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I have always been drawn to the dark side of literature. Some of my favorite books are in a genre that, for obvious reasons, has been referred to as prisoner literature. Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, Hugo's Last Day of a Condemned Man, Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—the list goes on. The body of work that has—at times miraculously—been squeezed out of people confined in tiny cells, put to limb-destroying work in subzero labor camps, awaiting their highly probable but, until the last moment, uncertain executions, is a testament to the life that can emerge from misery as well as to the cruelty that people are capable of inflicting on others. There are lessons, here, about conditions that we never want to recreate, about worlds that we never want to inhabit again. Lessons about what people can do with, and for, a crumb. And, beyond that, it is simply some of the world's greatest and most beautiful literature.
Perhaps it was this tendency to be drawn to literature's heavier side that prompted my girlfriend to give me a copy of Very Good, Jeeves. I had never read anything by Wodehouse before. I confess: I had never even heard of the good man—Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, affectionately called 'Plum'. But my girlfriend knows me well; she knows my taste in literature and my sense of humor. With regard to the latter, she knows especially how incredibly selective I am when it comes to 'practitioners' of humor. She gave me Wodehouse, and trusted that it would turn out well.
Another confession: it took a considerable amount of time before I got around to the book. I look back now upon that period of missed opportunities with scorn for the folly of my choices. I do know, incidentally, precisely when I did read it: I dove in on January 9, 2017, and made it to the finish line on January 12, 2017. Since then, I have read over 20 works by Wodehouse. Well it turned out, all right. I went about the job methodically. I first finished the 15-book-long Jeeves and Wooster series. I got over the tragedy of putting down the fifteenth, slowly, by following it up immediately with the first of Blandings Castle. I am currently three books shy of finishing that series. You might think that that just about covers the oeuvre, but you would be wrong. Wodehouse wrote over 100 books (how many, exactly, is the subject of debate). I have only made a dent.
“The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles.”
Wodehouse's works are winged things. You enter the worlds he arranges effortlessly and you are at ease. Everything is in its rightful place. Then something—the immanent visit of an aunt, the threat of a marriage—imperils the whole blessed state of affairs, like a dark cloud approaching a picnic on a sweet spring afternoon. There is a bit of turmoil (sometimes we begin at this point), but, ultimately, things work out. People get what they deserve. Love always triumphs. This is the basic formula of Wodehouse, which probably would not work (and, in a rare case, doesn't quite), were it not for 1) the wonderfully distinct characters, and 2) the high quality of the writing itself, which, 1) and 2) taken together, invariably manage to carry the thing through. About the characters, it must be noted that critics of Wodehouse have accused him of recycling material. Defenders, like myself, are only too happy that he did—if he did. The best (and, I should say, definitive) statement on the matter is provided by Wodehouse himself, in the preface to Summer Lightning. Here it is:
About the writing, what makes Wodehouse so delightful, aside from a healthy infusion of good old wit, is his inventiveness with language. He loves similes, and some of the images taken from nonhuman animals are so memorable that I chuckle recalling them now. My favorite is the dipping of the beak into lunch—made especially funny, of course, by the aristocratic setting, in which any mention of beaks at the table would likely invite a stern look from an aunt. He also loves abbreviations, which, again, are so memorable that I think of them on the spot. Whether it's wiping the good old persp. from the brow in a sticky situation, sharing the posish of said situation with a clueless cousin, or breathing in the eggs and b. before getting on with the day—Wodehouse plays with language, and the reader is always in on the joke. Apparently, he coined a number of terms (see some examples here). Whether he actually did, I doubt we can know for sure. He loved to use the latest slang—both American and English (he obtained dual British-American citizenship in 1955), so that it is difficult to prove whether society or Plum was first. But it certainly would come as no surprise to me if he brought into the world fresh ways of referring to things. At many points throughout his colorful writing, you already know that he did.
“Jeeves: ‘If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, Mr. Biffen has surely only himself to thank if he has entered upon matrimonial obligations which do not please him.’
Wooster: ‘You’re talking absolute rot, Jeeves. You know as well as I do that Honoria Glossop is an Act of God. You might just as well blame a fellow for getting run over by a truck.’
Jeeves: ‘Yes, sir.’”
In Wodehouse, there is no sadness. Or, if there should happen to be, it is only caused by momentary confusion, to be solved by one of the chosen characters—usually Jeeves, with his momentous brain. In Wodehouse, I have found a light side of literature that is as good as the dark.