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Poet of Communications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

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The branch of Wodehouse’s work which compels the attention of the historian more than any other, is his treatment of the communications media. Whatever criticism can be made of his choice of themes of which he had little experience and less contemporary knowledge, it must be acknowledged that he surveyed the media men, women and fashions with a perpetual eye to their nature and changes, their strengths and their phoniness. He also remained as vigorous in his power of parody and satire as he had ever been; and his increasing sophistication lent additional bite to his analyses with the advancing years. Naturally the problem of his place as a historical witness increases with the improvement in his writing. We can go to old Blumenfeld in The Inimitable Jeeves for a naturalistic presentation of the New York theatre manager of 1920, specifically because it is almost a line-by-line portrait of Erlanger. On the other hand, what is to be said of his much more professional and much more savage Barmy in Wonderland, written thirty years later? Certainly Wodehouse, in attacking the exploitation and commercialism of the theatre, was drawing on a lifetime’s knowledge, and some of the material presented might have more to do with 1938 than 1948. One could not have the confident reliance on detail with which one turns to the road show passages in Jill the Reckless. But as an insight on tendencies, attitudes, practices, responses, in the world of the New York theatre in his lifetime, it deserves the higher accolade we give to the artist whose eye sees deeper into an epoch than a mere reporter can hope to do.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Inimitable Jeeves, P, 93‐97. World of Jeeves, 91‐94, and see also 394‐95, probably wish‐fulfilment. On Erlanger, see Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Bring on the Girls (1954).

2 The Tilbury connection, lampooning a press and publishing lord, on whom see also Bill the Conyzceror and Heavy Weather.

3 Perhaps more satiric of theatrical plots than novels, despite the vast number of the latter with such a thane. It was clearly originally intended as a play and could easily be adapted for the theatre.

4 In Louder and Fuilnier. My text is from Week‐End Wodehouse, 40‐45. See also The Girl on rhe Boar, J, 257‐58: ‘I seem at this point to see the reader—a great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram of a battleship’.

5 ‘Something Squishy’, ‘The Awful Gladness of the Mater’ and ‘The Passing of Ambrose’, ibid., Chs. 16‐18.

6 ‘The Story of Webster’ and ‘Cats will be Cats’, ibid., Chs. 20‐21.

7 All the Flack stories are now in the Golf Omnibus.

8 Actually mentionod in the preceding story, ibid., 135.

9 His Autobiography illustrates this perfectly.

10 Not only The Way We Live Now but onward from The Three Clerks.

11 See B. O'Nolan, The Best of Myles.

12 Strand, XLIV. 7, full‐page plate of gambolling young Iguanadons.