I read a couple of P.G. Wodehouses back in March; I needed them for comic relief and a bit of a palate cleanser in between this and this and this.
Leave It to Psmith is the first Psmith book I’ve read. I’ll be reading more. Themes and motifs included The Flower Pot motif (in which someone got hit with one or something got hidden in one or somebody stole one with great frequency), money and the lack thereof, crime and robbery, and impersonation (every character in the book impersonated someone else at some point, adding to the incidence of confusion, crime, robbery, lack of money and broken flowerpots.)
Quirky Quotations:
“To find oneself locked out of a country house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience.” (You can tell this is a British novel because of the country house and the spelling.)
“A weird and repellent female . . . created for some purpose which I cannot fathom. Everything in this world, I like to think, is placed here for some useful end; but why the authorities unleashed Miss Peavey on us is beyond me. It is not too much to say that she gives me a pain in the gizzard.”
“A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.” I know that smell, unfortunately.
Jeeves in the Offing was my second Wodehousian selection. I don’t think I’d read this one before, but it’s hard to tell for certain. The plots in a Wodehouse farce are somewhat interchangeable; only the names are changed around to protect the innocent.
More Quirky Quotations:
“It just showed once again that half the world doesn’t how the other three-quarters lives.”
“‘And the severe mental strain to which I am being subjected doesn’t matter, I suppose?’
‘Not a bit. Does you good. Keeps your pores open.'”
“I don’t know why it is, but whenever there’s dirty work to be undertaken at the crossroads, the cry that goes round my little circle is always, ‘Let Wooster do it.’ It never fails.”
“I quivered like somethng in aspic.”
” . . . with girls of high and haughty spirit you have to watch your step, especially if they have red hair, like Bobbie. If they think you’re talking out of turn, dudgeon ensues, and dudgeon might easily lead her to reach for the ginger ale bottle and bean me with it.”
“I don’t know if you know the meaning of the word ‘agley,’ Kipper, but that, to put it in a nutshell, is the way things have ganged.”
“The silly young geezer . . . I’d always thought of her as half-baked, but now I think they didn’t even put her in the oven.”
And that, my dears, concludes your dose of Wodehouse, a quite salutary and salubrious prescription, for today.
Yes… Wodehouse! Funny indeed! One needs to be very careful if listening to Wodehouse while driving!
Have a heapin helpin of it, every day!
I’m currently reading a biography of Wodehouse, and just picked up another one at the used bookstore. Not as good as reading an actual Wodehouse, of course, but highly interesting!
I’ve always listened to Wodehouse, read by those excellent British readers from Recorded Books, Inc.–some of them four or five times! I’ve always wanted to copy down some quotations before they’re gone with the tape. Thanks for quoting!
Jeanne
I adore Leave it to Psmith!
Thanks for the laughs… I need to read more Wodehouse again… he is a favorite.
I finished this book for Saturday Review Challenge. I picked it up from your review list. I deliberately had not read the review before so as not to be influenced by it.
Posted it on Sat Review of Books