What would Jeeves do?

I can't get enough of P.G. Wodehouse these days, early 20th century English humorist, author of all of the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster stories but many other short stories, plays, lyrics and essays. This guy is amazing and I can't wait to read everything he's ever written. I found 'World of Jeeves' at a yard sale many years ago and have collected all I could get my hands on ever since. He just appeals to the smartarse in me, I suppose - the perfect mental vacation I need after being immersed in Winston Churchill's series on World War II history.

This says it best - a Newsweek article I ran across, June 2007, where David Gates writes:

"Wodehouse’s true appeal doesn’t lie in his “timeless” stage sets or his “inimitable” stock characters, but in his language — a pure well of English dazzlingly defiled. [Wodehouse} takes, and gives, so much pleasure in the manipulation of words and idioms, tones and dictions... “I was pushing a bit of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment,” Bertie tells us in “Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit, “and feeling fairly well-fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over.” When such meticulously calibrated play ceases to give us joy, let the nukes fly, the icecaps melt and the Great Irksomeness begin."

And on the BBC site:

It is worth pointing out that, despite Wodehouse's repeated intention only to write entertainment for entertainment's sake, his work has long been revered for its richness of language. Any one of Wodehouse's stories contains an astonishing variety of vocabulary, a capacity for literary allusion to satisfy the most intellectual of tastes, a wealth of witty dialogue, and an unsurpassed talent for simile.

Gotta love the Ionicus illustrations in the earlier editions:



And for your reading enjoyment, a few Wodehouse excerpts and quotes:

After breakfast I lit a cigarette and went to the open window to inspect the day. It certainly was one of the best and brightest.

"Jeeves," I said.

"Sir?" said Jeeves. He had been clearing away the breakfast things, but at the sound of the young master's voice cheesed it courteously.

"You were absolutely right about the weather. It is a juicy morning."

"Decidedly, sir."

"Spring and all that."

"Yes, sir."

"In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove."

"So I have been informed, sir."

"Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances."

~ The Intimitible Jeeves, 1923

I was standing there, hoping for the best, when my meditations were broken in upon by an odd gargling sort of noise, something like static and something like distant thunder, and to cut a long story short this proved to proceed from the larynx of the dog Bartholomew.

He was standing on the bed, stropping his front paws on the coverlet, and so easy was it to read the message in his eyes that we acted like two minds with but a single thought. At the exact moment when I soared like an eagle on to the chest of drawers, Jeeves was skimming like a swallow on to the top of the cupboard. The animal hopped from the bed and, advancing into the middle of the room, took a seat, breathing through the nose with a curious, whistling sound, and looking at us from under his eyebrows like a Scottish elder rebuking sin from the pulpit.

~Weekend Wodehouse

He looked like a bishop who had just discovered Schism and Doubt among the minor clergy.

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the hotel at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces.

Come to find out, my mom read Wodehouse books when she was pregnant with me....maybe that's where my love of salsa and pizza comes from?