Right Ho, Jeeves! By PG Wodehouse

Rating: WORTHY!

This novel, first published in 1934, is the second full-length book from Wodehouse about Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. I'd been sort of idly interested in reading a Jeeves story for a while, but I never got around to it, so when this came up as a discounted audiobook on Chirp, I snatched it up. I didn't regret it. It was highly amusing to me and quite entertaining, although there were some bits where it dragged, and it's hardly politically correct, given its antiquity.

Note that there is one use of the 'n' word (although not in this historical context intended in an abusive way, merely descriptive, it's still, through our modern eyes, abusive enough) and there's the usual sexism for a book of this vintage.

On top of all of that one might justifiably take exception as well, to the idea of the idle rich having so much and so little of use to do with it, when so very many have so very little and are in urgent need of more. Those things aside, I enjoyed most of the book.

The story is of Bertram Wooster who, fresh back from Cannes, is looking for yet more idle pastimes to waste his life on. He discovers that his old school chum, Gussie Fink-Nottle, needs help. The book is replete with oddball names, my favorite being Pongo, which is not a dog but another of Bertie's male friends.

Anyway, Gussie is pining for a woman named Madeline Bassett. Bertie refers to her as 'the Bassett' and I must have missed something (I listen to this while driving, which always takes precedence in any conflict of attention, of course), because when he started talking about the Bassett, I was convinced for a while that it was a dog he was walking. It took me a little time to make the right connection which in itself was another source of amusement.

Bertie is rather peeved that Gussie is resorting to taking advice from Jeeves, and this is a theme that runs through this book - Bertie's jealousy of Jeeves's respected standing and his accomplishments in terms of winning people's favor for seeking advice. Naturally Bertie tries to take over all of these situations, convinced he'll do a much better job, and inevitably ends up screwing things up. Thus he takes on yet another love affair, that between another friend of his, Tuppie, and his betrothed, Angela, and messes that up as well.

Some of the most entertaining parts of the book are those which feature Bertie's interactions with his feisty Aunt Dahlia. I was laughing out loud at several of those. She is such a force of nature and is so disrespectful and dismissive of Bertie, and utterly intolerant of idiocy, a quality with which he seems over-abundantly endowed.

When his aunt tries to tap him for the prize-giving at the local grammar school where she lives, Bertie is aghast and ends up managing to offload the talk and prize delivery onto Gussie, who shows up drink and is quite amusing. The whole event is reminiscent of a similar occasion in David Nobbs's The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin wherein Reggie delivers an equally irreverent and drunk speech at an event before faking his own disappearance. I wonder if Nobbs might have cribbed his scene from Wodehouse's original example.

All ends well, of course, so overall I really enjoyed this book and in particular the spot-on reading of it by Jonathan Cecil. It's possible to get this book for free from Project Gutenberg since it's now out of copyright in the USA, but then I would have listened to it via my robot reader and amusing as that can be, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as entertaining as Cecil's version! I commend this as a worthy listen.

Worldshaker by Richard Harland

Title: Worldshaker
Author: Richard Harland
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WORTHY!

Worldshaker is a steam-punk novel, part of a dilogy about the education of Colbert Porpentine, grandson of the master of Worldshaker, Sir Marmus Porpentine. Worldshaker is a massive ship, two and a half miles long, three-quarters of a mile wide, well over a thousand feet high, home to ten thousand people, and two thousand "filthies" - people who live below decks and unaccountably have within their control the power plant of this the city on rollers (when it's on the ground) or city of the air.

Col wakes up one night because of a ruckus in the hallway outside his room. One of the Filthies, who was brought up top to be turned into a Menial (a servant of the ruling classes), has escaped and is now running loose on the upper decks! The guards visit him and then depart and it's only after this that Col realizes that it wasn't the ruckus which disturbed him, it was something before that. He looks under his bed and there's a filthy hiding there. When she comes out, she turns out to be disturbingly attractive despite the dirt, and she can even speak, something which quite astounds Col. Her name is Riff and when he calls out to the guards in surprise, she runs and hides in his closet!

But Col doesn't betray Riff. The guards do not arrive, so he locks her in his closet. The next morning, his sister Gillabeth bursts into his room complaining that he needs to get ready - there's an important breakfast with his grandfather. She immediately goes to his closet and his heart almost stops as she wrenches it open, but Riff is no longer there!

