P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) is considered by many to be the best of British comedy writers, and for good reason. Every page of a Wodehouse novel or short story is a sustained marvel of wit, timing and sharply economical writing. The reader is never allowed to be bored, not for a minute. Often when reading Wodehouse one thinks, ‘I wish I could have thought of that’. But naturally only Wodehouse could. One of his great gifts is to work the English language like it was some marvellous kaleidoscope, to be enjoyed for its virtuosity and expressiveness. Wodehouse clearly loves the English language and celebrates the sheer fun its range can provide.
This propensity, in many ways, makes Wodehouse the very opposite of the modern twentieth century writer. Where tortured souls like Hemingway and Norman Mailer were celebrated for stripping back language and making it as blank and transparent as possible, this as a way of illustrating their ‘authenticity’, Wodehouse writes in a style he described as ‘musical comedy’. Hence he provides lots of fun colour and movement. The general feeling of Wodehouse’s fiction is one of perpetual movement, of characters energetically skipping over life’s hurdles, as though life was more a fascinating game than existential nightmare.