Inspiring to see how PG Wodehouse actually was. I learned two things: he had a smiling, charming manner; and he followed an exercise regimen. That's how you stay happy and productive until 90!
Mr.Parsons, I have read all the novels of Wodehouse.The humour ,the language-there is no one to beat him. My favourite was Blandings Castle stories. Though I never visited England I could well imagine how Rural England is after I read his novels.Go ahead and get all his stories. Happy reading! MOHAN BABU
you put it well mohan. i LOVE the blandings and "the empress" and the seemingly dimwitted lord emsworth. he knew what his nephew was really like. he got fooled but he KNEW the mind of that nephew. he had a few smarts. and i stress a "few" so delicious pg is. his bio is odd. he lived a charmed sweet life. as he deserved. he was an angel in human form.
Thank you for being right by my side during the worst and best times, Mr Wodehouse. Like your unforgettable characters you've spread sweetness and light with such ease and aplomb that some of it has rubbed off on me. While you may maintain that your books are not true to life, I maintain that there is something profound in your worldview and I find it absolutely essential to share your view to be able to take things as they come, in life. I wish you were alive and writing.
To put it into perspective, Wodehouse is of the generation between Lord Grantham of Downtown Abbey and his daughters, so he got a glimpse as a young adult of the aristocratic victorian and edwardian life before it began to come apart at the seams in and after the Great War.
Yes,Sir Wodehouse humorous novels are simply marvellous, you can't but laugh that the ingenuity of characters and plots. "Something fresh", Uncle Fred" " Blandings Castle " are all very funny. The Jeeves and Wooster books are indispenzable for a y serious buff of farce. Mr. Mulliners books are inreppresebly masterful.
I have always felt that the early writers of I love lucy Bob Carrol Jr and Madeline Pugh must have been avid fans of P.G Wodehouse because their humor is rather like seeing a Wodehouse novel ,one has to forget about logic and just enjoy the series of comedy of errors they spin ,its quite a coincidence that Wodehouse lived in New York from 1950 till his death And his novels based on Hollywood are my favourite ,as he describes a leading lady "the queen of stormy emotions" ,the rest of the cast and crew take refuge when she is on the rampage !
If you read some of Carl Hiassen's early novels they also leave you feeling that he's been a fan of Wodehouse. The subject material and style are different, but he has the same facility with language and a keen knack to squeeze every last bit of humor from a sentence.
Does anyone know where I can find the full versions of all of these interviews? I could seriously listen to P.G. Wodehouse talk all day. To be honest I think I could have sat watching him type with a pipe in his mouth for 10 hours straight.
As a long-time Wodehouse fan I thoroughly disagree with Nick Lucas. I always thought Fry and Laurie did a great job bringing the humour and feel of the novels to life. He seems to think they should have played the parts with more seriousness, but seems not to have noticed the books are light comedy (Wodehouse compared his style of novel writing to the musical comedies of his day and said they were the opposite of novels that go into serious real life problems).
i dont know.....i think hugh laurie was a little buffoonish. wooster in the novels is actually well educated and very well spoken in his way. hes slangy. 1920s british upper crusty slangy. he could pass for classy when necessary. just barely. but he wasnt the village idiot like laurie portrays him. i see him as a handsome rich fella (ie not laurie) educated but with the mind of a 23 year old. perpetually.
genius mchaggis Hm, I'd say a lot of that describes how Hugh is in the TV show quite well really, he's good looking and definitely well spoken (and upper crust slangy) and quite classy (despite the lapses of taste that Jeeves disapproves of - that are also there in the books), though I guess he is slightly on the buffoonish side compared to the books, but a certain amount of silliness is definitely there in the books too. And I'd say while the Bertie of the books has had a supposedly "good" education (at the right schools etc) he's not exactly an intellectual. A lot of his "culture" he seems to have picked up in sayings from Jeeves. But I guess it's a question of taste. I found Hugh's version entertaining, but for you he went too far in the buffoonery.
orlando098 i cant put my finger on it! my picture of wooster is not quite laurie. and i LOVE hugh laurie. he does a good job really. hes entertaining no doubt. maybe its in the somewhat overblown facial expressions. i see jeeves differently than fry too. i see him as more refined in appearance. fry has a galootish look that doesnt quite fit for me. it must be a visual thing.
With each passing year, it’s getting increasingly difficult to believe not only that people like that once actually existed, but that they were in fact not all that uncommon...
Just been reading “PSmith, Journalist” which, being set among organized criminal gangs in New York, was a little bit edgier than I was expecting from him. Quite entertaining, all the same -- if you overlook the fact that some racial stereotypes have not aged well ...
When I first delved into Wodehouse, I had my favourite story arcs: Jeeves and Wooster and the Mr Mulliner short stories. Later I branched out into the other arcs and you will find some firm favourites. What makes Wodehouse stand out were the ingenious farcial elements & the relative innocence of his characters. He himself admitted that his stories were like "a kind of musical comedy completely ignoring real life altogether". I can read my favourite or least favourite stories and always find a line or paragraph that will leave me giggling. God bless that man!
Tafami i started with "summer lightning" and "heavy weather" the prime period for blandings castle. im glad i started there. right in the thick of the cream. i love all his work but havent read his later (latest?) im afraid to. it might not be as good as his golden period.
An author's very early books and those written at the end of his career are not as good as those written when he was in "mid season form". PGW's best books are those which were first published in the years 1924 to 1964, roughly.
Watch Around the World in 80 Days. Some of it's goofy, but Phineas Fogg (Brosnan) and his valet (Eric Idle) are fab. Idle wouldnt work as Jeeves, but Brosnan, definitely as Bertie.
"Stephen Frye & Hugh Laurie should never have been allowed to get within 50' ............" nick lucas comment below. for reasons best known [to the bank? someone's ego? i don't know] hollywood and the bbc have a sorry history of "remakes." bbc tv shows second rate plays and light entertainment rather than daring to show anything of real quality that was shot in b/w
Stephen Frye & Hugh Laurie should never have been allowed to get within 50' of even a NOVEL of Wodehouse's, yet alone been permitted to attempt to play Jeeves and/or Wooster for any price! The 2 of them saw fit to camp & generally prance&swish their way thru the series & imagined that no-one would catch them in the act; they had not one iota of respect or regard for the characters they attempted to portray...
Tosh tosh. YOU Hacklebernie Grundsau should not be allowed within 50’ of a keyboard with such a lack of taste in how PG Woodhouse novels should be played out! Fry & laurie kept up the gold standard all the way through all the series they acted in and I wouldn’t have it done any other way!!
I think Fry and Laurie did considerable justice to the novels. It's impossible to fully capture the true essence of Wodehouse's writing anyway. How the master wordsmith plays with the words....it's not possible to play that out on television . Fry and Laurie had realised this and they had turned down the offer to play Jeeves and Wooster initially but when they realised that somebody else would get the role to play the characters they took the job after some trepidation
He wrote around 100 books, so yes (he was prolific)... I think you can't go much wrong with Jeeves and Wooster and the Blandings Castle ones, and then dip into some of the others too. They're not all equally good, and sometimes some of the plots start seeming a bit similar, but they're always entertaining as far as I remember. (My main Wodehouse reading phase was quite a while ago).
I think his earlier work isn't quite as good as his later work - it wasn't really until the 1930's that he fully got into the swing of his style. I like some of his pre-1930 stuff but the really hysterical stuff is after that.