The great announcement which grandpa makes that morning is that Col is to be his successor; he will be groomed to take charge of the ship. He is to go to school. Col's mom takes him on a shopping trip to gather school supplies. She's so worn out by this effort that she has to repair to Col's room to sit out an attack of the wilts and the vapors. It's while she's sitting on his bed that Col realizes the filthy is back! Riff is under his bed at that very moment. He hastily bundles his recovering mother out of the room and confronts Riff. She looks clean. It's a new Riff in many respects, and Col is finding it harder and harder to dismiss her from his thoughts or to see her as a filthy. She tries to smuggle out one of his books - on volcanoes (I wonder why?!) - as she leaves, and she tells him she'll be back.

Col is just about having a fit over her. Everything in his life was looking up, except that she's now in it. However, he sees a solution. All Riff wants, is to return to the below world with her fellow filthies. On his tour of the ship with his grandfather, Col learns that food is sent to the filthies via a chute, and so the next time Riff shows up, he escorts her to the nearest food chute (which is a long way from his room) and sends her down it. Now everything is coming up roses. So he thinks.

Col is a good hero. He is not very wise to the ways of the world - especially given that he's been sheltered from it and lied to all his life - but he isn’t dumb, and he's not afraid to question things and to take risks when he deems it important. He's not all powerful, and he has no magical or super-human powers. All he has going for him (aside from his privileged birth) is his smarts, his willingness to put himself into the position of others, and his good nature and sense of morality. Unfortunately, for all this, he does seem to have an ability to dig himself deeper.

When he first arrives at school, he allies himself with Trant, without realizing that Trant is of a much lower social status than he. Col is soon corrected by the upper status kids, who draw him into their circle. Given that these elite kids detest Col and wish for their families to usurp his family's eminent position, it’s hard to understand why they're so accommodating, unless they're working from the 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' principle, but they don’t seem that smart!

Harland excels himself when describing the school master, Gibber. His name pretty much says it all. Gibber is a gibbering idiot. He has the most hilariously warped ideas imaginable about academic subjects. In geometry, he detests obtuse angles because they’re so open. He much prefers acute angles because they're so sharp, but even they pale against the insurmountable rectitude of a right angle. Gibber makes his class draw right-angles for the rest of the period! Geography fares no better: it turns out that concave coastlines are an abomination. He can scarcely bring himself to even talk about the Great Australian Bight, for example. The coastline of Great Britain, contrarily, is magnificent because it has so many proud promontories! This is inspired and hilarious. Harland had me laughing out loud.

Col would have had it made were it not for Riff showing up in his life and his inability to jettison all thought of her once he'd fed her back down the chute to "the underworld". He makes the mistake, when he's in a good mood, of wrapping up the book which Riff had tried to steal, and sending it down the chute to her as a gift. The elite kids tail him down there, sad to say, and discover him. He gets into a fight with the bruiser of the group (indeed he was only in the group because he was a bruiser) and Col ends up being dropped down the chute himself. He almost comes to grief down there, but is rescued by none other than riff, who is a leader down below. She quite literally rescues him, because the filthies are about to drop him into the bilge and let him die for no reason other than he's from "up there". Riff has to fight a bigger guy to assert her authority, which she does without raising a sweat. She is fast and deadly. And she's secretly thrilled that Col sent her the gift, but she says he has to go before the council - the senior "filthies" - most of whom are no older than Riff.

Col's "sentence" is to aid a filthy to go topside as a spy, and the one who is chosen is, of course, Riff. Col is to return by having the officers upstairs lift him out by means of a grasping hook - the same way they capture the filthies they wish to turn into menials. But his return from the underworld isn’t greeted with great joy. He's now despised almost as much as the filthies are, because he's been contaminated by being amongst them. He's shunned and his family finds its elevated and privileged status being undermined by Sir Marmus's rivals. Seeing an advantage now, the elite boys at school reject him, and even Gibber increasingly disses him. Col ignores them all until he discovers they're planning on beating him up before the school term is over.

When he considers how he might be able to fight back, he suddenly realizes there is someone who can help him learn to fight, and it's someone he made a promise to not four days ago. Col remembers his promise to get Riff topside, and so he lowers a rope, as agreed, down the food chute for her to climb up. When she arrives, he's so excited by her arrival that he expects a joyful reunion with hugs and kisses, but she pretty much tells him goodbye and disappears.

Later he's amazed to discover that she's very successfully disguised herself as a menial and now roams Worldshaker with complete impunity! He tells her of his predicament, and she agrees to teach him to fight if he will teach her to read. Of course you all know where this is going. They spend much time together, and she learns to read, and he learns to fight and takes down ten opponents when the Squellinghams try to beat him up at school. What he didn’t expect was that these very villains would tell him that his sister Gillabeth was behind the attack! But things are about to get worse.

