Week-End Wodehouse

an absolute perfect sampling; if it really was a classic (to be read and giggled at) during highfalughtin' dinner parties in the '20s, i can hardly blame them, and i'd say: a classic it remains, as well as the best intro i can imagine to the greatest humourist ever, as well as one of the few writers who achieved (rather often, actually) what we in the business of enjoying it call 'perfect prose'.

so throw away all fifty-eight of the wodehouse anthologies published since then... or don't, as i imagine they can't help but contain excellence also, not to mention almost certainly writings post-1939... but...

there is something to Weekend Wodehouse. 4 or 5-hundred pages, illustrations by one 'Kerr' peppered enticingly about, an introduction by show more Hilaire Belloc, and a text covering virtually all his major characters/series (such things are so often the same with Wodehouse): Jeeves & Wooster, of course, Blandings of course, as well as Ukridge, Wodehouse's great antihero, the Oldest Member, who tells stories about golfers but which you need no appreciation of golf to enjoy, as well as some autobiographical bits & bobs, and several novel extracts (which I normally disapprove of, but certain scenes of Wodehouse's novels are similar to short stories anyway, and shall still provide a good time).

one of those anthologies which, despite perhaps being surpassed in completeness is, due to its selection, sequencing and artwork, itself a classic.

If you need a perk up, pick it up. If you're new to Wodehouse, pick it up. The point is: pick it up. show less

It's Wodehouse. How can you not like it? However, I did find this collection mixed. Some bits were brilliantly funny to the point where I'm getting tears in my eyes laughing; other bits were really not funny at all but may have been hilarious in their context (sadly lacking here). I enjoyed all the forewords and authorial notes, including the dedication to his daughter Leonora, "without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time." Ha!

After imbibing a tome of Wodehouse on this scale, my mind starts to generate Wodehousian thoughts. For example: I can imagine a foreword in which Wodehouse laments the title, worrying that it restricts the reader to only perusing its pages on the show more week-end. Or him taking issue with the blurb by Max Hastings on the front cover which states, in black and white, "A peerless collection"—which of course is not true, because a peer does appear in this collection. It really isn't fair to mislead the reading public this way with promises of no Lord Emsworth and then what-ho, there's at least three stories featuring the pig-loving peer. Really, the effrontery of the modern publisher is beyond anything.

Only, Wodehouse would say it funnier. show less

One of the worst books that I have ever read. Its attempts to be humorous, sardonic, and witty came off dry and cliché. I was not impressed and it was a struggle to read, and finish, this book.

I do not recommend. There are so many better books out there.

Turned to P.G. Wodehouse to take my mind off the coronavirus. It worked. Some of the absolute best Mulliner, Jeeves & Drones Club stories.

This title is presented with an introduction by Hilaire Belloc. 'P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection' - Julian Fellowes. "Weekend Wodehouse" - required reading at country house parties in the late Thirties - remains one of the best introductions to the work of PG Wodehouse. All the favourites are here: Drones Club stories, Mr Mullinger stories, and stories of Jeeves, Lord Amsworth and Ukridge.