A Prefect’s Uncle and Other Surprises

There is a tense, sparse quality to Wodehouse’s early work that almost reminds me of Hemingway.  I have noted before that the earlier works tend to have pages and pages of dialogue with maybe one of two speech markers.  The result is that the reader (or at least, this particular one) looses track of whom is talking.  When I am floundering in such a morass, sometimes counting backwards from the last speech marker, I wonder if it makes a difference to know which character is talking.  Perhaps Wodehouse meant only to have a run of dialogue, demonstrating how overly worked up about everything his teenagers are, knowing full well that almost everything they are concerned about comes to nothing.

This is perhaps a bit too existential a reading of Wodehouse.  I am not very familiar with the school yarn genre of the early twentieth century; it could be that they were all written in a similar fashion  Certainly, in his later works, the author diverges from his earlier style.  Children are for the most part only sideline players, sometimes the instigators of plot, but never, from what I can tell, the narrator or hero.  Then again, Wodehouse wrote his teenagers almost as if they were adults (and, some can argue that Bertie Wooster is merely an adolescent in a man’s body).  Another style development is that Woodhouse’s descriptions became more developed and lush.  He took great enjoyment in similes, and could run a mile with a metaphor.  One of the nice things about reading the works of an author who published over such a long period of time is becoming familiar with these changes.

There are two other, unrelated, comments that I had which are connected to this book.  The first was that, towards the end, one of the prefects calls a group of students to task for bullying.  Having been peripherally involved with the development of an anti-bullying policy for a local school last year, I almost dropped the book to hear about what we think of as a modern problem.  From what I can tell, we all knew that bullying has been going on since time immemorial, but that somehow it has become more intense in our modern age.   It is nice to know that there is nothing new under the sun, although still a little unsettling to think that intense bullying has always been a concern.

The second was a delightful encounter I had while reading this book.  You never know who you are going to meet on the commuter rail.  I have run into old classmates, teachers, long-lost friends and yoga buddies, to name a few.  The most notable encounter happened one evening when I plopped myself down on a two-seater, next to a man who was reading a Jeffrey Archer thriller.  That was notable enough, as not many people read Archer.  He was more surprised when he saw that I was reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel.  It turns out that my seat companion was the president of the Toronto Wodehouse association, and we had a wonderful ride talking about the master .  It also turns out that he works with the company that will be re-developing the old coal plant site in Salem, a project that is near and dear to my heart, as I always approve of any project that will improve my native city.  We also had a few other bizarre similarities, one of which being that his wife and I are alumnae of the same alma mater.  It turns out that the world of Wodehouse holds many surprises and delights, and not all of them are limited to the text between the covers. 

Katniss Everdeen vs. Bertie Wooster

In January, I read The Man Upstairs, which is yet another early collection of Wodehouse’s short stories.  What struck me about these stories as a collection is how they went back and forth between using a first and third person narrator.  I am a huge fan of first-person narrators.  My favorite novel from my teenage years, Jane Eyre, contains one of the most oft-referenced lines in first person narration (i.e. “Reader, I married him.”  This still gives me shivers every time I see it.).

When I write, I prefer to use the first person, which almost feels like an improvisational acting exercise.  Getting inside the head of one person and telling a tale is a useful trick for drawing in the reader, because it as though we are being taken into a confidence.  The reading experience becomes even more enjoyable for me when the reliability of that narrator is called into question, which happens in The Turn of the Screw or the more recent The Little Stranger (both, interestingly enough, are Gothic novels, but that is something to consider elsewhere).  As a reader coping with a narrator with uncertain motivation, I pull back and begin to examine other possibilities.  Did, in fact, that person jump to her death, or was she coerced by a supernatural being or was she killed by the narrator? 

The most recent first-person escape I went on was The Hunger Games trilogy. Those books are narrated by a girl in her late teens, which is not the most reliable age group for depicting reality in my experience (which is as it should be.  Teenagers need to hyper-emote, otherwise they become stunted adults.).  Added in to the mix is that Katniss Everdeen is put through some rather extreme situations, meaning that you can toss out any hopes for getting the full picture.  The author has a lot of interesting things to say about the nature of rebellion, and I have some theories about why those books are particularly popular at this point in time, but in the interests of this blog, what caught my attention most was the amount of emotion that was shown. 

