The Coming of Bill, by P. G. Wodehouse

One of things I really like about LibraryThing is that it enabled me to discover that there was an Overlook Press edition of a P. G. Wodehouse novel I didn't already own: The Coming of Bill. It's not his best book, but it isn't his worst by any means.

It's very different from his usual style. The back cover describes it as "The nearest Wodehouse ever came to writing a serious story," which is essentially true. Two characters die in the story. A couple gets together, gets married, has a baby, nearly gets divorced, and the gets back together again. In many ways, it's a sort of social commentary.

That's not to say that it isn't funny, because it is funny. There were several places where I laughed out loud. There are several of Wodehouse's standard character types: a butler (in this case Keggs who appeared in several other Wodehouse books), a meddling aunt, a boxer, and a business tycoon. This book has much to recommend it.

It's not quite as funny as some of Wodehouse's better known works, but it still is funny. The story is more serious than is typical for Wodehouse, but not detrimentally so. Really, The Coming of Bill deserves four and a halfyo-yos.

Worst Book Ever

No, I'm not reviewing The Eye of Argon. I'm reviewing the worst book by my favorite writer: P. G. Wodehouse's Not George Washington. Of course, Wodehouse can't take all the blame for this one; it was coauthored by Herbert Westbrook.

Wodehouse's books are usually very funny. They're full of clever wordplay, convoluted plots, and and lovable characters. Not George Washington doesn't have any of that. I only laughed once while reading the thing, and that was in the next-to-last chapter. The wordplay is not even remotely clever, in fact it's almost non-existent. The plot is slightly convoluted, but nowhere up to the usual Wodehouse standards. Quite frankly, I almost hated the main character, James Cloyster, because he's boring and a scoundrel. Trying to marry one woman when you're engaged to another is not the sort of behavior one expects from a Wodehousian hero.

This really isn't a good book at all. At best it's painfully mediocre. I can only recommend it to Wodehouse enthusiasts who want to collect copies of all of his works. Everyone else should steer clear. I can only give Not George Washington 3 yo-yos, and that's being generous.

A little Recklessness can be a good thing

I've finished reading another P. G. Wodehouse book, Jill the Reckless. This is a much, much nicer edition than the version of Love Among the Chickens I reviewed a little while ago. That's not very surprising, since Love was a cheap edition put out by a vanity press or POD or something. Jill, on the other hand is a beautiful collector's edition put out by Overlook Press. (For some reason Amazon doesn't have a copy of the nice cover, so I'm including a picture of it that I downloaded from the publisher.)

Besides having a nice cover, the book is well put together, and surprisingly cheap (less than $20 for a hardcover). I definitely want to get more of the Overlook editions of Wodehouse, but unfortunately, all the other editions they have are of books I already own in other editions, so I'll have to wait. They are planning to republish all of Wodehouse's works, but they're currently doing it at a rate of two books per year, which means that by the time they're finished I'll be in my sixties or seventies.

Jill the Reckless is the story of Jill Mariner, a head strong young girl, who heads to America and becomes a chorus girl after she is dumped by her rich fiancee. As is always the case in Wodehouse stories, she meets the true love of her life and things end happily. It's a great book, and it's definitely one of the best Wodehouse books I've read outside of his Jeeves and Blandings series. I give it 5 yo-yos.

Up next, in fact quite possibly later tonight, I'll be reviewing Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

Buck Buck Buck Buck Buck

I am a big fan of P. G. Wodehouse, and not surprisingly, I loved Love Among the Chickens. Unfortunately, this particular edition leaves something to be desired.

It's published by IndyPublish.com, which judging by their website, is a vanity press. Of course, Love Among the Chickens, is out of copyright here in the US, so anybody can publish a new edition if they want to. I just wish they'd put a little effort into it. This edition is seems to be culled from the Project Gutenberg version and they . They did remove all the introductory legal bits Gutenberg adds, but unfortunately that seems to be all the editing that went into it. Project Gutenberg distributes most of their books in plain text formats--ASCII in this case. That means they can't show things like italics . Instead they use backslashes to represent it--like /this/. Unfortunately, whoever edited this book was too lazy or stupid to replace the back slashes with italics. This was extremely annoying.

The actual story is terrific and very funny. This was the first story, and only novel, featuring that classic Wodehouse dreamer and schemer, Ukridge. In this book, Ukridge tries to make money by starting a chicken farm, despite the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about chickens or agriculture. The book is narrated by Ukridge's writer friend, Garnet, who gets lugged into the scheme. Garnet falls in love with a neighbor of the farm, and has some comic misadventures while wooing her.

It's not Wodehouse's best book, but it's not his worst book either. Really, even Wodehouse's worst book would still be pretty damn good. Still, I can't recommend this edition. There are several others available (as I said it is out of copyright). I wish I had bought one of the others, as some are actually cheaper. I just hope their better edited. While the story itself is great, I can only give this edition 4 yo-yos because of the poor editing.

One of the best of the Best

I have a hard time thinking about exactly what to say about Code of the Woosters, because P. G. Wodehouse is my favorite writer and this is one of his best books. Wodehouse was, without a doubt, the greatest humorous writer of the 20th Century (sorry Douglas Adams fans, but I bet he would've agreed with me). This book is simply hilarious.

The plot is Wodehouse at his convoluted best. Bertie Wooster gets sent to make disparaging remarks about a silver cow creamer so his uncle can buy it more cheaply. Naturally, he manages to make a mess of things, and the cow creamer ends up in the hands of Sir Watkyn Bassett. So Bertie is sent to that Hell on Earth, Totleigh Towers, to retrieve (i.e. steal) the thing. To do so, he has to get past old Pop Bassett and his minion Spode, the would-be dictator and general pug ugly. Bertie also has to help a few old friends whose love lives are in jeopardy. In the process, he nearly gets married and arrested, but thanks to the super mind of Jeeves, who is a valet—not a butler—everything turns out all right.

The book is also full of Wodehouse’s exquisite prose. Just to pick a few examples at random:

“Nothing can ever render being treed on top of a chest of drawers by an Aberdeen terrier pleasant, but it seemed to me that the least you can expect on such an occasion is that the animal will meet you halfway and not drop salt into the wound by looking at you as if he were asking if you were saved."

“I don’t say I didn't leave my chair like a jack rabbit that has sat on a cactus...”

“As Jeeves said, when I described the scene to him, the whole situation resembled some great moment in Greek tragedy, where somebody is stepping high, wide and handsome, quite unconscious that all the while Nemesis is at his heels, and he may be right.”

As I've said before, Wodehouse is the best, and this is one of his best. I give it 5 yo-yos.




Coming soon, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.