The Uncollected Wodehouse
Duggan, Martin L.
testimony of those who bear the tidings of a secular Hell that gets hotter and closer by the minute. Indeed, the aims and principles of this publication--another of...
...While it must be admitted that even the highest sort of hobo occasionally engaged in frisking for unwary gumps, and often anticipated the formal corn-picking of trackside farmers, he did so usually to sustain life at a very modest level of subsistence which may, I hope, be considered a mitigating factor...
...Neither is it meant for ~migr& alone but for the entire continent of man, for East and West alike, for those who will pay heed...
...No matter...
...Wodehouse and the American public formed a mutual admiration society from the time he wrote his fast piece for the old Saturday Evening Post...
...Jasen has presented us with: An opportunity to read Plum, as Wodehouse was called by his friends and admirers, in his formative years...
...Kontinent is not, then, merely a publication for the literary elite, in spite of its having gathered the most sophisticated writers capable of transmitting the message of freedom...
...Shouldn't we hope for Russian, Polish, Romanian creations to appear in their native tongues, for native readers...
...Make no mistake...
...These are from the years 1900-1909 and from 19141919...
...Or like an aspiring travel agent being able to sign on as a cabin boy to Christopher Columbus...
...literary experience that can't be duplicated...
...Nowadays, more likely, they engage in the extralegal pharmaceutical business, practice arson, become middlemen in the discount auto equil~ment industry, or provide the essential final link in any of a number of misguided Federal income redistribution schemes...
...Wife With Wodehouse has been a familiar sight in our bed for nigh unto 35 yearsma cause for envy at times, but never jealousy...
...A subtitle then might be: But Not All That Bad...
...Odd, you say, that Wodebouse and Runyon should be paired as an entry in one's esteem...
...Runyon's Guys and Dolls were to Broadway what Wodehouse's Dukes and Dowagers and Blokes and Beauties were to Blandings Castle...
...Wodehouse wrote lovingly every day of his life until the day of his death, completing his 96th book before bowing out graciously on St...
...Yet isn't this a strange wish...
...When that which has been uncollected is collected, doesn't that rather alter the nature of things...
...Anyone who would regard even the least of Wodehouse as an unpalatable leftover would criticize the second wine course at Cana...
...Those of us who read Wodehouse out loud agree with Hilaire Belloc that Plum was the most accomplished writer of the age, assuming you laugh in the English language...
...Another tale claims it is a version of the "ho boy" shouted by railroad mailhandlers in the 1880s just prior to releasing a bag of mail in the general direction of some unsuspecting station hand...
...Let us not deprive Mr...
...In any case, a hobo has been defined as one who dreams and wanders...
...Valentine's Day in 1975 at the age of 93...
...Consider what a jewel Mr...
...A tramp is one who walks from town to town, dreaming, begging, or stealing, depending on his degree of adherence to noble ideals...
...It's as though a painter were privileged to look over Leonardo' s shoulder when he started scratching in his first sketchbook...
...But this doesn't spell hope...
...It is tempting to say that we look forward to future issues of this journal as they appear in Western languages...
...This reviewer expresses joyful appreciation to the girl he married...
...Wodehouse was as much at home on Broadway as Lord Emsworth was at Blandings...
...He created or collaborated on 32 musical comedies...
...The litany of experience...
...The English, more than a trifle stuffy over his misadventures in World War II, when he was foolishly mistaken to be a Nazi sympathizer, got around to making amends just six weeks before his death when Queen Elizabeth II named him a Knight Commander of the British Empire...
...Delving into this uncollection is a Martin L. Duggan is editorial page editor of the St...
...The journal's varied styles--nonfiction (including an essay on metaphysical beliefs in the Soviet Union...
...Shouldn't we hope that the need for such publications will disappear...
...She was the one who tipped him to Plum...
...a few poems--all convey the same message: creation will go on at gun-point...
...One can imagine that Wodehouse early in life saw the great good humor of being named Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse...
...The secret is contained in his volume which Price and Pride would consider a bargain...
...Of course, with the soul and its yearnings, dignity disappears as well...
