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Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives] 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September]Siddhartha by Herman Hesse Current: Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqvddpX1uYA&t=76s Online hypertext versions available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10554/10554-h/10554-h.htm http://manybooks.net/titles/wodehous10551055410554-8.html About the book: From his "Introduction" to a collection of Wodehouse stories: Ogden Nash posted:
quote:Wodehouse understood perfectly what he was about. “I believe,” he remarked in an oft-quoted letter to his friend William Townend, “there are only two ways of writing a novel. One is mine, making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going down deep into life and not caring a drat.” Most great artists plumb the depths; Wodehouse remained fixed, gloriously, on the surface. That was both his limitation and his achievement. What he lacked in profundity he made up for in verbal dexterity. His province was humor: he didn’t trespass into other realms. He came bearing pleasure, not insight. A master of incongruity, Wodehouse left anguish and betrayal, self-knowledge and social awareness to other, generally lesser, talents. Stephen Fry posted:The masterly episode where Gussie Fink-Nottle presents the prizes at Market Snodsbury grammar school is frequently included in collections of great comic literature and has often been described as the single funniest piece of sustained writing in the language. I would urge you, however, to head straight for a library or bookshop and get hold of the complete novel Right Ho, Jeeves, where you will encounter it fully in context and find that it leaps even more magnificently to life. quote:The premise of the Jeeves stories is that the brilliant valet is firmly in control of his rich and foppish young employer's life. Jeeves becomes Bertie Wooster's guardian and all-purpose problem solver, devising subtle plans to save Bertie and his friends from boring social obligations, demanding relatives, issues with the law, and, above all, problems involving women. Wodehouse derives much comic effect from having Bertie, his narrator, remain blissfully unaware of Jeeves's machinations, until all is revealed at the end of the story. http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-genius-of-Wodehouse--2327 This particular novel is the first full length Jeeves and Wooster story. It was dramatized by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster, 1990,. Episode 4, "The Hunger Strike." About the Author quote:Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (/ˈwʊdhaʊs/; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. Born in Guildford, the son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. They include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse Themes and Background 1) Social Inversion: Of course there's the class inversion of the incompetent upper crust and the genius servant. A few details that highlight that which American readers might miss: -- Bertie's last name is "Wooster", pronounced "Wooster." "Worcester" as in "Worcestershire" or "the Earl of Worcester" is also pronounced "Wooster," so this is a joke and a way of highlighting that Bertie is both very very very upper-class and also a parody of the upper class. There's also usually a gender role inversion going on, usually in the form of an Aunt who is taking charge and making all the decisions. 2) Theme and Variation -- It may not be obvious from just the one novel, but every single Jeeves story follows a basic pattern recombined out of a few standard elements -- Bertie, Jeeves, Bertie's Incompetent Friends, Bertie's Frightening Aunts, etc. There's always someone wanting to get married, often to the "wrong" person; there's always an Aunt with very definite ideas as to what Bertie should be doing or not doing, etc. The stories start with a Separation -- Bertie and Jeeves are at odds for some reason. Stage 2 is Bertie Acting On His Own. Stage 3 is Catastrophe. Stage 4 is Jeeves Solving Everything. So reading these stories is always a bit like listening to a Bach fugue; it's not so much about what happens as it is about the process of watching it happen. 3) What War? quote:Wodehouse also recounts that he named his Jeeves after Percy Jeeves (1888–1916), a popular English cricketer for Warwickshire. Wodehouse witnessed Percy Jeeves bowling at Cheltenham Cricket Festival in 1913. Percy Jeeves was killed at the Battle of the Somme during the attack on High Wood in July 1916, less than a year after the first appearance of the Wodehouse character who would make his name a household word.[11] In a way these stories are as much fantasy and (I'd argue) as much a reaction to WW1 as anything Tolkien wrote, and nothing in these stories is as conspicuous by its absence as any mention at all of the Great War; they seem to take place in an alternate history where the Edwardian Era just continued on forever. At their best, the Jeeves and Wooster stories are simultaneously parodying and eulogizing a kind of Edwardian social structure that WW1 had already long blasted apart by the time most of the stories were written. All of Bertie's friends in the Drones -- upper class, well-meaning, privileged nincompoops -- are exactly the sort of folks who would have all died in the Somme. (all links from Wikipedia) Pacing Just read, then post. References and Further Reading Since it's October, if this thread gets ten substantive posts by people who have read the book, before the 30th, I promise a horror-drenched Woosterian October Surprise. Final Note: If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 19:17
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I always wanted to read more Wodehouse as everything I've ever read of his I've adored completely. I'm slightly ashamed to say I haven't actually read any of his Jeeves stuff. Mainly Blandings, Psmith and Uncle Fred. Gonna get this from the library tomorrow.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:47
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Wodehouse is actually one of the huge glaring gaps in my reading history, so this seems like a good time to fix that.