In order to salvage the family reputation and position of power, Sir Marmus negotiates a marriage between the Porpentine and the Turbots, namely that of Col to Sephaltina Turbot, which Col blindly goes along with since he feels bad about bringing the family down, and he thinks Riff is partnered with one of the filthies anyway, and even if she were not, she certainly wouldn’t be interested in someone like him. He doesn’t expect her to show up at his wedding, very effectively disguised as a privileged upper deck person, nor does he expect his reaction to her to precipitate a revolution. It all started with the jelly....

Original, brilliantly written, endlessly entertaining, and thoroughly engrossing, this is a novel I cannot help but highly recommend. Even on my second reading it was still as appealing as it was on the first. Now that I'm back up to speed on volume one, I'm very much looking forward to embarking upon the Liberator. Full steam ahead!

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

a Pride and Prejudice movie is reviewed on the Movie page

Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Pages: 238
Publisher: Penguin UK
Rating: Worthy!
Perspective: third person past

Note: Spoil like you've never seen a refrigerator! (like you don't know what's in this novel anyway! Darcy and Elizabeth get married! There! I gave it all away!)

How could I not read this in the bicentenary of its publication? I'm reading this in an anthology of Austen's novels. See, I told you I had one, and you didn't believe me! Mine isn't quite the same as the one referenced above, but near enough. The cover picture is from mine.

Note that Gutenberg has a free ebook of this novel. It's also noteworthy that Marvel comics produced a graphic novel of this novel (which I've also read! Yes, I'm way ahead of you!)

Having gone into some detail over Pride and Prejudice in the movie section elsewhere on this blog, there's going to be little to say about the story or the plot since it starts out very much like the best movie of the book, the 1995 one featuring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in the main roles, so this must needs be a compare and contrast review. The story centers on the Bennett Family, Mr & Mrs, and their five daughters, from oldest to youngest: Jane, Elizabeth (Lizzie), Mary, Catherine (Kitty), and Lydia, and their interactions with the main male suitors Bingley (for Jane), Darcy (for Lizzie), and last but least Wickham (for anyone he can get but finally, for Lydia).

This book is something of a delight. It’s very different from modern novels (understandably, since it's over 200 years old!), and different again from American novels since it’s British. The Brits like to use single quotation marks to signify the spoken word their novels, and the grammar and word use varies considerably from that which is to be found in modern novels, even those which are written as historical (or perhaps more accurately, hysterical) romances. It’s not often you find words like 'celerity' in modern works, nor 'self-gratulation', nor 'whither', nor 'repine', nor 'eclat'!

Austen often has a (perhaps unintentional) turn of humor that I find delightful, as in chapter 17 where she has Jane and Elizabeth secretly discussing Wickham's revelations regarding Darcy, from which they're disturbed by Bingley's arrival with an invitation to the ball which he had promised Lydia he should hold:

The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, where this conversation passed, by the arrival of the very persons of whom they had been speaking;

Summoned from the shrubbery indeed! Shades of Monty Python!

Even someone of Austen's propriety and stature isn't immune from grammatical error, or perhaps more accurately, error in clarity of communication as I discovered, also in 17, where we read:

Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of her brother;

When first I read that, I found myself wondering how Jane could have a brother when Austen has already made it quite clear that she had only four sisters and no other siblings. Having looked at this more closely, I can only conclude that the brother in this case is Bingley, the brother not of Jane, but of her two friends mentioned in the prior clause, so the sentence is somewhat more confusing on that point than it ought to have been!

Austen also seems inconsistent in how she uses the indefinite article before an aspirate. She writes 'a husband', but 'an hope'. This may be less interesting to others than it is to me, because to me it’s yet another reason to take interest in more antiquated writing styles, especially when found in the form of fiction. This antiquity of style is one of the charms of such novels. I almost end up feeling as though I'm a better person, and certainly I feel that I'm better equipped as a writer for having an acquaintanceship with such work.

I find myself wondering what rules she's applying as she writes, or if indeed she's applying any rules other than her own innate feel for English as she has it through nothing more than growing up a native to it in that era. Perhaps whatever rules she employs were so imbued within her having grown as she did, that it never crossed her mind that any rules were actually being employed at all, so innate is her grasp of the language. But how remarkable it is that we can have now this window into life 200 years ago, even as narrow and focused as it necessarily is! Perhaps you might want to research Austen's life and times. There's a Jane Austen wiki which may be a good place to start - or to which you can contribute if you wish!

