#wodehouse — Public Fediverse posts

A quotation from Wodehouse

   “So, Jeeves!”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “What do you mean, Yes, sir?”
   “I was endeavouring to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: ‘Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part of the great web.'”
   I breathed a bit stertorously.
   “He said that, did he?”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.”

P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Mating Season, ch. 4 (1949)

More about this quote: wist.info/wodehouse-p-g/46199/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #wodehouse #pgwodehouse #marcusaurelius #jeeves #wooster #acceptance #advice #destiny #fate #foreordainment #nature #stoicism #trouble #universe

"Have you seen the river?"
"No."
"It lies at the bottom of the garden. Except during the winter months, when – they tell me – the garden lies at the bottom of the river."

from Doctor Sally by P. G. Wodehouse
#Wodehouse #winter #garden

P. G. Wodehouse on nightclubs:
"A sound like the sudden descent of an iron girder on a sheet of tin, followed by a jangling of bells, a wailing of tortured cats, and the noise of a few steam-riveters at work, announced to their trained ears that the music had begun. Sweeping her to him with a violence which, attempted in any other place, would have earned him a sentence of thirty days coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench, Lancelot began to push her yielding form through the sea of humanity till they reached the centre of the whirlpool. There, unable to move in any direction, they surrendered themselves to the ecstasy of the dance, wiping their feet on the polished flooring and occasionally pushing an elbow into some stranger's encroaching rib."
Came the Dawn, from Meet Mr. Mulliner
#Wodehouse #PGWodehouse #clubbing

"I read an interesting thing in the paper the other day," said Lord Tidmouth. "It appears that the sardine's worst enemy is the halibut, and I give you my word that until I read it I didn't know the sardine *had* an enemy. And I don't mind telling you that my opinion of the halibut has gone down considerably. Very considerably. Fancy anything wanting to bully a sardine."

P. G. Wodehouse, Doctor Sally
#Wodehouse #fish

I added a sorted words puzzle and a shuffled pages #puzzle to my Book Blender collection of #WordGames. They are two stories by P. G. #Wodehouse - "The Alarming Spread of Poetry" is a dire warning of slightly lower stakes than your typical dire warning (940 words). Is "Jeeves and Wooster" a romcom? The other puzzle is based on "The Man Upstairs", a more standard romcom from the same author (29 pages).

https://donkirkby.github.io/book-blender/the-man-upstairs.pdf
https://donkirkby.github.io/book-blender/the-alarming-spread-of-poetry.pdf
#ShortFiction #Fun

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

— Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935)

#PGWodehouse #Wodehouse #ClassicLit

"She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season."

— The Mating Season (1949)

#PGWodehouse #Wodehouse #ClassicLit

As I re-read “Leave it to Psmith”, I’m realizing for the first time that The Efficient Baxter is basically Malvolio from “Twelfth Night”. Wodehouse has to have done that on purpose, right? He was well-educated, he would have known one of the great comedic put-upon characters of Shakespeare.

#wodehouse

Latest addition to my library, and absolutely the finest part of it: A complete, 99-volume collection of the Everyman Wodehouse. This is the best edition of Wodehouse ever printed, and I now have all of it. Collectively it’s essentially everything he ever wrote for publication.

It looks like whoever owned them before me must have bought them for resale and never read them, because they all look mint condition. I will not be making that mistake.

#books #wodehouse

I’m embarrassed to say, that while reading my Wodehouse novel I had to look up the reference made to Pierpont Morgan.

Apparently it’s John Pierpont Morgan, American rich person.

Now that I think of it, I have heard of JP Morgan, I think I owe his descendants money.

#Reading #Wodehouse #PigsHaveWings

"As the fellow said, better a dinner of herbs when you're all buddies together than a regular blowout when you're not"
Proverbs 15:17, Wodehouse version
(The Code of the Woosters)
#Proverbs #Bible #Wodehouse #BertieWooster

'I eyed her sternly.
"Aunt Dahlia, this is blackmail!"
"Yes, isn't it?" she said, and beetled off.'

P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters
#Wodehouse #BertieWooster #aunts #blackmail

My Pop used to go on and on about Jeeves, especially when things were going sideways. It would cheer him and I never had any idea what he was talking about or why he was laughing when things were bad. So here I am , forty years after his death, reading P. G. Wodehouse and finally understanding my father. #reading #book #Wodehouse

I just finished Full Moon and read a review at #TheStoryGraph in which the reviewer apologetically said they preferred Blandings to Wooster. Were it possible to have replied, I'd have said "no apology needed, so do I" PGW is sui generis - or as Clarence might say of the Empress's size "sooey generous" #bookstodon #Reading #Wodehouse
@bookstodon

"You probably consider that you are being broadminded, but you want to be careful how you let that so-called broadmindedness grow on you. It is apt to become mere moral myopia."
The Mating Season
P. G. Wodehouse
#Wodehouse

An underused word for your consideration: "scug" - a Victorian schoolboy insult denoting a pushy, slovenly, morally undeveloped slacker with bad manners and far too high an opinion of himself.
(All that in one syllable! If that's not 19th century efficiency I don't know what is.)

If it's good enough to be employed by those most worthy knights P. G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett, I deem it good enough for us. I use it myself. Care to join me?
#scug #insults #Wodehouse #Pratchett

Evening

#Plum shrub cocktail we call the #Wodehouse

Roderick Spode is P. G. Wodehouse's send-up of British fascist Oswald Mosley. Mosley founded the Black Shirts; Spode founded the Black Shorts ("there were no shirts left.").
Is it just me, or have I seen that salute somewhere recently?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ShRf1svMcuA
#Spode #fascism #salute #ElonMusk #uspol #Wodehouse

My Xmas book haul.

Already started re-reading Foundation. I loved it when I read it in college. I do remember that it’s mostly men talking about politics, philosophy, and psychology. Which is absolutely true. So I understand why the TV series made changes to adapt it.

I absolutely love both versions. The book definitely needed more women though.

#Reading #Books #Foundation #Asimov #Wodehouse #Banks #Dante #MarcoPolo #SaigoTakamori

The year is 2371. This is how I described @jdekg’s premise to @MaryHenry:

“J has announced a Premise. Players can be Starfleet and/or Klingon. We are tasked with escorting a venerable (retired) Klingon ambassador who will be exhibiting his prize show Targ, Empress, at some manner of fair.”

#StarTrek #Klingon #ttrpg #Wodehouse

What a marvellous writer is PG Wodehouse. There's something just right about this passage, the words dance along.

#PGWodehouse #Wodehouse #Paris

I'm a quiet, peaceful sort of bloke who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I mean to say is, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan.

P.G. Wodehouse,
Carry on, Jeeves (1925)

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65974/pg65974-images.html

#Wodehouse #HowToParty

"And if any young writer with a gift for being funny has got the idea that there is something undignified and anti-social about making people laugh, let him read this from the Talmud, a book which, one may remind him, was written in an age just as grim as this one.

'...And Elijah said to Berokah, "These two will also share in the world to come." Berokah then asked them, "What is your occupation?" They replied, "We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted, we cheer him up."'

from Over Seventy by P. G. Wodehouse
#humour #humor #Wodehouse #Talmud

I'm re-reading The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse. This snippet comes as Bertie Wooster has been dragged to a tea-and-bun shop by his pal Bingo, who's in love with the waitress:

#Wodehouse #PGWodehouse #Book #Books