2011 Books – The World of Jeeves

I’ve read a lot of books that I would describe as fun, entertaining, insightful, interesting, and even brilliant. But few would be labeled with the word: delightful. The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse is a collection of short stories presented as Bertram Wooster’s diary of incidents that he and his valet, Jeeves, must overcome.

Throughout the short stories you meet various friends and relations with whom Bertie often finds himself entangled in some scheme or another. And his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, must come to the rescue.

Though the stories are fairly basic in design, it is the masterful use of words that makes them brilliant. When he sets a scene, from Bertie’s perspective, it generally makes me chuckle… if not outright laugh.

In “The Purity of the Turf,” a church service is described thus: There’s something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall, the vicar, was up in the pulpit, and he has a kind of regular, bleating delivery that assists thought. They had left the door open, and the air was full of a mixed scent of trees and honeysuckle and mildew and villagers’ Sunday clothes. As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the stained-glass windows, birds were twittering in the trees, the women’s dresses crackled gently in the stillness. Peaceful. That’s what I’m driving at. I felt peaceful. Everybody felt peaceful. And that is why the explosion, when it came, sounded like the end of all things.

You read sentence after sentence describing the serene setting then you’re about to fall asleep yourself when you read “And that is why the explosion…” and you can’t help but chuckle.

Everything in this book is so well done. The characters, from Bertie and Jeeves to Aunt Agatha, Bingo, Roderick Glossop and Aunt Dahlia, are so perfectly formed, they feel like part of your family. I don’t think there was a page where I didn’t chuckle at some point, or outright laugh… sometimes until tears were streaming down my cheeks.

It is useless for me to describe how wonderful these stories are. One has to pick up a book and read them for themselves. They are funny, supremely witty, intelligent, and I don’t think I’ve come across anyone who has made me laugh as hard as Wodehouse has. As Isaac Asimov says of Wodehouse, “Nor do you read a P.G. Wodehouse novel for the sake of suspense. You know that Bertie Wooster will get out of the ridiculous fix in which he finds himself, and you don’t really care whether he does or not. You read on only because you enjoy laughing” (Asimov, Gold, p.260).