One of the interesting phrases I found was 'he left the country.' when Austen means, of course, not that he left England, but that he left the countryside for the city. And on that topic, we find Jane in denial about Bingley after he has left, and Elizabeth rather angry at his behavior, but not so angry as she becomes when Collins proposes to her and will not take no for an answer. The 1995 movie has Collins storming off and proposing to Charlotte, which doesn't represent the novel at all. The 2005 movie does a better job on this score. And Bingley's sisters (of which there appears only one in the 2005 movie) do not steadily imply that Bingley, now back in London, is seriously interested in Darcy's sister in the movies whereas they do in the novel.

One item of interest occurred to me reading the novel, and that is exactly what Lizzie's dad might have meant in issuing his 'ultimatum' upon learning of Lizzie's refusal to marry Collins:

...Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

Does he mean he will never speak to her if she does, or does he merely mean that if she marries and moves away, he will be unable to see her? I think we're supposed to take it as it's traditionally been understood, but perhaps Austen was playing with a little double-entendre here?

Whilst on this topic, I have to say here that the novel suggests a far greater friendship between Jane and Bingley's two sisters, notwithstanding the superior attitude of the latter, than either the 1995 movie or the 2005 movie would have you believe. The novel also indicates that Elizabeth's first two dances with Collins were much more embarrassing than they were depicted as being in the 1995 movie ('mortification' is the term Austen uses, followed by 'ecstasy' as the dances are over and Elizabeth is released!). The 2005 movie shows no problem there at all.

This novel was not originally intended to have the title 'Pride and Prejudice', it was to have been titled 'First Impressions', but as wikipedia points out, two other works with that title had been published quite recently as Austen was revising her work, so she changed it to what is in my opinion a far better title. It’s hard to see this novel under it’s original name! Austen perhaps took her title from words in a contemporary work by Fanny Burney, which Austen is known to have liked.

The title is all the more appropriate since the novel primarily addresses the clash between Darcy's over-developed sense of pride, and Elizabeth's hasty prejudice against him based on her first impression of his character, and of Wickham's despicable lies about him. Her prejudice shows strongly at the dance which Bingley holds at Netherfield, where Elizabeth is depicted as saying, in response to her friend Charlotte's suggestion that dancing with Darcy (now there's a movie title!) isn’t so bad: "Heaven forbid! That would be the greatest misfortune of all! To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not wish me such an evil."

Contrast that, then, with what she says whilst she's actually dancing with Darcy in response to a comment he made about her suggestions as to how conversation ought to be conducted during a dance:

'Both,' replied Elizabeth archly; 'for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.'

So now, it appears, she considers that the two of them have a lot in common, although Darcy seems to disagree. They spar over the pianoforte whilst the others play cards. Cards back then consisted of games such as Quadrille, which according to wikipedia is is a Spanish trick-taking game directly ancestral to Boston and chief progenitor of Solo whist, perfected in early 18th century France as a four-handed version of the Spanish game Ombre.

Another game was Cassino, which wikipedia describes as an Italian fishing card game which is the only one to have penetrated the English-speaking world.

Do you wonder at this point if I wonder if they're going to be 'violently' in love? That term is much abused, we find, and Austen herself is evidently quite aware of it. Consider this from Chapter 25:

But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour's acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how violent was Mr. Bingley's love?

On Elizabeth's visit to Hunsford to spend time with her friend Charlotte, now married to Collins (ch 28) we come across yet another of Austen's charming phrases:

Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind.

After their sparring over the piano, which is even more charming in the novel than in either movie (and which is better done in the 2005 movie than it is in the 1995 version), Elizabeth finds that visits by Darcy to Charlotte's home, where Elizabeth is staying, are much more frequent, but he says very little. This portion of the relationship is entirely passed over in the movies, which makes it harder to see from what quarter Darcy's deep passion arose.

The very heated exchange between then after Darcy proposes in the worst proposal ever, is not exactly spelled out, in terms of who said exactly what in the novel, so some of what appears in the movies is quite simply made up. But whilst the novel lacks something in this regard at this important point, it handles sufficiently well, particularly Elizabeth's personal ruminations immediately afterwards and the next morning when Darcy hands her a letter (he's stalking her out in the country where he knows she walks).

Darcy's letter hugely long and it's related in the novel with no paragraphing, running to 4½ full pages! Neither movie gives any indication of this., On the contrary: the letter they show is very short in comparison. Lizzie agonizes over Darcy's words about Wickham for two hours as she walks up and down in the outdoors, but she eventually arrives at the conclusion that Darcy must be right! Then she turns her attention to what he said about Jane. Why she does this in the reverse of the order in which the letter conveys this information must remain a mystery, I suppose, but we're forced to wonder if Austen was more fixated upon Lizzie's relationship with Wickham than she was on hers with Jane.

