[lit-ideas] Re: Hereabouts
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2022 18:07:22 -0800
On Feb 14, 2022, at 7:38 AM, epostboxx ("epostboxx")
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 13. Feb 2022, at 20:03, david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
“Would you say,” I said, stepping into terra wotsita, that it’s possibly to
be ‘vaguely Wodehousian’? Those two words together showed up in my morning
reading and somehow they bother me. I mean, if we revere anything about
Wodehouse it’s how well he captures eccentricity.
Yes, he captures that and so much else of what most of the rest of us would
label 'the human condition' – in fact he 'nails it,' as the (perhaps now
outdated) colloquialism goes.
And I don't think one could speak of "vaguely nailing it." Think of those
attempts to revive the Jeeves and Wooster characters by contemporary authors.
Only genuinely Wodehousian Wodehouse please! Accept no substitutes - ask for
it by name, and insist upon the original!
Absolutely. To hold onto the girl he loves, Walter is keeping his temper in
check by reminding himself of Socrates’ calmness in the face of adversity.
Socrates is shortened in the narrative to “Socks."
There are several putting methods in vogue among the lower classes of golf—to
name but three, the Sitting Hen, the Paralytic Crouch and the Lumbago Stoop.
Walter favored the Sitting Hen…[snip]…Rising from the Sitting Hen position is
as a rule a slow process…[snip]…One moment, [Walter] was tied in an apparently
inextricable knot, the next, he was drawn to his full height, his face crimson,
his eyes rolling, the sound of his breathing like that of two Scotsmen having
hiccups in a Ponsford Botts story…[snip]
“Socks, Walter!” I cried hastily.
“Socks be blowed!” he retorted. [snip]
Walter, who had been gulping like a bull pup trying to swallow a bone too large
for its thoracic cavity, contrived to speak.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “It is agreed, I think, that I am a fiend
in human shape?”
[Love interest, Angela, speaks] “And by no means the worst of them.”
“But—and this is where I want you to follow me very closely—you have no
objection to fiends in human shape?”
“Not the slightest.”
“Odd,” said George Porter, who had holed out and joined our little group.
“Most girls dislike them…”
Literature, philosophy, comedy. Wodehouse could write a mouthful. He was also
good at re-working. This excerpt is from “A Few Quick Ones” (1959). Ponsford
Botts had appeared in “Excelsior,” which you’ll find collected in the golf
stories and “Nothing Serious.” (1951) The later version, “Joy Bells for
Walter,” had no dog, no R.P. Crumbles, no Horace Bewstridge. But Vera in the
earlier story and Angela in the later one both approve of being rude, or worse,
to annoying relatives.
I agree with Chris, vaguely Wodehousian is like saying "vaguely the Bardian.”
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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