If one ever wanted to demonstrate to an alien race the stereotypical emotional landscape of an American young woman (all right, Panem is not exactly the US, but close enough) and a British man, you would do worse than giving them The Hunger Games and My Man Jeeves.  Katniss’ emotions leap out at you, in fact, they propel the storyline right up to the end.  Concepts like marriage and family loyalty are taken very seriously.  One could argue that is because the stakes are literally life and death, although I find that even teenagers who are not fighting to survive tend to take everything Very Seriously (I might have been a case in point).   Bertie, and other Wodehouse first person narrators, tend to be bounced around by life’s waves of tumult.  They enter into engagements, sometimes accidentally, and seemed resigned to them, and are no less vexed when they are broken.  The stakes never include death, merely the loss of face, a butler, or some other prized possession. 

I could go on about the historical of the time when both books were written.  At the time they were published, just about all of Wodehouse’s readers would have lived through at least one World War, whereas contemporary American readers (with the obvious exception of veterans and returning soldiers) have little experience with war.  This is not my point though.  What I found to be most interesting was how one form of storytelling can be twisted deftly used to convey early twentieth century insouciance and post-Apocalyptic angst.

Carry on, Jeeves Musings

In December, I read this collection of Bertie and Jeeves stories, which includes the first meeting of the renowned pair.  The last story, Bertie Changes His Mind, is one of the few in the Wodehouse canon that is told from Jeeves’ point of view.  Although it is a nice change of pace, I am glad that there are not many like this.  I strongly suspect that this was done on purpose by Wodehouse, who, if he was certain of anything, knew what people would read again and again.  Only the other day, I was talking about Wodehouse with the headmaster of my high school, and he noted that, after a while, he found it difficult to distinguish between one story and another.  There are a lot of recycled plots, it is true, but I find that there are enough differences in the details to make them worth reading.  Well, I would think that, wouldn’t I, given that I’m committed to reading the entire lot.  Writing ninety novels and short story collections during one’s lifetime practically requires repetition. 

It is not uncommon to have the seemingly less-intelligent character pose as the narrator.  One of the more famous examples of this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s device of having Dr. Watson narrate the Sherlock Holmes stories (Holmes himself is the narrator of a couple of later stories).  Of course, I am hardly the first one to see parallels between Holmes and Watson and Jeeves and Wooster.  In “Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes or Le Mot Juste,” Kristin Thompson likens Jeeves to Holmes, and expounds on textual similarities, including references to grey matter and that sort of thing, that indicates that Wodehouse was explicitly making a connection between the butler and the sleuth. 

Why is it so common to have the less-brilliant relate the action?  Two thoughts immediately spring to mind, and I would not doubt if a whole host of other reasons come in to play.  The first issue is reader accessibility.  After all, if one is aiming to be a popular author, then it would fly in the face of logic to alienate a group of potential readers who might feel as though they were being patronized by a superior mind.  In the US, there is a general feeling of mistrust towards the so-called intellectual elite.  Somehow I don’t think that this is a new phenomena, as people really have not changed much in the past couple of thousand years, and probably longer than that. 

The second thought is that the character of Jeeves, and Holmes as well, is enshrouded by an air of mystery.  While the reader is privy to the great mind’s solutions, we do not know exactly how that mind operates.  At the end of each story, the reader is given some insight into Jeeves‘ thought process, although there is often the feeling that we do not know the entire story.  Like God, Jeeves works in mysterious ways, and part of his allure is that element of the unknowable.  Should Jeeves be the central narrator, that carefully cultivated air would erode.  We would see too much of the man behind the curtain and lose part of the special quality of the Jeeves and Wooster stories.  Revealing the man behind the curtain lead to the ousting of the Wizard from Oz, and perhaps something similar would have happened with Jeeves and Wooster had Wodehouse plotted a similar coup. 

Strange Obsession

One of the characters in the Wodehouse pantheon who never fails to irk me is Gussie Fink-Nottle.  My main objection to him is that he is a wet blanket who cannot cope with life.  Reading between the lines, I feel that Bertie Wooster feels the same about him, but continues to be his chum out of a sense of loyalty that he refers to as the Code of the Woosters.  I suppose we all have people like this in our lives whose mere presence causes us to sigh and wish that things were different, but still we tolerate them because there but for the grace of God go I, blah blah blah.  Gussie’s main preoccupation in life is his love of newts.  He has quite the collection and can speak about the amphibians ad nauseam.  His obsession with them has always amused me, as they seem to be such unlikely things to capture a person’s fascination.  My amusement dried up abruptly when I realized that I, too, am obsessed by an unlikely thing.

