I have spent most of this week in the world of Wooster and Wodehouse as an antidote to hay fever and general lowness and it has worked a treat. I cannot for the life of me understand why I have left it so long in my reading life to enjoy the delights of these wonderful books. Not complaining though, I now have the simply glorious prospect of working my way through all of PGW's output, some 90+ I gather which should keep even me going for a while. I am also rationing them and trying not to read more than one a week (so two years ahead of me in this case), but it is difficult and this week I have gone over the top and read three, so that has blown that timetable.
I will not even attempt to go into detail regarding the plots and characters as, if you are a fan already you will know and understand the impossibility of describing their intricacies, charms, wittiness and downright lunacy of each, and if you have not read them, then you should and then you will find out for yourself.
I keep a packet of yellow post-its near to me when reading and when I come upon a nicely turned phrase or bon mot or a sentence that really hits home, I place one of these invaluable little slips on the page to return to at a later date. Well, needless to say, each book is bristling with these yellow thingies and my idea of dropping a few of these selected lines in a post on Random has had to be cut back as I discovered I would be copy typing more or less the entire book. However, I simply have to put a few down and here they are:
Bertie on his friend Kipper Herring - "...salt of the earth but nobody could have called him a knock out in the way of looks .....he would have been an unsafe entrant in a beauty contest even if the only other competitors had been Boris Karloff, King Kong and Oofy Prosser of the Drones"
Bertie on Aunt Dahlia - "she greeted me with one of those piercing view-halloos which she had picked up on the hunting field in the days when she had been an energetic chivvier of the British fox. It sounded like a gas explosion and went through me from stem to stern ...I believe that Aunt Dahlia in her prime could lift fellow members of the Quorn and Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated from them by two ploughed fields and a spinney"
Bingo Little (well known for falling in love at the drop of hat has married and had a child)- "...the infant was looking more than ever like some mass assassin who has been blackballed by the Devil's Island Social and Outings club as unfit to associate with its members"
Now I appreciate that you may read these and smirk or titter but cannot see why they are just so howlingly funny. You will have to take my word for it that when you are reading the novel in which these few quotes are found, they will finish you off. Every story has a cumulative effect as each sentence is brilliant, there is no let up, streams of superbly written pearls of delight drop off the end of PGW's pen and by the time you have come to the end of the book in question, you will be weak with laughter. When challenged by a friend as to what was reducing me to such a state of helpless mirth, I read a few paragraphs out to her to be met with a blank stare. And I fully understand why. You just have to immerse yourself in the Wodehousian world and let the rest of the universe go hang.
It is only after starting to read PGW that I realise just how brilliant Bill Bryson is. His books have had the same effect on me, they too have humour that is just there, impossible to convey by a description, you have to read them to understand why. I would not be surprised if BB is a Wodehouse fan, I know that he is the only other writer who has reduced me to a lunatic state and once put me in the position of having an entire carriage of commuters looking at me as if I was totally barmy and needed to be carried away by men in white coats.
Oh the joy of laughter - can make any day lighten up. I have another 80+ of these wonderful books to go and have a list all waiting to be ticked off when I hit Hay on Wye next week.
So, I must now hie me hither as I am off to the Big Smoke to see Oliver with Rowan Atkinson as Fagin. I just hope my luck holds and I don't get there and find he has been bitten by a gnat or fallen off the London Eye or some such other ghastly happening.....
