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The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

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Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#31

Post by gm3dmo »

klenwell wrote: post #27
dang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Orwell article is brilliant from start to finish ("there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing"). We think of Orwell as a political and moral writer more than an arty one (and he famously wrote about how he sacrificed his art to politics), but this is among other things a fantastic piece of literary criticism. Examples: How closely Wodehouse sticks to conventional morality can be seen f…

I guess you could call Orwell's essay an exoneration but it is, to my reading, no defense. It strikes me as sharply political and moral. And, I agree, scintillating literary criticism. Your excerpts go to the heart of the argument. If Orwell thinks it's nonsense to call Wodehouse a fascist, it's not because Wodehouse was necessarily above fascism. It's because he was too silly and stupid ("the events of 1941 do not c…

William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), an American citizen was hanged by Britain for his "treason". Ezra Pound, poet and fascist sympathizer was interned briefly by the Americans. Wodehouse was probably had good reason to be anxious while his wartime behaviour was looked into by the authorities. I would speculate that he probably had enough connections with his school tie and the old boy network to "get things smoothed out".

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#32

Post by dang »

klenwell wrote: post #27
dang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Orwell article is brilliant from start to finish ("there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing"). We think of Orwell as a political and moral writer more than an arty one (and he famously wrote about how he sacrificed his art to politics), but this is among other things a fantastic piece of literary criticism. Examples: How closely Wodehouse sticks to conventional morality can be seen f…

I guess you could call Orwell's essay an exoneration but it is, to my reading, no defense. It strikes me as sharply political and moral. And, I agree, scintillating literary criticism. Your excerpts go to the heart of the argument. If Orwell thinks it's nonsense to call Wodehouse a fascist, it's not because Wodehouse was necessarily above fascism. It's because he was too silly and stupid ("the events of 1941 do not c…

It's more like praising with faint damn, I think. Orwell was a man of the pretty-far left. The public-school class system must have been anathema to him (at the same time as he was a product of Eton—where, by the way, fellow future anti-utopian novelist Aldous Huxley was his French teacher) and yet he presents Wodehouse not as any kind of villain but just hapless and obsolete. So obsolete that you'd never guess that Wodehouse would outlive Orwell himself by 25 years.

This article might have been as much of a defence as it was politically possible for Orwell to produce in 1945. Even his famous independence from sectarianism must have had its limits. I also think one can put one's finger on why Orwell was so sympathetic to Wodehouse and so willing to judge him softly: they were both profoundly and essentially English. People have often pointed this out about Orwell, saying for example that his deep Englishness was the wellspring of his immunity to ideology. I think that same quality is probably what resonated with Orwell about Wodehouse - he was sympathetic in the literal sense (having similar feelings). There are moments in this article where it's as if he's reading Wodehouse from within.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#34

Post by 082349872349872 »

dang wrote: post #32
klenwell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could call Orwell's essay an exoneration but it is, to my reading, no defense. It strikes me as sharply political and moral. And, I agree, scintillating literary criticism. Your excerpts go to the heart of the argument. If Orwell thinks it's nonsense to call Wodehouse a fascist, it's not because Wodehouse was necessarily above fascism. It's because he was too silly and stupid ("the events of 1941 do not c…

It's more like praising with faint damn, I think. Orwell was a man of the pretty-far left. The public-school class system must have been anathema to him (at the same time as he was a product of Eton—where, by the way, fellow future anti-utopian novelist Aldous Huxley was his French teacher) and yet he presents Wodehouse not as any kind of villain but just hapless and obsolete. So obsolete that you'd never guess that…

Was the Brave New World that anti-utopian? For all we know, the island may have been super chill.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#36

Post by mordechai9000 »

gm3dmo wrote: post #31
klenwell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could call Orwell's essay an exoneration but it is, to my reading, no defense. It strikes me as sharply political and moral. And, I agree, scintillating literary criticism. Your excerpts go to the heart of the argument. If Orwell thinks it's nonsense to call Wodehouse a fascist, it's not because Wodehouse was necessarily above fascism. It's because he was too silly and stupid ("the events of 1941 do not c…

William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), an American citizen was hanged by Britain for his "treason". Ezra Pound, poet and fascist sympathizer was interned briefly by the Americans. Wodehouse was probably had good reason to be anxious while his wartime behaviour was looked into by the authorities. I would speculate that he probably had enough connections with his school tie and the old boy network to "get things smoothed out".