It all began innocently enough.  My house is over a hundred years old and has a forced hot-air heating system.  While the heat is incomparable, it does dry out the air quite a lot, which causes a lot of tickly throats in the morning and aggravates my cat’s asthma.  The obvious remedy is to run a humidifier.  I bought a wonderful one a couple of years ago.  It was a Sunbeam ultrasonic model.  Not only could you set the desired humidity percentage, but it also shut off automatically when those levels were attained and there were no filters involved.  It was silent, and served me well for a year and a half, until, alas, I hit the clumsy stage of my pregnancy.  Since I was living alone at that point, I was responsible for filling the reservoir.  One night, I dropped it in the bathtub and cracked it.  I spent far too much time searching for a replacement reservoir on the internet after being informed by the good people at Sunbeam that, not only was a replacement reservoir not available, but they no longer made that particular model.  The pregnancy hormones rendered me inconsolable, bemoaning that of all the losses that I had experienced recently, from my failed relationship right on down to my missing memory stick, this was the sharpest sting.  Fortunately for my mental health, I had some chocolate, dusted myself off and concocted a plan.

It being February, when all reasonable people had bought their humidifiers and the stores were stocking bikinis in their place, I was out of luck.  Against my better judgment, I bought a couple of Crane models from Amazon.  I really ought to have paid attention to the reviews, a good half of which almost screamed “Do not buy this!” at me.  Reason was clouded by the blind panic that was brought on by the twin worries of my son’s imminent birth and my cat’s asthmatic condition.  Besides, one of them was shaped like a duck, the perfect thing in a nursery.  The appliances arrived and worked well throughout my maternity leave, misting the air and providing respiratory comfort to all and sundry.

Then the summer hit, and my son developed his first case of the sniffles.  The poor mite had to endure regular applications of saline to his nose and tussles with a Swedish Snot Sucker.  I was told that the air conditioners were drying out the air and to run humidifiers.  Up to the attic went I to retrieve the first Crane humidifier, certain that it would provide the same reliable service that it had during the early spring.  So it did, for one week and then it refused to send as much as a wisp of moisture into the air.  The second unit responded similarly, although this one operated for only a couple of days.  By that time, the weather had broken and the sniffles had dissipated.  Of course, being a baby, he got sick again a month later, again necessitating a humidifier. 

That was in September and since then, I have bought three humidifiers and returned one.  One is in my bedroom and another in my son’s room.  A third is needed for my living room because, as much as I try to lure my asthmatic cat into spending the day snoozing in my room, he is very fond of a spot on the couch directly across from a heating vent.  I have tried carrying a humidifier from room to room, but given my track record, I know it is almost a matter of time before disaster happens.  For reasons unknown to me, probably yearning for a lost love and wanting to recapture the magic, I called Sunbeam and, when I heard that they had a really good ultrasonic model out, I bought two so as to have a back-up or a spare reservoir when/if I break one.  Awkwardly enough, I placed that order after speaking with the Crane people, who informed me that I could have replacement models sent as my units were still under warranty.  I had plumed for a refund, but there was nothing doing.  It seemed madness to have two broken humidifiers in my house when I would have two working ones, albeit working ones that I will never trust, hence the reason why I did not cancel the Sunbeam order.  When all of this is done, I will have six humidifiers in my house. 

My madness only became clear to me when I was asking my father if he wanted a humidifier (a Crane obviously, as I suspect I will start hoarding ultrasonic Sunbeam humidifiers now) and he asked me why I had one on offer.  This put Gussie’s newt-loving tendencies into perspective.  Certainly, I once made the acquaintance of a particularly compelling bearded lizard named Eugene, and thus understand the allure of something that others might put into the creepy and slimy category.  No one, to my knowledge, in literature or real life, has ever had a soft spot for a Sunbeam humidifier manufactured in 2008 with adjustable humidity levels and automatic shut-off.  Were I ever to meet Gussie in the street, I would have to slink off, knowing him to be the better human being.  Thank goodness for my self-respect that he is only a fictional character. 

Sunday, Bloody Sunday ~or~ My Tussles with the Globe

There is almost always something in The Boston Sunday Globe that irks me.  Usually, it is to be found in The Globe Magazine, which is terribly Boston-centric and apologetically upscale.  I say apologetically because every now and again it makes an attempt at being budget-conscious in its offerings and shopping guides, which makes me roll my eyes.  If you’re going to be upscale, embrace it and move on.  Even though I’ll probably never be able to afford a million-dollar renovation on a house, it is nice to see one in pictures, because that’s probably as close as I’ll ever come.  As a subscriber to Vogue, I am more than comfortable with the thought of an aspirational publication and never feel as though I’m being talked down to, which can happen with the Globe.

I do not mean to single out the Globe.  The London Sunday Times appears to have a mandate that no issue can be published without at least one anti-American statement.  At least their lifestyle magazine is a better read, and does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a “Coupling” section where people discuss the intimate details of their relationships.  These essays always make me wonder how the author’s friends and family feel about knowing the little intimate details of their lives.  It is akin to having a Brahmin version of the Kardashian family on display.

