Learning

The Incomparable P. G. Wodehouse!

Written by Do I Editorial

P. G. Wodehouse was a humourist par excellence; very few people come close to him on the mastery of English prose.  Over the years, he has had legions of fans, including a number of famous authors.  Christopher Hitchens said of him, “there is not, and never will be, anything to touch him.” The sampler below will show you why.

* He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “when!”
* He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
* Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
* She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
* The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
* There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
* He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
* Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.
* Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, “So, you’re back from Moscow, eh?
* If he had a mind, there was something on it.
* He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.
* “What ho!” I said.
“What ho!” said Motty.
“What ho! What ho!”
“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
* I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast.
* A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

Visual Courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranh/