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happy writing squee :)
Another essay about Wodehouse.
It's actually a review of the biography about him, by McCrum, but there's quite a lot about his writing. *snippets most of a paragraph*
The linguistic inventiveness is almost unmatched in the comic novel; the marvelous metaphors — ‘Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes’ — or the metaphysical flights of fancy, like the one about the Egg who, had his brain been made of silk, could hardly have supplied enough to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. The splendid, hilarious play of register, the endlessly comic allusions, the violent freedom with parts of speech; as Bertie might have said, others abide our question, but Wodehouse is free. The idiomatic style of many of his best books, a sort of idiolect one-tenth observed, nine-tenths invented, has a powerful charm, but beneath the period flavour a true linguistic fantasist may be observed to be at work. Wodehouse’s claim to greatness is not in the fact that he writes about love, but that he once described ‘aunt calling to aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primeval swamp’.
The one about the aunt calling to aunt has stuck with me from first reading it. *loves* This is the stuff I can't do and really desire to more than anything else in the world. Well, that and the intricate plotting. As the essayist points out, most of his best stories aren't about anything, they're just fun, and no detail goes to waste.
It's actually a review of the biography about him, by McCrum, but there's quite a lot about his writing. *snippets most of a paragraph*
The linguistic inventiveness is almost unmatched in the comic novel; the marvelous metaphors — ‘Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes’ — or the metaphysical flights of fancy, like the one about the Egg who, had his brain been made of silk, could hardly have supplied enough to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. The splendid, hilarious play of register, the endlessly comic allusions, the violent freedom with parts of speech; as Bertie might have said, others abide our question, but Wodehouse is free. The idiomatic style of many of his best books, a sort of idiolect one-tenth observed, nine-tenths invented, has a powerful charm, but beneath the period flavour a true linguistic fantasist may be observed to be at work. Wodehouse’s claim to greatness is not in the fact that he writes about love, but that he once described ‘aunt calling to aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primeval swamp’.
The one about the aunt calling to aunt has stuck with me from first reading it. *loves* This is the stuff I can't do and really desire to more than anything else in the world. Well, that and the intricate plotting. As the essayist points out, most of his best stories aren't about anything, they're just fun, and no detail goes to waste.
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Yes, that's what I love about Wodehouse. Douglas Adams said something like, I believe -- 's in The Salmon of Doubt. His stories aren't about anything much, but they don't have to be anything much. They're just the nearest thing to pure joy you'll ever read in English -- or in any other language, I bet.
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Oh shoot, that reminds me - I have an interview to complete.
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*deeply shocked* Blasphemy!
(:D)
which is to say, um. um! um. yes.
*flees in embarrassment*
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1. "Well then, dash it. I'm on velvet. Absolutely reclining on the good old plush!"
2."Well, I'm dashed,' he said. 'I'm dashed if I'm not.'
3. "But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it."
I tried to read a Jeeves and Wooster book in Dutch once and half of the fun was sucked out of it, simply because the translator (and he was good) didn't have any other choice.
no subject
But yeah. I do agree that the real joy of Wodehouse would probably be lost in translation.