I had a horrendous bout of depression a few years ago and couldn't read. The words skipped everywhere.. Reading is my salvation and I didn't even have that escape. Eventually I tried my Kindle with large text and turned to Wodehouse. The only books I could read for several months. They probably saved my life. Thank you, Mr Wodehouse.
Made the mistake of reading one on a bus, once. Got the giggles and couldn't stop and got hysterical. People started edging away from dangerous lunatic.
I saw the Fry Laurie episodes on TV in college. It came on at 8pm Sunday nights. I laughed so much, people were calling and knocking on the door, saying, "I'm trying to study!" "Turn your TV down!" "I can't concentrate with all that laughing!"
He sounds such a lovely mild mannered guy. I can’t thank him enough for Blandings and Bertie Wooster. A very underrated author. I read him every day...he keeps me sane in this crazy world. Thank you sir, and thank you too to Alistair Cooke.
I always refused to read as a child and that at 14 I took a cross-country train trip by myself. Right before the trip my sister gave me a paper back copy of ‘Right Ho Jeeves’ and I tore through it and must have read it 3 times by journeys end. Within and hour of arriving I was in a bookstore trying to feed my new found addiction.
JONATHAN SUTCLIFFE A train? It’s a huge metal means of transportation and it rolls along rails. I don’t own a watch. No need as my phone has a clock on it.
I will never tire of Wodehouse no matter how many times I read or listen to his books or watch Frye and Laurie portray Jeeves and Wooster . All his silly characters are timeless and always e enjoyable . No one can make me laugh harder than P.G.Wodehouse and I love that he appeals to and is suitable for ALL ages . 💌
Honestly...whenever life becomes too serious, stressful and darkened; when I become depressed over politics (a too frequent occurrence these past 2 years and counting); if the walls of human drama begin to close upon me; and I find myself feeling adrift and distant from my sanity; I snatch up any one of these literary saviors and hibernate within the comedic splendor of Wodehouse's cast of nutty, hilarious characters and places. After indulging in one of his works, I find myself restored, rejuvenated and willing to take on life once again! A strong cup of steaming Earl Grey, solitude with a comfortable couch and one of his adventures are the best medicine for the rigors of 21st-century life.
PG. what a genius. I adore his books; his beautiful turns of phrase and gentle, clever, ridiculous plots. And look at his face, his eyes. They reflect his intelligence, humour and kindness. I wish I’d known him. He’d be my ‘who would you invite to a dinner party’ guest for sure...
I'm thoroughly impressed with Wodehouse's works. It would have been nice to have had his books as part as our literary curriculum when I was in high school.
Not only was he a great comic writer in that light but incisive way, his grammar was wonderful to follow. As a privileged Indian with a decent education I was fortunate to have a father who collected a large number of paperbacks in his study. P G Woodhouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Bram Stoker besides dozens of other good writers on both sides of the Atlantic were standard reading. For nostalgia I still read an old Woodhouse even today about fifty years later!
When one reads mysteries, one waits impatiently for the destination, one wants to know who done it. When one reads PGW one enjoys the journey so much that one is not in a hurry to reach the destination. Not that the destination is bereft of surprise and joy ! The destination is as much enjoyable as the journey.
P. G. Wodehouse helped me cope with 9-11. After ten days of being almost completely immersed in it I was becoming nuts and needed something to restore reason and common sense. Wodehouse also relieved the sense of oppression. The TV program was no longer on Alabama's Public Television so I got 3 or 4 books from the bookstore. My life saver.
For all the criticism Bertie receives, I would like to be a close friend of his. Honest, generous, and very sociable; a joy to be around compared to the people I've encountered in the real world who are none of the above. richard -- Eustace: Where is Bertie, anyway? Jeeves: He had an important meeting with Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps, sir. Claude: Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps!? Jeeves: I believe that is the sobriquet, sir. Yes. Eustace: Has the I.Q. of a backward clam? Jeeves: It's my understanding that amongst fellow members of the Drones Club he is considered something of a dangerous intellectual, sir.
@Archie Woosung - _clearly_ when people say things like, ' . . . is the best . . . ever!', it's understood that such a statement is a subjective one. Commonly meaning that it's a firm favourite of theirs or at least held in particularly high regard, yes. Are you autistic or something?
I was in my early 30s when I 'discovered' the Wodehousian realm of farce; now at 71, I remain grateful to 'Plum' and his characters for the laugher and joy he'd given me. Thanks so very much for posting!
PG - genius. But it must be said that Alistair Cooke is a genius interviewer, he really follows up PG's answers with fresh comments, and he allows space for natural conversation. I know it's not a fresh observation, Letters From America is still a wonderful listen. But still.
The interviewer is the great Alistair Cooke, whose use of English was also to be admired. My mother adored his broadcasts on the BBC, and we always listened to "Letter From America" on a Saturday morning. Happy times.
I just finished "Thank you Jeeves" and I am still under impression. I loved the book and I will continue reading other books by super talented P.G. Wodehouse. He is absolutely amazing!
The other 11 Jeeves books are just as good. They’re best read in order of publication, as the other characters pop up repeatedly, referencing stories from the earlier episodes. Start with the short stories in ‘the inimitable jeeves’ (1923) and go from there. ‘Right oh jeeves’ (1934) is ridiculouly funny.
