A highly comic romp with the English gentry, you
know, those fellows of Eton, living in Manors (and
having impeccable ones,I am told), with little to do but
receive social approval for whatever they do; all with
the quietly dignified, prescient aid of their butler.
Pleasant enough, but P.G. Wodehouse masterfully parodies
the upper crust and their sometimes foolish pretences as
he skewers one Bertram Bertie Wooster (A lesser man,
caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have ceased
to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is
that they are not lesser men.); often through the verbal
and psychological ingenuity of Jeeves, the almost
obedient servant who masters the master (I fear, sir,
that I was not entirely frank with regard to my
suggestion of ringing the fire bell). Wodehouse (who
belongs with those other two-initialed humorists of the
era, A.J. Leibling, S.J. Perelman, and T.E. White)
created icons and, perhaps, an entire genre through
Bertie and Jeeves. The dialogue is, as they say,
splendid: Droll and dry, understated yet preposterous.
Perhaps nowhere else have the strictures of etiquette
been exposed with such wit: A touch of salmon? Thank you
With a suspicion of salad? If you please. Wodehouse
manages this satire through the first-person narrative
of the object satirized-no mean feat, what? (You may
find yourself uttering Wodehousian English phrases for a
few days after reading this.) The plot is a bedroom
farce without the bedroom, with lots of the usual twists
and turns, but the ending is a little too neat. One
reads Wodehouse, however, mostly for his delicious
language, his assortment of odd, engaging (and oddly
engaged) personalities, and, above all, his adroit sense
of humor and timing. Right ho! Highly
recommended.
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