...Since the beginning of the Global Unpleasantness in 1941 the hobo has become an increasingly rare creature...
...Late in life he became a United States citizen by studied choice...
...Indeed, the aims and principles of this publication--another of Solzhenitsyn's brainchildren--should put a libertarian's conscience at ease: 1. ABSOLUTE RELIGIOUS IDEALISM, that is, with a given dominant Christian tendency, a constant spiritual union with representatives of other faiths...
...And then, there is the cameo portrait of Milovan Djilas, ex-member of the Central Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, former close collaborator of Tito, who lives a stranger in his own country...
...0 D 0 0 0 0 D D U g O B O I D O D 0 I m e Q D I Q Q 0 Q 0 Q o B 0 0 Q 0 O D D b Q 0 ~ D m o 0 g I U B 0 O 9 D I o 0 0 0 g e U 0 I ~ Q 0 o I 0 0 0 O D 6 O Q 0 D b 0 m B D Q Q I D g j B P 0 o 0 Q O I 6 0 0 I Q 0 o 0 D I j 0 D Q D 0 D 6 Q i D D Q 9 U D D 0 0 Q O 0 0 Q o 0 w ~ Q o ~ 0 o i 0 ~ i ~ i Feather River John Hobo Bill's Last Ride Notes on the plight of Hood River Blackie, the Waffles Kid, and Steam Train Maury--a vanishing species...
...Wodehouse is the only person capable of making such snobs and simpletons lovable rather than insufferable...
...Popular demand has apparently pressed our redoubtable editor into inviting your humble servant to describe in somewhat more detail the plight of the vanishing hobo, and I am pleased to do so...
...Aside from the many migratory workers using the rails only for free transportation, there was always a hard core of old-time hoboes for whom hob0ing was not so much a harsh necessity as a special way of life...
...Most of the important talents will drown, while at the same time the simple folk's impulse for creation and beauty will continue to be stifled...
...The second half contains short stories published as early as 1901...
...When the wanderer was subjected to an interminable evening of tumultuous Christianity as the further price for this meagre fare, it can be argued that he came out somewhere on the short end of the deal...
...Walpole is a tadpole while Wodehouse is a whale of a writer...
...ciate, if you will, that here is the opportunity to be present at the birth of Reggie Pepper, who was to evolve into Bertie Wooster...
...of the law...
...Sharing your wife or life with Wodehouse is a good way to laugh happily ever after...
...Beats Anything Else You've Read...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 29...
...By contrast, a bum is one who begs and/or steals and wanders, usually one step ahead Feather River John was in earlier times a well-known figure from the Oregon Trunk to the Clinch field...
...As with the sinking of the Lusitania and the identity of thousands of voters in Chicago, no one seems to know the exact story of where the name "hobo" came from...
...Louis Globe-Democrat...
...Runyon, like Wodehouse, should be read aloud from time to time, for good writing is like fine wine that 28 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 must be swirled around the tongue to be fully savored...
...Only one American writer approaches Wodehouse in doing for his countrymen what the English master accomplished...
...Wodehouse wryly observed he had nothing else to live for, since he already was in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum...
...At the high water marks, early in this century and again during the Great Depression, there were more than a million men, and some women, trying to ride free on the trains of the land in search of one thing or another...
...The first section contains early contributions from publications, some of which have since gone broke...
...Jasen of that part of the $8.95 which is his due...
...4. ABSOLUTE NONPARTISANSHIP, that is, a categorical refusal to express the interests of any existing political group...
...One theory has it that it is a contraction of an ancient greeting "halloo, beau," a salutatio n alleged!y once common among everyone from highwaymen to Siamese twins...
...He now issues instructions to world leaders from /sis home in Concord, Vermont, all of which have to date been ignored...
...Who, hearing "Bill" from Show Boat, would suspect that P.G...
...3. ABSOLUTE DEMOCRATISM, that is, consistent support of all democratic institutions and tendencies in contemporary society...
...He preferred, if accepting charity at all, to reciprocate by inducing a refulgent glow in the breasts of various pious housewives and Salvation Army missionaries in return for a bowl of stew and a place out of the rain...
