  The feeling imparted by such moments comes across as confidences from an old friend.  Perhaps that is only my feeling, especially since I am two books away from the end of this project, but it is a comforting one.  Wodehouse wrote this book when he was 90, and while I’ve noted the strength of this voice in many of his books, it was at its strongest here.  If books ever had end credits, The Voice of Wodehouse would be a frequent name on the lists.

Speaking of Wodehouse being 90 when he authored this book, there is a passage that I would bet a tidy sum reflects conversations he had with the publishing people: “‘Well, this is certainly the happy ending.  I had a feeling everything would come right in the last reel.  Old-fashioned, yes, but it still sells tickets.’”  I can only imagine how trying it was to sell the land of Bertie and Blandings Castle in the age of bell-bottoms and questionable facial hair.**  Was Wodehouse seen more of an historic anachronism then?  There was a television show, The World of Wooster, that ran from 1965 until 1967, but that was five years in the past by the time this book came around.  Certainly, it took until the 1990s with the Fry & Laurie adaptation for I think a true reexamination by the general public.  It can be hard to be a legend when one is still alive. 

*Read February 2017

**Of course, I am writing this in the era that has seen the reemergence of Victorian facial hair and the man-bun, so who am I to cast shadows?