P.G. Wodehouse

“I believe there are 2 ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.”

P. G. Wodehouse was not only a writer of novels but a lyricist and playwright as well. He even had a career in Hollywood as a screenwriter. His best-known books were the Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories, he wrote 15 plays and 250 lyrics for 30 musical comedies. He made it into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Wodehouse commented on his writing by saying, “I go for what is known in the trade as light writing and those who do that – humorists are sometimes called – are looked down upon by the intelligentsia.” However, his characters are delightful and charming and never bat an eye when getting into trouble. Bertie Wooster follows a code of a chevalier (valiant knight) in which he is a victim of his morals and always is a gentleman when confronted with obstacles. Bertie is never worried about his intellectual life.

Wodehouses’s characters however were not always popular with the establishment. They tend to be eccentric with strange habits and embarrassing interests. The relatives such as Aunt Agatha show boorish behavior and ineptness in regards to social mores. Policeman and magistrates are looked upon as evil but easily fooled and the servants are usually more intelligent than the masters.

His plots have been described as “showing genius for creating multiple layers of comedic complications that the characters must endure to reach the invariable happy ending.” He does explore the rules of society in that day and age by having the man be engaged not to the woman he loves but to a better match financially. Gambling, impersonations resulting in confusion and the problems that alcohol presents are also themes throughout his stories.

He lived a long time, from 1902 – 1975, wrote 96 books. In a BBC interview right before his death he said, “I have no more ambitions left, as I have been knighted and created as a wax figure at Madame Tussards.”