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Oct 6, 2016 20:53
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I'm glad to say that Wodehouse is the only author to have ever reduced me to helpless giggles (not this book, though) and that finding a complete set of the Wodehouse omnibus (vols 1-5) in the local library was one of the highlights of my errant youth. If you've any sense of humor at all, you owe it to yourself to pick this book up. It's true that all of his books are pretty much identical in plot, though. The magic is, you don't care. As I recall, he wrote a sad ending once and his fans complained so vociferously he changed it and never wrote another one again.
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Oct 7, 2016 06:34
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Wodehouse was a genius of his genre. If every author wrote as much to their own strengths as Wodehouse, reading would still be the main form of entertainment. So stoked he's this month's Author!
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Oct 11, 2016 10:00
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I always feel Wodehouse is a bit of a slow burner in that all the intricate lines he draws usually only intersect dramatically later on, and I think I've reached that point now. Can't wait to see how Jeeves solves everything.
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Oct 11, 2016 23:36
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I am about a third in and it is well-written , funny, and clever. I have laughed out loud several times.
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Oct 12, 2016 02:29
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About halfway through, it's more of a slow burner than I expected. Still, I laughed at this:quote:I must say I saw the girl's viewpoint. It's only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don't want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the girl what a hell of a time he'd been having among the cannibals and what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for the awestruck "Oh-h! Not really?", she had said that the whole thing had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably really been a prominent local vegetarian.
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Oct 13, 2016 12:09
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I always meant to check Wodehouse out just because I love Steven Fry. Well thanks for this BOTM choice because I've been laughing my rear end off since I started it. Dude's a master of language.
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Oct 13, 2016 15:48
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Finished this yesterday. Quite a lot of people have expressed the sentiment that Wodehouse is 'medicine for the soul', and I think they're on to something. I've been having a lovely time of it lately and this cheered me right up. Things don't seem quite as bleak as they were  Anyway, this was the first Jeeves book I've actually read. The only stuff I'd read before were Uncle Fred etc, so it was neat to see the situation from the non domineering relative point of view. Aunt Dahlia was fantastic. Her increasingly abusive telegram messages to Bertie demanding he come at once were great. She definitely isn't afraid to tell Bertie what he needs to hear, rather than what he wants to. Fink-Nottle's speech was definitely all it was cracked up to be, particularly near the end when we finally get to (nearly) hear exactly what Gussie thinks of Bertie. In vino veritas, I guess. I also loved that incredibly well reasoned argument that Bertie manages to give while being chased around a tiny bench. That would have done Hollywood, with its similar traditions, incredibly proud. I think what I like most about Wodehouse is, despite him writing largely about the sort of people the vast majority would never get to meet, he has absolutely no airs or pretences at all and treats the reader as a knowing friend rather than a casual observer. Even the little touches like him abbreviating words gives that impression. It reminds me a lot of Austen in that, no matter the circumstances, it's all a big joke, and the reader is in on it.
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Oct 13, 2016 16:26
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How did I nearly miss this thread? Wodehouse is one of the best authors out there, and I'm down for reading this....well, I think I gave my copy of the book to my brother, so as soon as I get a copy out of the library to read. But I'm in! (I prefer paper books to ebooks, I'm boring that way.) Also, obligatory shout-out to the tv adaptation of the Jeeves novels. They're good. Stephen Fry as Jeeves is absolutely a perfect fit. e: drat. My library doesn't have it, and neither does the inter-library loan system. Guess I'm going in on the ebook after all! StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 14, 2016 |
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Oct 14, 2016 18:44
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Rush Limbo posted:Aunt Dahlia was fantastic. Her increasingly abusive telegram messages to Bertie demanding he come at once were great. She definitely isn't afraid to tell Bertie what he needs to hear, rather than what he wants to. The final speech at the awards ceremony gets most of the love when people talk about this book but goddamn it was the the telegrams between Dahlia and Bertie that made me the laugh the hardest I ever had while sitting down with a book. I also love how everything is really only resolved when Jeeves manages to get Bertie away from everyone else long enough for people to just talk it out--while Bertie, the utter fop, ruminates on what it must have felt like for the peasants before the French Revolution, looking in at the feasting rich. I kind of wonder what the jokes per minute rate would be if you sat down a counted it out--Wodehouse doesn't waste words on anything that doesn't build atmosphere or make you laugh. There's all these little one sentence throw away lines and action--when Bertie gets back from his midnight bike ride and just kind of pitches the bike (which belongs to someone else) into a hedge. If you let yourself really build the scene cinematically, amazing visual gag. I guess I can feel a lot of this humors influence on something like 30 Rock? Which Roger Ebert once described as being as funny as it was possible to be while existing in a purely "comedy" universe or the real one, and has the same frenetic energy and pace and colliding, intersecting storylines that only manage to fit together because it's that funny that they do. Also Jesus Christ if Tuppy Glossop isn't a fantastic name.
