HB P. G. Wodehouse, Sept. 15
Tom
flea,' I scarcely know how to deal. Thinking it over, I believe he meant
it to be complimentary, for all the performing fleas I have met have
impressed me with their sterling artistry & that indefinable something
which makes the good trouper."
--on himself, in _Performing Flea_
Tom Parsons
--
--
t...@panix.com | There's nothing so dangerous for manipu-
| lators as people who think for themselves.
http://www.panix.com/~twp | --Meg Greenfield
The Sanity Inspector
>"With Sean O'Casey's statement that I am `English literature's performing
>flea,' I scarcely know how to deal. Thinking it over, I believe he meant
>it to be complimentary, for all the performing fleas I have met have
>impressed me with their sterling artistry & that indefinable something
>which makes the good trouper."
> --on himself, in _Performing Flea_
Shouldn't that header be October 15, 1881?
One great advantage in being a historian to a man like Jeeves
is that his mere personality prevents one selling one's artistic soul
for gold. In recent years I have had lucrative offers for his services
from theatrical managers, motion picture magnates, the proprietors of
one or two widely advertised commodities, and even the editor of the
comic supplement of an American newspaper, who wanted him for a 'comic
strip.' But, tempting though the terms were, it only needed Jeeves'
deprecating cough and his murmured 'I would scarcely advocate it,
sir,' to put the jack under my better nature. Jeeves knows his place,
and it is between the covers of a book.
-- Wodehouse, introduction to _Jeeves Omnibus_
When the Germans made their rapid advance through Belgium in
the early summer of 1940, they captured, among other things, Mr. P. G.
Wodehouse, who had been living throughout the early part of the war in
his villa at Le Touquet, and seems not to have realised until the last
moment that he was in any danger. As he was led away into captivity,
he is said to have remarked, "Perhaps after this I shall write a
serious book."
-- George Orwell, _In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse_
It is nonsense to talk of 'Fascist tendencies' in his books.
There are no post-1918 tendencies at all.
-- ibid
I confess I find myself slightly shocked when anybody admits
to not liking Wodehouse, although I can see that this is an
unreasonble reaction. But I think I can be dogmatic on a few points
from my own observation; that Wodehouse has been more read than any
other English novelist by his fellow novelists; that nobody with any
genuine feeling for the English language has failed to recognise at
least an element of truth in Belloc's judgment of 1934, that Wodehouse
was 'the best writer of English now alive, the head of my profession';
that the failure of academic literary criticism to take any account of
Wodehouse's supreme mastery of the English language or the profound
influence he has had on every worth-while English novelist in the past
50 years demonstrates in better and conciser form than anything else
how the Eng. Lit. industry is divorced from the subject it claims to
study.
-- Auberon Waugh, in _New Statesman_, 21 Sept. 1975
--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
--The Jam
Tom
> Shouldn't that header be October 15, 1881?
Yes, yes, yes! I've never posted an HB before, & while trying to get
everything right I managed to get the month wrong (& didn't even know
the year).
Daniel P. B. Smith
me a loaf of bread, tells the gentlemen with muskets at the
main gate to look the other way, and leaves the rest to me.
In return I am prepared to hand over India, an autographed
set of my books, and to reveal the secret process of cooking
sliced potatos on a radiator.
--P. G. Wodehouse (as quoted by Orwell)
I've always thought that was funny, although it was apparently not
received very well at the time.
--
dpbsmith at world dot std dot com
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/10808 ISBN 1-4033-1406-3
The Sanity Inspector
to live but how to live well. It reminds us that we must "extract joy
from our lives." It helps us survive "the dour, rationalist nightmares
of machine law, machine art, machine cities." It offers us bonds of
friendship not only with the living but the dead. Above all, it leads
us to a vision of the divine. Holy laughter, Dante claimed, is one of
the special gifts of paradise. Those who reject it reject God Himself.
That is why Thomas More, soon to die, comforted his friends with the
assurance that before long they would be reunited "merrily in heaven."
Such surety was well expressed by P. G. Wodehouse, bringer of joy to
millions. If any young writer with a gift for being funny has got the
idea that there is something undignified about making people laugh, he
wrote in a now forgotten essay, let him read the Talmud:
And Elijah said to Berokah, "These two will also share in the world to
come." Berokah then asked them, "What is your occupation?" They
replied, "We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted
we cheer him up."
These two, he wrote, "were among the very select few who would inherit
the kingdom of heaven." Let us hope that we meet them there.
-- Dermot Quinn, "What's So Funny?", review of F. H. Buckley's _The
Morality of Laughter_,
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0308/reviews/quinn.html
Grace McGarvie
be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper. Jules Renard
----ANOTHER REASON TO NOT GO THERE-----
The Sanity Inspector wrote:
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