’’...write about Wodehouse and you tread on hallowed ground. He’s a writer people mind about intensely, a writer who, without strong feelings himself, encourages the most vehement reactions.’’
’’No library, however humble, is complete without its well-thumbed copy of ’Right Ho, Jeeves, ’ by P.G. Wodehouse, which contains the immortal scene of Gussie Fink-Nottle, drunk to the gills, presenting the prizes to the delighted scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, built around 1416.’’
-John Le Carre
An acquaintance of mine who was then recently introduced to Wodehouse, when I was trying to encourage him to embark on the journey of devouring the whole canon, asked me a question that is often put to Plum(Wodehouse was called Plum by those who loved him - he still is) devotees, ’’What is your favorite Wodehouse?’’ Now, that is what I call a very difficult question to answer. Take the case of someone visiting the Tulip Gardens of Holland being asked about the single flower he liked most among the breathtaking sight of all the flower beds symmetrically laid; wouldn’t that someone be baffled to no end? Or like Shakespeare’s Othello, be perplex’d in the extreme? I feel very similar when I am faced with the question. :) I love all of the master’s works like ’’how the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all’’. The books have never failed to put a smile on my face in many a dull moment of life caused by the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
I think the best way to go about reading Wodehouse - the way I employed to wade through the whole Canon of 100 odd books - is to start at the Jeeves and Wooster series featuring the adventures of the kind hearted blundering upper class British man about town Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his omniscient, omnipotent, Spinoza reading Gentleman’s personal Gentleman, Reginald Jeeves and after that pounce on the Blandings Castle series featuring the absent-minded Peer, Clarence, the 9th Earl of Emsworth at the helm of affairs and his paraphernalia complete with his hat trick medal winning Berkshire sow, the Empress of Blandings. There are fourteen of Jeeves and Wooster Novels and an almost equal number of Blandings castle novels. After fraternizing with the above mentioned sterling creations of the master, one should not miss the escapades of Psmith (the P is psilent as in Pterodactyl), Uncle Fred and a lot more of other interesting creations. Before I proceed further, there is more to be said about Uncle Fred. He is a peer mostly confined to the country side and on the occasions he is unleashed on London, those being the occasions when his better four-fifths is away visiting friends or on some other errand that keeps the redoubtable Uncle Fred away from her temporarily, he tends to ’’step high, wide and plentiful’’. I do not know if you are familiar with the word ’’excesses’’, but these are what Uncle Fred invariably commits when at liberty.
Steering back to the res, I wonder where else one would come across characters with names like Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie or say, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton. Douglas Adams may be, yes!! But with all the credit that he is due, Mr. Adams is still not Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. (Hazarding the possibility of getting didactical, I have to mention that the name is pronounced Wood-house as opposed to the popular notion Woad-house, for I every once in a while chance upon people referring the master as Woad-house) And those of the readers who start out on reading Wodehouse find themselves in a similar enviable posish of a sailing master pleased as a punch upon discovering a great chunk of land. In other words, they would feel like how Columbus would have felt when he first set foot on America.
The plot in the books generally is very intricate and enters into sub-plots and sub-sub-plots like the nested parenthesis in a complex algebraic expression and finally ends with almost none of the characters disappointed; but for me, the plot itself is incidental. It is like a rope that holds the pearls and diamonds of the master’s free flowing lyrical prose replete with hilarious adjectives to describe characters and situations, Gilbertian metaphors, allusions to Shakespeare, the holy scriptures, references to the Greek and Roman Myths, the Arthurian Legend, the poems of yore and all this is done in a humorous manner that leaves you guffawing to no end. It is these things that have sent me back to the master again and again and yet again. Here I have to add a note of caution. It is not advisable to read Wodehouse in public places lest you would be considered leaky in the top floor by your suspicious and shifty-eyed onlookers.
I highly recommend PG Wodehouse to anyone who loves the English language. I myself call the favorite pastime of reading his books, ‘Gorging on Plums’. Not for nothing, I guess, does a friend of mine call me a ‘Wodehouse Crusader’.