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Heaven: Book group for October - Aunts aren't gentlemen by PG Wodehouse
This month's book is definitely in the category of light reading. PG Wodehouse remains one of the best comic writers in English, and his prose is masterly.
This particular book, Aunts aren't gentlemen, is available on every bookshop and publishers' list that I checked. Most public libraries have at least some of his works on the shelves, as publishers keep reprinting them - though I can't guarantee the stock at your local.
It is one of the Jeeves and Wooster series, featuring Bertie Wooster a 1920s man about town, and his manservant Jeeves, whose cleverness always gets Bertie out of whatever farcical scrape he has let himself into. Many other characters re-appear from other books, but this one can easily be read independently. Warning: allow a chapter or two for the farcical plot to warm up.
This particular book, Aunts aren't gentlemen, is available on every bookshop and publishers' list that I checked. Most public libraries have at least some of his works on the shelves, as publishers keep reprinting them - though I can't guarantee the stock at your local.
It is one of the Jeeves and Wooster series, featuring Bertie Wooster a 1920s man about town, and his manservant Jeeves, whose cleverness always gets Bertie out of whatever farcical scrape he has let himself into. Many other characters re-appear from other books, but this one can easily be read independently. Warning: allow a chapter or two for the farcical plot to warm up.
Comments
So thank you.
I just finished the book I've been reading, and plan to start re-reading "Aunts Aren't Gentlemen" this evening.
And they are indeed wonderful to read, thank you, Pidwidgeon -- I read three stories from a golfing compilation, The Clicking of Cuthbert, yesterday. My parents remain keen golfers and many a day was it where I was dragged around the course, so the obsessives in the stories are relatable. Now I think of it, may get his golfing compilations for them for a Christmas gift.
Tukai -- I may well do. Thank you.
Q1. Did you find the book funny?
- If so, slow-grin funny or laugh-out-loud funny? Which were the best bits?
- If not, where did it misfire? Prose style? plot? General absurdity of his whole 1920s ‘aristocratic’ world? or what?
Q2. Was this the first book you have read by Wodehouse?
- If so, did it leave you ‘hooked’ and looking for another? Why?
- If you’ve read others before, how did this one (which was the last of about his 90 or so books!) measure up to the others? Which of his books or stories is your favourite and why?
Q3. Most (maybe all?) of Wodehouse books are set in a ‘timeless’ world, which is more or less that of the leisured class of 1920s England (similar to that of the Great Gatsby in the USA but less mercenary). But this book was written in 1974, so a few anachronisms may have crept in. Did you notice any such? Did they worry you?
Q4. Bertie has no parents that he can remember , or are even mentioned as far as I know, but a tribe of Aunts who hatch schemes involving him. Did you ever have such relations that you might want to tell us about?
I enjoyed the book, and found it funny, but usually more in a slow grin kind of way. He has a way with words and there are rarely any words wasted.
This was my first Wodehouse book. I enjoyed it, and I'd probably happily pick up another Wodehouse if I was looking for some light reading. But it didn't leave me craving more. I think just a little too light and fluffy.
My favourite of Wodehouse's novels as the two starring Monty Bodkin - "The Luck of the Bodkins" and "Peals, girls and Monty Bodkin". And I think Wodehouse was wise not to write too much about this one character. But some of the Blandings short stories are also laugh-out-loud funny.
By this time in the oeuvre, Wodehouse' world is becoming stale, I think. The author himself had not lived in England for many years and you even find Americanisms creeping into Wooster's narrative. While you could never move Bertie and Jeeves on from their world of the twenties/early thirties, for me by this time their world is more of a pastiche than a celebration.
As I say, I have not yet finished the book. I think Bertie's aunts are some of Wodehouse's best inventions and I am currently waiting to see if Jeeves' aunt returns from Liverpool to make an appearance. I can think of a way in which she might redeem the book - so I will carry on with it, to see if this does indeed happen!
The world is pretty timeless and though I think I spotted at least one anachronism, I can't remember what it was so it can't have been that important. I wonder if there were ever young men quite like Bertie Wooster. The type seems to appear in the 1890s and had melted away by the second world war. Lord Peter Wimsey on the outside looks like he belongs to the drones club, but of course there is far more going on in his head than in Bertie's.
I've read a few Wodehouse's and I'm sure I'll read more, I like them and loved the adaptations with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry years ago. I recently saw one again and it has stood the test of time.
Bertie's relations are great, and I think his father gets a mention in this book as Aunt Dahlia is his sister, but we never find out exactly where Bertie gets his money from. If he had ever grown up I wonder if he would have married and which of the many young women he got tangled up with would have suited him.
Based purely on reading Wodehouse and Sayers, I see Wimsey as rather older than Wooster: the Bellona Club is full of men damaged by fighting the First World War, while their younger brothers and cousins who were too young to serve fool around at the Drones.
But both worlds assume a class of young(ish in Wimsey's case) men with enough time and money to belong to clubs - sometimes as a pied a terre in London instead of a home, but as well as a home for both Wimsey and Wooster.
I'm going to give some earlier Wodehouse a try.
While I couldn't source this book, I personally find Wodehouse' turn of phrase and his ability to exaggerate mannerisms and such a pure delight.
I just finished reading The Clicking of Cuthbert, golfing short stories and his knowledge of the game*, and his ability to extend and exaggerate the rules and personalities, simply wondrous. I'm reading Bachelors anonymous, a story in which a men's group similar to AA keep people from marrying, but more with various characters. Whenever I am feeling low, W's prose and characters can raise a smile.