...They did not engage in vandalism or burglary, nor did they appear drunk and disorderly in public places...
...imprisoned once for having criticized the party's position toward the Hungarian uprising in 1956, then again for his book Conversations with Stalin, forbidden to publish his novels and stories, now among the witnesses of the Red Terror...
...The book is divided neatly into two parts...
...A common bond...
...And you may join those being put in their place by Keggs, who preceded Jeeves as the perfect butler...
...Perspicacious readers of this journal may have noticed, in the December edition, sandwiched between a report of an attempt to mate a man with an ape, and another of the assassination of a Budweiser Clydesdale, a small item by this publication's Fauna Editor describing my efforts to inspire compassion for the American hobo as an endangered species...
...Thus his portrayals of English upper crust truly were a toast to his countrymen, not a merciless roast...
...Not at all...
...Uncollected" suggests something that was left for the rubbish man who passed it by...
...Mulliner and Psmith and Freddie Fitch-Fitch and Stanley Featherstone Ukridge and all the others he created to enrich our lives...
...In his introduction Malcolm Muggeridge reminds us that someone as thick as Hugh Walpole couldn't comprehend what Belloc was talking about...
...As a rule, these professionals were resourceful, resilient, merry, generous, industrious (as required), responsible, and on the average as sober as the ordinary reader of this publication...
...Having both ears helps too...
...Appre...
...A proper title for this 212-page book of revelations could be: The Worst of IVodehouse...
...What was Wodehouse like before the birth of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves and Bingo Little and Mr...
...2. ABSOLUTE ANTITOTALITARIANISM, that is, a struggle against any variety of totalitarianism--Marxist, nationalist, or religious...
...Conceding that a title such as A IVodehouse Exchequer would be too trite, and too pretentious to suit the source, The Uncollected Wodehouse is unsatisfactory as a handle for this laughyourself-sick pack...
...Before he completed his studies at Dulwich College, Wodehouse must have realized that anyone bearing his monicker and boasting that alma mater could get a lot of mileage out of just being himself and writing about those around him...
...To the Western liberal who would trade freedom for (he fancies) bread, who believes that the common man would sacrifice art to the redistribution of potatoes, Ludek Pachman has this to say: ...we found in 1968 [in Czechoslovakia] that it was the workers in particular who immediately called for freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, and were willing to wait awhile for a raise in pay (which was, to be sure, dismally low...
...Wodehouse wrote 18 plays...
...That he was...
...When asked if he agrees with Solzhenitsyn, the agnostic Djilas picks up a copy of Gulag to show the passages underlined in pencil: "The most significant book of our times...
...As a virtue to offset this minor vice, the old-time hobo rarely if ever descended to accepting the charity coerced from the taxpayer...
...0ig4ii~I~QQI44QgI~4iQ~0mq~oiUQ00Q0i4wQUIQ~I4qQaIq~Q0Q0QiQ6gO00qIAa~QgQOOi4ggnq~giQ~BQQ49Q4O00wQi~g0gioQI4~QaqQq~e0O8Qg~9~g~0IQi~UIg~m~4~4qq~Q10 BOOK REVIEW The Uncollected lVodebouse Edited and with an Introduction by David A. Jasen / The Seabury Press / $8.95 Foreword by Malcolm Muggeridge Martin L. Duggan The title of this book is apt to drive Eggs, Beans, Crumpets, and all Drones completely bonkers, for it is a collection of stuff from the earliest writings of Wodehouse in newspapers and magazines--bits not previously put between the covers of a book...
...Wodehouse was equally as familiar as Runyon with the world of Harry the Horse and Sky Masterson and Big Julie and Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide...
...a short story (illustrating, without pathos, the salvation that a modicum of love can bring amidst the aimless poverty of socialist antiutopia...
...One always owes a debt to the individual who introduces him to an indispensable part of life thereafter...
...Alas, those who can still harbor such hopes haven't been reading very carefully lately...
...The American is Damon Runyon...
...No longer do unemployed and dispossessed youths of our land head for the division points to swing onto a slow drag or manifest...
...Wodehouse was the lyricist...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