I found PG when I moved to the country for my first teaching job and I was living alone. I read the Golf stories first and loved them. Then it was onto all the Jeeves and later Blandings and others. The Bright Penguin reissues released about 2000 were a great move. We’re so lucky one of the best was a comic master aren’t we? Long live Plum!
I'm 30 years old and from London, our slang is very diffirent today but I've downloaded some of these books/dramas to give them a go :) Oh wow, this guy would have never used a computer... These older folks seam so warm and caring compared to todays people in power, but i suppose that's how it was back then too.
thank you Mr Wodehouse for so much glorious fun and real happiness you have brought into my life Everyone open one of his books and you`ll be so happy Take care folks
I wonder if there is an equivalent for other languages. For what languages can the following sentence be accurately completed? "__________ makes me glad that I learnt the __________ language."
Alistair Cooke’s not only a great interviewer, his voice had such a beautiful accent. It reminded me when young I listened to his radio broadcasts “letter from America”. I didn’t always understand everything he said, but just loved the poetic Rhythm of his voice.
"It is a very fine day, sir! There is a letter on the tray, sir." "Good gosh, Jeeves, that was practically poetry!" "Oh I say Jeeves, what was it Shakespeare wrote about having an eye like mother's?" "An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, is the quotation for which you might possibly be groping, sir."
Damn. I can no longer read dialogue between Jeeves and Wooster without hearing Stephen Fry's and Hugh Laurie's voices in my head. Much as I love Fry and Laurie's work, I don't think their voices are what P. G. Wodehouse had in mind at the time.
@@crimsonmask3819 let me be a bit more precise. Adams often imitated the Wodehousean prose style. It wasn't a bad imitation, certainly better than Rich Little's Johnny Carson. Wodehouse: "if things were other than they were, except if there was one thing that things were not, it was other than they were". Adams: "the machine then produced a substance that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea". You also see it in certain descriptions of Arthur Dent. There is a very similar playfulness with language, logic, negatives and tenses, designed to reward the reader's attention. Adams suggested that time travel would impact grammar as you would have the modified subinverted plagal past subjunctive intentional tense. I particularly admired this insight and it led me to speculate how time travel would impact tort law (if I go back in time beyond the statute of limitations and injure you is the statute tolled?) and taxation (if I go back in time and win money based on my knowledge of sporting event winners, do I owe the income tax in the year of the sporting event or the year I return to in my time machine to spend the winnings? Is there a trans-temporal competent authority to avoid double taxation?). Adams was a genius and sui generis but he often slipped into the prose rhythm of Wodehouse. Not the short answer, to be sure.
Having taken early retirement just before lockdown started, I picked up ‘Salmon of Doubt’ on Audible. That has led me to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. With Douglas, Fry and Hitch all ganging up on me to check out this Wodehouse cove, I bought Fry’s Jeeves collection, and then the Blandings collection. Now I am recognising Wodehouse influences all the way through Douglas’s writings.
@@Canalcoholic Thank you for the thoughtful and interesting reply. I retired 2 years ago, though I mock my retirement by working 10 hours per week and it mocks me back by making me not wildly motivated in my work. My retirement was not so much early as belated and politely suggested as well as distinctly body-englished. In any event, I am pleased that if I was indeed imagining the Adams/Wodehouse industrial complex, that I am not alone in my delusion. Great post. Cheers.
The prince of English humorous writing, and the best general commentator on America in his day. I grew up with the adaptations for radio, but the books themselves are a continuing delight. Alistair Cooke's Letter from America was a weekly event too, but for mastery of the language it has to be P.G. Walks away chuckling.
Having always adored Wodehouse's writings, I still had never heard his actual voice. And, my! Do all Englishmen have such eloquent voices? Gielgud, Olivier, etc, etc,! Wodehouse being no exception to that uniquely English excellence. It was fascinating to hear him speak. Many thanks for posting this gem!
I was never comfortable with flying but one time I took "The Golf Omnibus" with me and never even noticed the time. others did notice the laughter and snorts at the good bits.🤣
_The suggestion is entirely possible:_ Hungarians are very attached to their humour, both in print and on the stage, but before the 1956 Uprising the country’s regime were dreadfully repressive and isolationist, with citizens being interrogated just for writing a postcard to a family member in another Warsaw Pact state!
Writing about being a humourist in his autobiography Over Seventy, Wodehouse quoted two people in the Talmud who had earnt their place in Heaven: “We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted, we cheer him up.”
I can't imagine a literal translation of Wodehouse into another language would work at all. So much of his humor is based in English usage. (Douglas Adams is the same way.)
My grandfather who was born at the end of the 19th century used to read aloud the stories for me... He always used to end up in fits of laughter, and I always followed suit...
Мы слышим голоса двух великих англичан! Сэр Алистер Кук все еще вел трансляцию на BBC, пока в марте 2004 года он не умер от рака легких в возрасте 95 лет.
I've read and re-read many PG Wodehouse books. Got a couple books in sight right now. One I enjoyed a lot was Laughing Gas about a young Earl who gets entangled with a dubious Hollywood starlet. He accidently swaps souls with a child star and amazing things happen to this Earl (child star).
If P.G. Wodehouse had written anything other than humor, he would have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Humor gets no respect and Wodehouse's writing is nothing short of genius.
