Laugh Out Loud Scenes and Hilarious Narrative Characterize Wodehouse Books

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I love the P. G. Wodehouse books. It amazes me that almost a century after they were penned, I’m literally laughing out loud at the wittiness of the plots, and the hysterical narrative. In my mind’s eye I shall forever visualize the incomparable actors Stephen Frye and Hugh Laurie as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster respectively, while I’m reading! That perfect pairing is tantamount to God’s gift to Wodehouse’s legacy via the Jeeves and Wooster series.  

Wodehouse spent a lot of time in the US, continuously from 1946 until his death in 1975, purchasing a home in Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, 77 miles east of Manhattan, and became a citizen in 1955 (but remained a British subject, although never returned or visited). Between 1952-1975 he completed 20 novels. The most well known of his books are likely the Jeeves and Wooster series. During WWII he was interned in a hotel in Berlin, and was released shortly before his 60th birthday, but made five ill advised broadcasts on the German branch of CBS broadcasting with his subject “How to be an Internee Without Previous Training.” This caused an uproar in Britain, but some of his friends, Dorothy L. Sayre among them (one of my favorite mystery writers), came to his defense, although admitting doing the broadcasts was a stupid idea. I hope to find a good biography about Wodehouse, and try to find some videos of him as well. To me he is a comic genius, and a keen observer of human nature. Only one of his books, Thank You Jeeves, appears in Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (Goodreads has a great group for Boxall’s List). 

Carry on Jeeves, like many in this series, covers a few months in the life of Bertie Wooster and his manservant Jeeves, almost a series of short stories plucked from their days together, but linked coherently by timeline. The books take place in both Britain and the US during the late 1920s and the 1930s. Wooster is a young man in his twenties with more money than sense, and is putty in Jeeves’ capable hands, although not without a struggle when it comes to the sensitive issue of Wooster’s problematic wardrobe or facial hair preferences. He and his friends have a penchant for getting into impossibly compromising situations, and Jeeves has an uncanny gift for conceiving of the perfect strategy to extricate said gentlemen from their dilemmas. 

If you’ve never read Wodehouse, thankfully access to his books abounds online via Internet Archive, YouTube, and booksellers. Audible books are often on sale, and many affordable Kindles can be found. I read this Kindle with Audible narration. Library platform Hoopla has the best selection of Wodehouse books, CloudLibrary has 8 books (and two currently have holds), and Libby has the audiobook Pigs Have Wings. Libravox in the public domain has three audiobooks of his short story collections.  

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