P. G. Wodehouse—we miss you!

by Richard Subber | Jul 7, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language

Who doesn’t love Bertie Wooster?

I happened on a 1982 review of a biography of P. G. Wodehouse, and I can’t resist believing that the reviewer is a hatefully well-bred person.

Prof. Samuel Hynes very incautiously permits himself to label old P. G. as

” . . . the greatest trivial novelist in literary history . . .”

Egad.

Is he talking about Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), the remarkably gabby genius who created Bertie Wooster and Jeeves?

Is he talking about the guy who makes us love the incurably erratic Wooster?  who makes us worshipfully respect the very properly domineering Jeeves who can’t hurt a fly, knows nearly everything and saves Bertie’s bacon every time? who makes us stiffen, suppressing cries of delight, as we absorb the adjectival artistry of the whole bloody Wooster/Jeeves madhouse?

Hynes goes so far as to declare that Wodehouse “created a world without real problems and without human depths.” If you’ve read any of Wodehouse’s work, you know that ain’t true. There’s a bit of Bertie’s passion and despair in all of us, and Jeeves divinely makes it possible for everyone around him to be human.

There’s just one word too many in Hynes’ summary of Sir P. G. Wodehouse: “the greatest trivial novelist.”

I think you can guess which one it is.

If you want to, click here to read all of Hynes’ comments about Frances Donaldson’s 1982 biography, P. G. Wodehouse.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)

Edwin Romond easily hits another homer…

click here

Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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Saint Martin’s Summer…book review

by Richard Subber | Jun 25, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language

the good folks prevail

Book review:

Saint Martin’s Summer

by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

Pinnacle Press, 1909

270 pages

Saint Martin’s Summer, published in 1909, is a historical romance. This is Sabatini’s signature style. Think of it as a very high-toned beach book…

Spoiler alert: if you think you’re going to get a big helping of heaving bosoms and sweaty ravishment, maybe you should pick another book…

If you are familiar with Sabatini’s novels or his genre, you already know that knowing the ending—that is, anticipating with confidence how the good folks will prevail—is not necessarily an obstacle to full enjoyment.

Consider my most recent reading of Saint Martin’s Summer.

Grenache is the diffident, honorable cavalier sent by the Queen in Paris to contrive the rescue—effect the “enlargement,” do you love the language tones as I do?—of Valérie, the sweetest damsel you can imagine, from her desperate affairs of the heart in the godforsaken backwater of Dauphiny.

The designing Dowager, the feckless Seneschal, the callow son (Marius), and the worldly and unfaithful son (Florimond)—and believe it or not, too much money and power—round out the cast and the motive forces in Sabatini’s completely predictable and marvelously fulfilling mainstay of Romance literature.

Did I mention love? In Saint Martin’s Summer, you will relearn the potency of plighted troth, the lonely loyalty of unrequited love, the degradation of love in the minds of the loveless, the blossom of unexpected love in the heart of a forlorn girl, and the slowly rising heat of first love in the nobly bewildered and barren soul of an older man, who suddenly realizes that he can welcome a better life with an eager bride who is suddenly ready to be a woman.

I guess, technically, I had to mention “spoiler alert” at the beginning of this review. If you’ve read this far, I think you normally don’t pay attention to spoiler alerts, or, in this case, you didn’t mind.

I like to re-read Sabatini (e.g., Scaramouche) because I know how the stories are going to end,

I know what the lovers are going to say,

and I like the way Sabatini tells a story.

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Here’s my first take on Saint Martin’s Summer, after my first reading:

Jason Bourne would be bored in Dauphiny.

Dauphiny is a sleepy, rural French province, but there is occasional sword play, and some moat diving, so Bourne wouldn’t be bored all the way to tears…

Let’s just face up to it, in your classic Romantic novel about 18th century French dowager marquises and blundering bounders and dashing heroes and cherishable maidens and fat, simpering seneschals, you’re going to get more talk than titillation, and more argument than action. So be it.

Sabatini deftly creates his tale of principled, introspective people trying for success, both villainous and otherwise.

His characters have deep appeal—they’re always trying to do the right thing, or at least trying to do a bad thing the right way…e.g., Grenache knows he must save the girl, and he knows he will love her deeply…

They care deeply—about the ones they love, about their success in a milieu that maximizes opportunity for deception and ultimately minimizes the prospect of getting away with a betrayal or self-dealing or moral weakness.

Sabatini is a colorful storyteller,

and he tells a great story about things that count.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

Book review: An Empire on the Edge

by Nick Bunker

The British wanted to win

       the Revolutionary War,

    but they had good reasons

        for not trying too hard…

click here

As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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