* my parents play several times a week; I did not inherit their love of the game
Bachelors anonymous sounds like the original MGTOW (Men Going There Own Way), but hopefully a bit less toxic.
Q1. Did you find the book funny?
- If so, slow-grin funny or laugh-out-loud funny? Which were the best bits?
- If not, where did it misfire? Prose style? plot? General absurdity of his whole 1920s ‘aristocratic’ world? or what?
It wasn't the style of comedy that makes me laugh, but it was mildly amusing. I felt like the book was a long build up to the final joke that reflected the title. I also liked the resolution relating to the cat and Jeeve's aunt. I don't think it misfired so much as it is just not the style of comedy I find really funny personally.
Q2. Was this the first book you have read by Wodehouse?
- If so, did it leave you ‘hooked’ and looking for another? Why?
- If you’ve read others before, how did this one (which was the last of about his 90 or so books!) measure up to the others? Which of his books or stories is your favourite and why?
This was the first Wodehouse book I have read. There is a Youtube channel called 'The Shows Must Go On' that played free musicals once a week during some of the lockdown and they had the musical 'By Jeeves' one week, but I only watched the start. I found Wooster rabbitting on tedious and didn't know what to expect having not read the books. The book was better, because I could quickly read any parts that dragged on a bit. I probably won't read any more books, but might check out clips from the T.V. series with Fry and Laurie as the actors are usually entertaining.
Q3. Most (maybe all?) of Wodehouse books are set in a ‘timeless’ world, which is more or less that of the leisured class of 1920s England (similar to that of the Great Gatsby in the USA but less mercenary). But this book was written in 1974, so a few anachronisms may have crept in. Did you notice any such? Did they worry you?
I think I noticed a couple of anachronisms, or at least events that didn't feel like contemporary books from the 1920s, but nothing I could specifically identify.
Q4. Bertie has no parents that he can remember , or are even mentioned as far as I know, but a tribe of Aunts who hatch schemes involving him. Did you ever have such relations that you might want to tell us about?
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I don't think I have any current relatives that would drag me into a scheme. If there is any scheming it is going on behind my back!
You either like Wodehouse's books or you find them irritating.
The Gadarene swine and "God will smite thee, thou whited wall" featured, as did others, in the Bachelors Anonymous chapter I just read.
Thanks @Cathscats , the Billy Graham joke was one of the anachronisms I spotted, though I did wonder briefly if Graham had been big in the twenties. Isn't there one of the American stories centred round an evangelist?
I did quite like the running joke about the scripture prize the Bertie won, therefore enabling to come out with various Bible quotes. I won the prix for religious studies every year in my primary school, but haven't noticed it being particularly useful in later life!
You are thinking of Jimmy Mundy (probably after the genuine Billie Sunday) a social reformer in the short story "The Aunt and the Sluggard".
I gave up watching the Fry and Laurie series. Too many features changed from the original and separate stories mashed together.
I watched a clip on Youtube from one episode and they did not act at all like I imagined the characters from reading the book. One clip is not enough to judge if I would like it or not, but it did not really inspire me to watch more.
Having said that, I'm now very curious to reread Aunts Aren't Gentlemen all these years later, to see what new things I notice in it. I always find it fun to reread books I read as a teenager, to see them afresh from the perspective of middle age. It may also be that I wouldn't like the TV series now.
But I did try and watch the Neflix Anne with an E series, and gave up at episode three as they changed it around too much.
I guess it depends on how much you thin the original is 'sacred'.
Firstly, on the mild tangents that have cropped up here.
Personally I thought the Fry and Laurie series was very good. A few of the episodes still make me laugh out loud, even after repeated viewings on DVD. I have read quite a few Wodehouse stories over the years (though I have only 3 or 4 left on the shelf, as we share ours on though church book stalls). But F&L added a couple of perspectives that I had not picked up earlier: Spode , the "amateur dictator" was depicted (satirised) in much more depth than I recalled from my reading, as were the goings on (e.g. mock games of rugby) at the Drones Club premises. But F and L, though perfectly in character (even though I had previously pictured Jeeves as much older than Bertie) are both quite tall, which must have made it difficult for the casting director to find other actors who would not look dwarfed by them.
As for the initialisation, my understanding is that was in fact an accurate rendition of a sort of 'allusions' code in which some of the men about town talked (and I suppose wrote) in those days. It is certainly not lazy writing by Wodehouse.
This book ("Aunts aren't gentlemen") , like some of Agatha Christie's equally prolific output follows a successful but well worn formula. Nevertheless I found it easy and amusing reading, though only slow-grin funny rather than laugh-out-loud funny.
As for "Billy Graham", I thought this was just a little joke by Wodehouse on his 1970s readers; why should a rural Englishman of the 1920s not have this English-sounding name? I did wonder if the big street demonstration at the start was an anachronism, but it turns out that there were in fact plenty of those in the 1920s and 30s.
As to personal favourites, some of mine are short stories whose titles I can no longer recall, notably one about a dissolute uncle of a drones club member who takes the young man to visit what had been ancestral lands, which have since been sold; there the uncle "assists" a bemused young lady who they meet by chance in one of the houses on the new estate to sort out out her love life. Of the novels, I commend "Hot Water", a farce with multiple intersecting threads set in a sea-side resort in France.