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Oct 14, 2016 19:43
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Wodehouse has a way with names. I've always enjoyed Pongo Twistleton
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Oct 14, 2016 21:14
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I adore Wodehouse and this book especially. I've read it several times already, but your OP was a perfect introduction and I'm so glad more people are discovering Bertie and Jeeves
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Oct 15, 2016 07:48
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I enjoyed seeing "a swift kick in the pants" in British English, implying a kick to a girl's panties. Also, I want to concur that the funniest parts are strewn throughout in little throw away lines. One example of so, so many:quote:It simply wouldn’t occur to him that a girl might be prepared to give up her life’s happiness rather than waive her shark.
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Oct 15, 2016 16:21
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We're halfway through the month, so it's probably time to post this. If anyone wants to watch the Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie adaptation of this novel, it's online here (it was a two-parter): First Half: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH5_xlKlYew Second Half: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_CwiNVtuxE edit:This is not the Halloween Surprise which is still to come Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 15, 2016 16:33
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And now I get to see the mess jacket in its full color TV splendor.
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Oct 15, 2016 21:43
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I'm glad to have something to push me to get into a Wodehouse, because I've been trying to get back into him and was stymied by the way the beginning of nearly all his books is a bunch of rich idiots I want to strangle and it takes a while for the madness to really kick in.
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Oct 15, 2016 23:20
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I really liked all the parts of Angela tormenting Tuppy. Especially the way she served the ham sandwiches. My brother recommended Wake Up, Sir! It's a Jonathan Ames novel written in Wodehouse style.
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Oct 17, 2016 09:54
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Sort of on topic - I've read the BotM but I'm still more familiar with the stories from the TV show. Would anyone know which books include my favorite character out of that - Spode, the amateur dictator?
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Oct 17, 2016 11:20
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anilEhilated posted:Sort of on topic - I've read the BotM but I'm still more familiar with the stories from the TV show. Would anyone know which books include my favorite character out of that - Spode, the amateur dictator? The Code of the Woosters, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Stiff Upper Lip Jeeves (also features Madeline Basset from the BOTM) and Much Obliged Jeeves Like with a lot of Wodehouse's stuff it's more contemporary than we might think, and Spode probably wouldn't be hugely out of place in the alt right. Rush Limbo fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 13:12
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Thanks, going to load up on my next library trip. It's kind of what I've been thinking with the resurgence of nationalist nutjobs all over Europe these days.
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Oct 17, 2016 15:43
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Rush Limbo posted:
One thing I'm really appreciating on this reread is the way he writes Bertie, walking the line between intelligence and buffoonery. Bertie always has ideas that *almost* work. He makes a lot of very well educated and intelligent quips, he just can never remember the source or misquotes them slightly or misattributes them to Jeeves. When he doea have a good idea, everyone assumes it was really from Jeeves. And for all his privilege, Bertie always tries to help.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:57
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Yeah, from the works I've read from him Wodehouse really likes all of his characters. They may be ridiculous, a bit too spoiled, or just not that smart, but they aren't ever contemptible.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:24
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Yeah, Bertie's only real defect (and admittedly it's a pretty huge defect) is that he's proud and always assumes that this time his plans are going to work out, and that the people who think he's an idiot (ie, everybody) are just being mean. Though, I could think of a few characters in Wodehouse who don't have any redeeming characteristics, like the Duke of Dunstable. Aunt Agatha is pretty much pure bad, as I recall, although Lady Constance has a softer side. Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 00:43
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Rush Limbo posted:Like with a lot of Wodehouse's stuff it's more contemporary than we might think, and Spode probably wouldn't be hugely out of place in the alt right. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 18, 2016 06:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One thing I'm really appreciating on this reread is the way he writes Bertie, walking the line between intelligence and buffoonery. Bertie always has ideas that *almost* work. He makes a lot of very well educated and intelligent quips, he just can never remember the source or misquotes them slightly or misattributes them to Jeeves. When he doea have a good idea, everyone assumes it was really from Jeeves. Yeah. It would have been easy to make Bertie just quite unpleasant, but he's not. He's a likeable guy and you want him to succeed. You know he won't, ultimately he'll overlook some minor detail and wind up in the soup, but you cheer for him anyways. Really, I think there's some Bertie in all of us.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:54