Lizzie is soon back home, but within a month or so she's off again in what's by far the best part of the novel (of course I'm insanely biased when I say this!) on her trip with the Gardiners to Derbyshire, a county in which I was born and raised. This is the location of Mrs Gardiner's home village of Lambton, which is conveniently close to Darcy's Pemberley. There is at least two Lambtons in England but neither is in Derbyshire. One of them is famous for being the home of the Lambton Worm, an ancient legend from which Bram Stoker took his inspiration for his The Lair of the White Worm. Wikipedia informs us that the home of Fitzwilliam Darcy was modeled on Chatsworth House, a beautiful place not far from my home town. It was this very house which was used (for exteriors only) in the 2005 movie.

Austen also has Lizzie refer to other places with which I'm very familiar: Dovedale to which I've also been several times, the Peak District, and finally, my own home town, Matlock (yes, just like the TV show, but we had it first!) which is part of the Peak District.

Moving right along now.... Lizzie and the Gardiners (sounds like a band name, doesn't it? "Here's the latest release from Lizzie and the Gardiners, Wickham if you've got 'em"!) are strolling around Darcy's home! This seems strange to me, but I guess it was perfectly normal back then for strangers to be shown around the homes of the ridiculously well-off. It's during this tour that Lizzie completely reforms her opinion of Darcy, and then, of course, she runs into him as she's going outdoors.

I think of the two movies, the better one for this portion is the 2005 version, even though it strays way beyond the bounds of canon. In it, a scene was added where Lizzie is looking at some truly amazing sculptures, one of which is a bust of Darcy. Yes, Virginia, men had busts back then, and proud of them they were, too! A non-canonical scene was also added where Lizzie is attracted by some beautiful piano-playing and finds herself watching Georgiana, without knowing who she is. Darcy suddenly walks into he scene and hugs her. He sees Lizzie, who runs, evidently thinking this is Darcy's girlfriend!

Eventually, the two of them talk outside, during a walk with the Gardiners, but Mrs Gardiner carefully engineers it so that she and her husband are way ahead of the younger couple. The ensuing conversation, awkward as it may be, gives Lizzie leave to further reform her opinion of this man. Her flabber, such as it is, has never been so gasted as when Darcy informs her that he should like for her to meet his younger sister, Georgiana, who is anxious to meet Lizzie.

Unfortunately. it's immediately after this is that Lizzie receives news from Jane that Lydia has absconded with Wickham! Darcy learns of this from Lizzie - much more humorously portrayed in the 2005 than in the 1995. he embarks upon his adventure to discover where Wickham is hiding in London. There is much more going on here than is ever portrayed in either movie, and once Wickham and Lydia are married off and out of the way, considerably more going on with Bingley and Darcy than is portrayed in either movie, although the essence of what happens is carried through there.

Needless to say - but I've begun so I'll finish! - Bingley comes back and proposes to Jane - although nowhere near as velocitously as the movies indicate, even the lengthier 1995 version, and eventually, Darcy and Lizzie have their walk, wherein they go into rather tedious detail about their roller-coaster history together, I have to say. Eventually they're both married off and exquisitely happy. Austen doesn't marry either of the other sisters, but takes pains to relate that, removed from the influence of Lydia, and living with the Darcy's, Kitty improves immeasurably and left with her mother, even Mary starts to come out of her shell.

Yes, there was far more detail than ever I was interested in hearing at the end of this novel, so while I still recommend reading this or another of Austen's works for their authentic period detail, and for Austen's occasional humorous and charming turn of phrases, I have to say that I'm not overwhelmed by her overall talent as a writer. There is too much detail of the tedious variety and it's gone into in places where less would have sufficed. There is almost no observation of the surroundings, and conversation can sometimes become obscure since Austen is not fond of indicating who is speaking at a given time, so that perhaps a whole page will pass of purest conversation, by the end of which one is no longer certain as to who said what.

I realize that this is how they wrote back then, but that renders my observation no less valid. I seriously doubt that, had Austen not written this, but a writer of modern historical romance wrote it exactly as the first edition bore it, it would not have anywhere near the acclaim it now has, and before it was published you may rest assured that some editor somewhere would have it with abandon if it came across their desk! It's worth keeping that in mind when we bestow praise upon it, but go ahead and read it and make up your own mind, because your opinion of it is all that matters in the last analysis. Overall I'm quite prepared to declare it worthy!