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.”

Now you know 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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Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)

Edwin Romond hits another homer…

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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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P. G. Wodehouse—we miss you!