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Thanks for the BOTM selection! I just started reading this and am about 1/5 through, so still early enough. I've never read any Wodehouse, and I'm loving it. It's really funny. I'm perhaps not finding Bertie as likeable as many of you have said in recent posts. He reminds me a bit of the narrator in Three Men in a Boat. Is there a picture of the offending evening coat? I don't quite understand why it is so shocking to Jeeves (I know evening dress used to be a very big deal, so I understand the general idea, but I'm curious how it compared to traditional evening dress) Edit: sounds like it's in the video adaptation. Will watch those after I'm done reading. I'm only skimming the thread so far since I've hardly gotten into it. The telegrams with his aunt were amazing. Enfys fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 22:41
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Enfys posted:Thanks for the BOTM selection! I just started reading this and am about 1/5 through, so still early enough. I've never read any Wodehouse, and I'm loving it. It's really funny. I'm perhaps not finding Bertie as likeable as many of you have said in recent posts. He reminds me a bit of the narrator in Three Men in a Boat. Jeeves is mortally offended by any evening coat that's not solid black
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Oct 18, 2016 23:04
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Enfys posted:
Ok, yeah, this might be something that needs explaining to modern readers, especially perhaps Americans. Jeeves is Bertie's "Gentleman's Personal Gentleman," or valet. Like half his job is making sure that Bertie is dressed well -- maintaining Bertie's wardrobe, shining shoes, cleaning clothes, etc. Since Jeeves is a perfect gentleman's gentleman, whenever Bertie dresses . . . less than perfectly . . . it makes Jeeves look bad, like he's not doing his job or doing it badly. Like if you've watched Downton Abbey, you know how part of the chief Butler's job is making sure all the silver is perfectly polished? And how a good Butler takes pride in that? Imagine if someone in the family decided to start using plastic forks with every meal instead. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Jeeves is mortally offended by any evening coat that's not solid black Also this but he's not wrong Long and short, half the joke is how silly the jacket makes Bertie look, and the other half of the joke is how obsessive over sartorial perfection Jeeves is. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 23:52
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There's also the additional joke where Jeeves tries everything in his power to get rid of any given item while not appearing to do it purposefully.
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Oct 19, 2016 00:40
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WODEHOUSIAN HALLOWEEN SURPRISE: http://imgur.com/a/PzEly Excerpted from Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier". We need suggestions for next month!
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Oct 19, 2016 13:28
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I should have known Moore would have done something with Wodehouse in the league. What he did with the Invisible Man and Hyde was 
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Oct 20, 2016 20:09
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Just started on this. I hear Stephen Fry's voice in my head whenever Jeeves speaks even though I've never seen any of the Wodehouse adaptations with him in it; apparently it was enough to know that they exist.
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Oct 21, 2016 15:16
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Groke posted:Just started on this. I hear Stephen Fry's voice in my head whenever Jeeves speaks even though I've never seen any of the Wodehouse adaptations with him in it; apparently it was enough to know that they exist.
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Oct 21, 2016 17:28
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What's neat is if you hear earlier BBC radio recordings of the books the characters sound so much like Fry and Laurie it's hard to remember it's not them. That's just what those characters sound like, canonically.
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Oct 21, 2016 18:39
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Has In Cold Blood ever been a BotM?
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Oct 22, 2016 00:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Also this but he's not wrong As multiple people point out, a white mess jacket makes Bertie look like a waiter or a lounge musician. White jackets in formal wear are for staff, not respectable people (at least outside of the tropics.  ). Not to mention those brass buttons and epaulettes make him look like a marching band leader.
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Oct 22, 2016 09:55
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I'd recommend The Death of Bunny Munro as BOTM, because I've just read it and I kind of want independent confirmation that what I read was actually what was written and I didn't hallucinate the entire thing. What an... odd book.
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Oct 22, 2016 21:00
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anilEhilated posted:I've got a similar problem, automatically hearing the narration in the voice of Hugh Laurie. That show was perfectly cast. Yeah. Can't really consider this a problem, though. Call it a bonus feature. Am up to where Bertie is being blackmailed by his aunt into handing out prizes at the school and this poo poo is hilarious.
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Oct 24, 2016 08:56
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