There I was a couple of Sundays ago with an unexpected free hour on my hands because my son decided to become a marathon napper.  I sat down with the paper and reached the Ideas section.  There was an interview with Mindy Kaling, a Massachusetts native who is a writer for The Office and has recently published a book.  Miss Kaling is one of my favorite on-line personalities, and I read her book with great interest.  Perhaps my standards are too high, but I thought that this was a rather quick effort.  She, and Tina Fey for that matter, is more than capable of writing something with a bit more heft to it.  Anyway, one thing that really got me to thinking was that she said that she has never laughed out loud while reading.

Initially, I did not think much about this comment and focused my attention on the offerings of the Globe North section.  The next day, I was reading the story of Jeeves first coming into Bertie Wooster’s life and found myself laughing out loud (see, there is indeed a Wodehouse connection).  When I stopped to consider the comment, I found that I do laugh frequently when I read, probably to the consternation of my fellow commuter rail passengers as that is when I do most of my reading.  Some passages in David Sedaris have almost had me weeping, as well as some bits in the Series of Unfortunate Events (the earlier books are brilliant pieces of satire).  Am I alone in this?  Is there perhaps something wrong with me?  All I do know is that I feel sorry for Miss Kaling.  Most of these laughs have really been good for me, a spiritual palate cleanser.

The second thing that annoyed me was, inevitably, this week’s Coupling essay.  Please don’t ask me why I persist in reading something that fills me with bile ninety percent of the time.  This week’s offering was by a man who is a writer and married to another writer.  The couple both work from home and have small children.  Basically, the essay was an attempt by the man to assuage the lingering feelings of guilt he had for letting his wife assume most of the child care, at the expense of her writing career.  He justified the decision by stating that he earns more than his wife.  Well, he would, wouldn’t he, as he can write and publish and she is relegated to writing at night.  I don‘t know about her, but the last thing I want to do after putting my cherub to bed is to pullout the laptop.  Most nights, my mind is dribbling out of my ear and it is all I can do to take up my crochet needle.  He harped on the fact that she was a novelist, as if that entire group was doomed to poverty.  Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to see Stephen King or Nora Roberts in the bread line anytime soon, although I do realize that not all novelists are rolling in the proverbial hay.  My largest complaint was that I felt that this man was trying to make me absolve him from guilt, and I am not about to let him off the hook.  Let that be a lesson to you, Coupling authors.  Don’t try to use your audience to settle a score in your marriage.

The third thing?  Devra First spoke poorly about Turkish Delight, saying that it was disappointing.  I don’t know what Turkish Delight Ms. First has been eating, but it certainly leaves a sweeter taste in my mouth than many of the things she has praised to the skies.  It is one of my most favorite things in the world, and my dear English chum always brings me some when she visits.  In fact, I have a box waiting for me in my pantry that I suspect I am reserving for Valentine’s Day when I shall be in need of a pick-me-up.  I admit that I almost attacked it to assuage the disgruntlement I felt about the Globe, but my son woke up and demanded my attention.  I only thought about the paper one more time that day, which was when I was placing it in the recycling bag with more glee than usual.

Plot Twists ~or~ Thoughts on Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets and Other Matters

When I think about Wodehouse’s work, a few images come to mind: Jeeves coolly and brilliantly elucidating a solution to Bertie’s problems; Lord Emswoth sighing contentedly over his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings; and aunts imposing their will on unsuspecting victims.  All of these lead me to think about how quickly plots can change with the arrival of one telegram, phone call, or burglar creeping in the night.  The few people who do not look at me like a deranged lunatic when I talk about Wodehouse (actually, there is only one, my fantastic Uncle Joe.  The rest of my family is fairly patient with me, although they have been probably worn down by years of coping with my numerous quirks.) often remark on the fantastic plots.  For a while, I would agree with them.  Life always seems to bounce along, and I never gave a thought to how the plot of a life can change drastically in minutes.

This changed a few weeks ago, when there was a massive rain storm in my neck of the woods and my son’s daycare was flooded.  This was followed by the equally horrifying news that the center would be closed for two and a half weeks.  Suddenly, I went from a mother who happily deposited her offspring securely in the same place everyday and then dashed off to the city to a Sherpa.  You see, the most logical place to send him was a branch of the daycare center that just happens to be located across the street from my office.  I went from being a single commuter to having a plus one.  The littlest commuter had a grand time as he enjoyed being cooed over by a new cohort of adults.  Meanwhile, bags hung off of every available limb.  My handbag, the bag for my pumping equipment, my lunch, and a bag of my son’s things, not to mention the occasional appearance of an umbrella .  One day, as I was pushing the stroller while my child was chewing on his French giraffe in the midst of a downpour, laden with luggage and the aforementioned umbrella, I thought that Wodehouse would have had a field day with this, except there would need to be a valet or wager involved somewhere. 

