Yet Another Masterpiece

The Purloined Paperweight, by P. G. Wodehouse. Simon and Schuster, $4.50

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse—more usually referred to among his fellow writers as The Master—is not a man given to trenchant utterances on the contemporary scene, but he was once reported as complaining that the younger practitioners of today were too bitter and twisted, lacking the joie de vivre necessary to impart a little gaiety to the world. When the first numb shock of having incurred the great man’s disapproval wore off, we looked at each other with new eyes and saw that he was quite right. Why is it that our books seem to need a monstrous child, a mass-murderer and the occasional sex-fiend to give them that extra bit of punch? My own explanation is that we are all living under his shadow. We are too much aware of our own pitiful inadequacies to risk comparison with him. We have to pretend to have a social message, or to be angry about something, or just to be insane—in order to be granted a hearing. Few of our disgruntled young writers would agree that they owe their state to that supreme figure of gruntlement, the Master himself, but I think there must be something in it. Nobody but the most odiously conceited and second-rate twerp would dare try to write a novel which was exclusively comical in its intention under his benign but quizzical gaze. So here comes another 2,000-page marathon devoted to the color problem, drugs and suburban adultery.

AW

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Auberon Waugh

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The Purloined Paperweight, by P. G. Wodehouse. Simon and Schuster, $4.50

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse—more usually referred to among his fellow writers as The Master—is not a man given to trenchant utterances on the contemporary scene, but he was once reported as complaining that the younger practitioners of today were too bitter and twisted, lacking the joie de vivre necessary to impart a little gaiety to the world. When the first numb shock of having incurred the great man’s disapproval wore off, we looked at each other with new eyes and saw that he was quite right. Why is it that our books seem to need a monstrous child, a mass-murderer and the occasional sex-fiend to give them that extra bit of punch? My own explanation is that we are all living under his shadow. We are too much aware of our own pitiful inadequacies to risk comparison with him. We have to pretend to have a social message, or to be angry about something, or just to be insane—in order to be granted a hearing. Few of our disgruntled young writers would agree that they owe their state to that supreme figure of gruntlement, the Master himself, but I think there must be something in it. Nobody but the most odiously conceited and second-rate twerp would dare try to write a novel which was exclusively comical in its intention under his benign but quizzical gaze. So here comes another 2,000-page marathon devoted to the color problem, drugs and suburban adultery.