It has been noted that he may have been naive, but he never returned to England after the war. As it may be, he truly seems to have simply been clueless. Unlike Pound, who was an open proponent of fascism and supporter of Nazi Germany. I wonder if they would have tolerated Pound if he hadn't been so enthusiastic for them, or if he would've been lumped with the so called degenerates.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#37

Post by robotmay »

aptwebapps wrote: post #29
robotmay wrote: post #6

I love the 90s TV series with Fry and Laurie (as in the article image), but I've sadly never managed to get into the books as I have an extreme dislike of books written in the first person. There are a lot of good books I've missed out on because of this. My desire to try and get into the Wodehouse books is pretty high, though, so perhaps another attempt is warranted.

The Jeeves and Wooster stories are all (or almost all) in the first person, but most of the his other novels are not. Look for some of the Blandings Castle books.

Ooh, thank you for the tip, I didn't know that.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#38

Post by robotmay »

dhosek wrote: post #26
robotmay wrote: post #6

I love the 90s TV series with Fry and Laurie (as in the article image), but I've sadly never managed to get into the books as I have an extreme dislike of books written in the first person. There are a lot of good books I've missed out on because of this. My desire to try and get into the Wodehouse books is pretty high, though, so perhaps another attempt is warranted.

Ah, but first person offers so many wonderful opportunities for wit and voice that are impossible in third, and Wodehouse takes great advantage of that, with Bertie Wooster as the narrator of most of the stories (I can't remember if it's a single story or a whole book that are narrated by Jeeves) and providing a wonderful example of unreliable narration. I wish I'd remembered that when I was looking for good unreliab…

Don't get me wrong; I totally get the reasons for doing it, but unfortunately I have some weird problem with reading books written that way :(

When I read fiction I barely notice the words on the page and instead (sort of?) see what's happening in my head. It's not like characters even have a properly defined look, but I am visualising everything. However when the book is written in first-person, it plays havoc with my imagination and I really struggle to see the characters; it's just words on a page. It reads more like non-fiction, which for some reason doesn't trigger the same effect.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#39

Post by esperent »

egypturnash wrote: post #21

I have fond memories of reading his stories of rich imbeciles wittering about and having their asses repeatedly saved by their silently obedient and scarily smart butlers, but I am not sure I could read them now without the same uncanny change in how I view the "tinny/woody" Python sketch: all these total dumbfucks going on about the most inane thing possible -- while a whole set of servants stand behind them, waitin…

The tinny/woody Python sketch was _always_ meant to be viewed that way. That's why I love Python so much - they used absurdist humour as a vessel for scathing social commentary which at the time pushed the boundaries of the acceptable.

Re: The blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse

#40

Post by kwhitefoot »

neonate wrote: post #22
klenwell wrote: post #18

There was also an interesting New Yorker article on Wodehouse recently about his experience as a Nazi captive: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/wartime-for-wo... I never picked Wodehouse for a prisoner of war. But I guess he handled it with characteristic aplomb. That article inspired me to search for the Fry and Laurie series. It's not being streamed on any of the popular platforms but I did find some d…

As the New Yorker article explains, he also did propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis while there, and while this caused a scandal in Britain that persisted after the war, it surprisingly (by today's unforgiving standards) never ruined his reputation. It seems that most people who have looked into it concluded that he was genuinely trying to cheer people up and was naive about the consequences. Orwell, whose judgment s…

Thank you for that. If only such a standard of writing were more common!
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