We Are All Wodehouse

[the_gneech]

The list of people who think of Wodehouse as a primary inspiration is full of people I admire; Douglas Adams is right at the top of it (he basically described his own style as a Wodehouse pastiche), Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are on there, and so on. And I wouldn't fool anyone if I tried to claim that the Brigid and Greg Fictionlets hadn't come largely from my reading of Wodehouse, and Bertie and Jeeves in particular.

But I do have a problem about that, which is this: there are too many neo-Wodehouses out there. Every novel I pick up that seems like it would fall roughly into the same genre as a Brigid and Greg novel, also seems to be inspired by Wodehouse -- except they generally try to "serious it up" somewhere along the way by introducing Not-Bertie's drug-addicted sister and tossing in copious amounts of sex, swearing, or people swearing while they have sex.

There's also the little problem of believability. A couple of weeks ago, The New Yorker ran a story which is gone from the site now, but had a title along the lines of "What It Was Like to Be Dead" about a man whose wife's long-lost first husband reappears after having got amnesia in the Vietnam war and wandered off to Scotland. In this story, the Not-Bertie narrator mentioned getting something "right in the beezer" and my suspension of disbelief went right out the window.

Dude. Seriously. "Right in the beezer" might be something that an airheaded Etonian might say in the 1930s -- it is not something that some cynical middle class American guy would use while talking about his marriage falling apart.

For that matter, what's the deal using a light, airy, "I'm not Bertie Wooster, I promise" voice to narrate what is essentially a depressing (and supposedly philosophical) story? I hope you don't mind spoilers, but the story ends with the narrator's life turned upside down and the wife headed off to what the narrator is pretty sure is going to be a life of misery -- and the Wodehousian pastiche that was all over the front of the story is quickly tarnishing by the end.

Why do the pastiche at all if it's not what you want to write? I presume the waxing philosophical at the end is the writer's more natural voice ... was the Wodehouse a crutch to get you started? Or a disguise to trick me into reading what I thought would be Story A, only so you could switch up and hit me with Story B halfway through?

Thing is, this is typical of pretty much all the neo-Wodehouses I encounter. They start out with fluff (which Wodehouse would be the first to tell you is what he wrote), and then halfway through they suddenly want to be taken seriously and start lobbing drama at you. Wodehouse once said of his work that he wrote musical comedies, except with the music taken out. Not so, the neo-Wodehouses, who seem intent on writing The Sound and the Fury with an Etonian airhead narrating it.

An important exception: I would like to mention Four Weddings and a Funeral here as being this kind of neo-Wodehouse thing done right. For one thing, while I'm sure Richard Curtis had read Wodehouse, he doesn't just copy Wodehouse. Charles may very well be an Etonian airhead, but he is enough of his own character to not fall into the "Not Bertie" category. For another, even though there is some drama in the story ("...and a Funeral"), it is an important story element rather than just feeling like it came out of nowhere to "heavy up" the film -- and things go right back to being funny again.

Anyway, I'm not sure what got me ranting on this today; it's just something I've been thinking about in regards to the B&G story I guess, and I woke up wanting to get my thoughts down. Sort of a "Note to myself: DON'T DO THIS!" kind of thing. As I once said of R. E. Howard and my fantasy stories, I want my work to be mine, not Wodehouse's. :)

-The Gneech

Comments

[babsbunny.livejournal.com]

In regards to the "right in the beezer" cliche, you'd be surprised. My mother used to say that all the time, and as a result so do I!:)

I'm glad to see someone paying attention to PG Wodehouse though. I didn't think a lot of people our age did, which is a shame. I agree that he did inspire some really talented people however!

On a related note, I've been hearing rumblings of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry teaming up to do Holmes and Watson. They were great as Bertie and Jeeves, so I can't wait to see how they portray the latter!

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, I doubt they'd do it while House is in production; but it would certainly be a unique take. I always rather favored the Jeremy Brett H/W.

-The Gneech

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

A game for you, sir.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Funny concept -- but way too hard to actually play! Yikes!

-TG

[emsworth.livejournal.com]

Really, with the exceptions of things like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (and possibly "Gosford Park"; the Maggie Smith character was *very* Wodehouse aunt-like), for my money, the best "neo-Wodehouse" was the kind which occurred when he was alive. That is to say, British authors with a similar sensibility in some ways, but not intended as outright copies and their own feel.

Henry Cecil comes to mind (he and Wodehouse admired each other's work). While Wodehouse drew from his school days and the theater world and the fact that he could bridge Britian and the United States and thus create his own versions of both (a world where British constables say "Ho!" and American gangsters say "Hey!"), Cecil was a former barrister and judge. His use of recurring atmospheric characters and places was very much like Wodehouse (i.e. not just writing a series or two, but many books which are linked only by a recurring set of supporting eccentrics, in Cecil's case, the drunken solicitor Tewksbury and the half-witted Colonel Brain chief amongst them). His books often had joking titles like "Sober as a Judge" or "Daughters In-Law." However, he could combine the "fluffiness" with biting satire of the judicial system and even moments of tragedy without it feeling like a betrayal (although his most serious books, like "No Fear or Favour," are generally the ones with the fewest colorful character moments). Also, while Wodehouse strove towards a happy ending, Cecil often included ironic O. Henry-ish twists. And yet, the two authors are often compared, particularly in their use of linguistic tangles and oddball minor characters, but neither was trying to be the other, which is probably why both succeeded (though Cecil, while reasonably prolific, has become somewhat more obscure, at least in the states; in Britian, they actually did several sitcoms and films, one with Terry-Thomas, based on his work.

A personal favorite of mine is "Independent Witness," in which 12 people claim they saw an MP cross a stop sign and hit a motorcyclist. The cross-examination of Col. Brain is hilarious. Hitchcock directed a version of that one, with an American cast, for his TV series, under the title, "I saw the whole thing!"

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

On an only-vaguely related tangent, I've finally read a Lord Emsworth story; I've been working my way through The Most of P.G. Wodehouse, which is an enormous anthology including a story or three from all of his major sets, and I've made it through the Mulliner stories, the Ukridge stories, the one Emsworth story, and the "Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets" stories. The Golf stories come next, followed by Bertie and Jeeves, and finally Quick Service, which I gather is a stand-alone novel.

I'll have to get an Emsworth volume separately; I enjoyed the one story included, but hardly felt like I got a representative sample -- especially compared to the five Ukridge stories which didn't particularly appeal to me.

-The Gneech