Good old Plum would have also enjoyed witnessing the events surrounding the planning of my mother’s surprise 60th birthday.  This followed a more traditional Wodehouse theme, as the entire thing was spring upon me by my de facto aunt, my mother’s charmingly unhinged best friend.  Aunts are major catalysts in Wodehouse stories.*  Instead of pinching a silver creamer shaped as a cow, my aunt-inspired mission included a photo shoot with my son and long, involved discussions about whether it was better to arrange the salads before or after we reached the party venue.  Like Bertie, I realized that the only way I was going to survive was to say yes to everything, and then ignore the plans which were preposterous, such as her suggestion that we reenact the finale from Chicago for the entertainment section of the evening.

What does this have to do with the inestimable Eggs, Beans and Crumpets?  Admittedly, not a whole lot.  It is a nice collection of short stories, many of which involve one of my favorite tertiary Wodehouse characters, Bingo Little.  He has a nice marriage humming along with an author, Rosie M. Banks, and manages to get himself into numerous scrapes.  While reading it, I remarked to myself on how a lot of these plots can be a bit bizarre, until I took a good long look at my life and recognized that it too is replete with elements of the absurd.  For every call from Aunt Agatha that has sent shock waves through Bertie‘s life, I have had requests to join committees and, lest I forget, my impending divorce was triggered by a telephone.  Life has its own bizarre designs, and it is far better to turn them into plots for a mad-cap story rather than dwelling over their more serious implications.


*It is one of my deepest regrets that it looks as though I shall never be a full-fledged aunt.  I am an only child, and am in the process of undoing the union that has made me a step-aunt by marriage to people who are only a couple of years younger.  My step-niece has also made me a great step-aunt, but that does not have the same ring to it somehow. 

Creative Immortality ~or~ More Musings on The Golden Bat

Looking at the publication date of The Golden Bat reinforced the fact that Wodehouse was a product of the late Victorian/Edwardian age, albeit one who lived well beyond the demise of both monarchs.  The man was publishing books in 1904, which is now well over a hundred years ago.  This comes as a shock to me.  I still consider Kurt Cobain’s death to be a recent event, and 9/11 happened only last week, didn’t it?  Never mind that, when I was younger, it was not unusual to have veterans of World War I pottering about, and now they’re almost all on another field of battle.

I often wonder if Wodehouse thought that his books would still be published and read so long after they were written.  He died in 1975, almost forty years ago, and, not only are all of his books still in print, but they bring out swanky new editions that are featured in au courant design magazines.  Moreover, their humor still endures, which I find remarkable.  Maybe in large part that is because there are not many pop culture references, which lends to the so-called timeless air of the novels and stories.  I read Tina Fey’s memoirs a couple of weeks ago, and I find myself wondering if 30 Rock will still be considered funny in the next century.  Fey’s humor relies a lot on witty observations of current situations, so I’m not convinced that it will endure.  Who can say though.  Maybe it will be like Shakespeare, and the episodes will come with long footnotes explaining the ironic use of language.  Goodness knows, I’m a sucker for a good footnote.

I have almost no doubt that good old P.G. would be tickled pink knowing that his books are still read.  Isn’t that what all writers and other artists dream of, that, not only will their work be shared during their lifetime, but will outlive them?  One my favorite recent episodes of Dr. Who involved The Doctor taking Vincent Van Gogh into the present to show him that people considered him to be a master and appreciate his paintings.  I always loose it when I see the touching last scene, as the incomparable Bill Nighy, playing an art historian, explains to Van Gogh the precise nature of his legacy (not knowing that he was speaking to the artist himself).  To be fair, even the Van Gogh character cries, so it is a weep-fest on both sides of the screen.  It is the base human need to share that still compels people to tell stories and express, having an audience. 

I’ve been struggling with the need of having an audience recently.  Over the past ten years, I have written a couple of novels and a pile of short stories that I have no doubt will languish in unpublished obscurity.  At the moment, I am in the process of trying to determine if I should pack it in and give up on fiction writing or carry on.  I go back and forth on the merits of writing for my own sake versus doing something more productive with my time.  Part of my compromise was starting this blog, which, while not fiction, still keeps me writing, which I am determined to do regardless of the form it takes.  Fortunately for the world at large, Wodehouse had success relatively early on in his writing career, meaning that he did not quit.