I can't remember whether I've read Psmith, Journalist or not, but I believe the first Psmith and Mike book was actually a school story, so it represents a very early Wodehouse work, moving away from the younger audience & yeah, is not Wodehouse as we know him from his later stuff.
so this space may become a little Wodehouse-dense for a while.
Yes, the first Mike and Psmith book was a school story; that and this one and Psmith in the City were all written very close to one another. I haven't read those, so I don't know what they're like. They might be a little better if the integrity of the Wodehouse Bubble is preserved -- but Wodehouse is definitely still finding his feet in Psmith Journalist.
I really enjoyed Psmith, Journalist, but I found huge levels of fascination in the "British Stereotypes of America, circa 1900" and "Wodehouse attempts an ethnography of NYC for his audience" factors. I love that sort of weird cultural detritus, and the novelty of NYC being a place that anyone would need an introduction to was more than enough to carry me through the book.
I had the same reaction to The Scarlet Pimpernel! The classism was especially shocking because I'd had no expectation of it; from cultural osmosis, I had thought the book was just frothy fun with no real world connection.
I mean, I knew The Scarlet Pimpernel was about a hypercompetent English aristocrat saving his French confrères from the guillotine, so I was expecting a certain amount of classism, but I was still totally unprepared for the spittle-flecked welcome I actually received. I say it crossed a line on the first page, but really it was the very first paragraph.
Psmith Journalist is definitely interesting on those levels! I enjoyed reading the book, just not as much as I would have if it were also a little funnier.
Scarlet Pimpernel managed to remarkable feat of making me recoil from the classism so hard that I actually started to sympathize with the Reign of the Terror!
I KNOW. I' started listening to the guillotine song from the musical just to cheer myself up. :p
It gets less egregious after the first chapter or so, when other things turn up to crowd it out a little. I like Marguerite and her conflicted loyalites. But that first page! Come on.
It's hard to say what I would have made of it at ten! My sister loved it at ten, but our tastes tended to diverge a lot. It has a (somewhat irritating to present eyes) Melodramatic Unspoken Love thing going on that I might have gone for at the time, and stupid aristocrats exclaiming things in drawing rooms are always(?) funny and, as I mentioned below, I've always been a fan of Underestimate Me At Your Peril, but there's a good chance I would have gotten bored before I reached the point where there starts to be a story, and gone off to read Jane Eyre for the millionth time instead. I was a pretty lazy re-reader at ten.
I think I need to re-read it and see what I think. Back then I had seen the movie with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon, which promted me to read it. Read all the sequels too!
MERLE OBERON? I love Merle Oberon! Or at least I loved her in that terrible Wuthering Heights adaptation with what's his name. I should watch this movie, y/y? The Scarlet Pimpernel seems like it would work better with lots of Old Hollywood acting and intrusive violins and Merle Oberon's leonine glare. Is the movie any good?
Gosh, I read the first half of The Scarlet Pimpernel a few years ago & don't remember thinking there was anything untoward about it. I suppose it's pretty classist by definition, seeing as it's about a heroic aristocrat saving his poor fellow aristocrats from the wrath of the great unwashed, and written by an actual baroness, no less! But maybe I'm just used to reading 19th century novels where authorial voices tend to be rather snobby, so I've learned to ignore it.
I'll have to finish it sometime & see if I can spot the offensive passages. But there's so much casual racism & sexism in Victorian/Edwardian literature that I've learned to pick my battles when it comes to old books. :\
Yes, it is very Victorian/Edwardian style. And great fun, once you accept that this is one battle not worth fighting. I first read it when I was about thirteen. I finished it in an evening. I've reread it since then and still enjoy it. Despite the classist attitudes of the era there is one attitude that she didn't have. Just take a look at early Agatha Christie and Buchan as such and there's so much casual anti-Semitism; I think in Christie's case it was typical of her class and it wasn't till she met a Nazi that she realised it was wrong. In one scene of Scarlet Pimpernel, Percy disguises himself as the cliched grovelling Jew in order to get rid of Chauvelin, because while he isn't anti-Semitic, he knows Chauvelin will be. For that matter, his cliched dandy act is just that: an act
( ... )
Percy disguises himself as the cliched grovelling Jew in order to get rid of Chauvelin, because while he isn't anti-Semitic, he knows Chauvelin will be
I haven't gotten there yet! I am mildly curious about whether it will be interesting, or make me cringe so hard that I pull a muscle, or maybe both! (my bet is on a little bit of both, but we'll see).
I haven't come across much of the casual anti-Semitism in Christie yet, but I've been reading her all out of order; I'm sure it's in there somewhere. I know Dorothy Sayers is pretty bad about it, and as far as I can tell, their Detection Club buddy G. K. Chesterton's anti-Semitism isn't even casual.
The Bertie Wooster books are my favorite (Bertie is the best first-person narrator), but there are a huge number of Wodehouse things I haven't read. Psmith was an early endeavor and not spectacularly successful, but the non-Bertie book I'm reading now (The Adventures of Sally) is pretty good.
There's a delicious Arthurian short story in which the damsel comes to the court of King Arthur
( ... )
Will look up that story. It's in one of the Mike Ashley theme collections, not sure where it was first published. Sorry, I didn't realise you hadn't finished. Forget it - there's plenty more to read before you get there.
I have read a few of Dorothy Sayers' books, but I recall in the first Lord Peter novel that he worked out whodunnit because the villain was an anti-Semite. I can't recall any other references.
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so this space may become a little Wodehouse-dense for a while.
This sounds like a plan with no downsides?
;-)
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:D
Yes, the first Mike and Psmith book was a school story; that and this one and Psmith in the City were all written very close to one another. I haven't read those, so I don't know what they're like. They might be a little better if the integrity of the Wodehouse Bubble is preserved -- but Wodehouse is definitely still finding his feet in Psmith Journalist.
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I had the same reaction to The Scarlet Pimpernel! The classism was especially shocking because I'd had no expectation of it; from cultural osmosis, I had thought the book was just frothy fun with no real world connection.
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Psmith Journalist is definitely interesting on those levels! I enjoyed reading the book, just not as much as I would have if it were also a little funnier.
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It gets less egregious after the first chapter or so, when other things turn up to crowd it out a little. I like Marguerite and her conflicted loyalites. But that first page! Come on.
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I'll have to finish it sometime & see if I can spot the offensive passages. But there's so much casual racism & sexism in Victorian/Edwardian literature that I've learned to pick my battles when it comes to old books. :\
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I haven't gotten there yet! I am mildly curious about whether it will be interesting, or make me cringe so hard that I pull a muscle, or maybe both! (my bet is on a little bit of both, but we'll see).
I haven't come across much of the casual anti-Semitism in Christie yet, but I've been reading her all out of order; I'm sure it's in there somewhere. I know Dorothy Sayers is pretty bad about it, and as far as I can tell, their Detection Club buddy G. K. Chesterton's anti-Semitism isn't even casual.
The Bertie Wooster books are my favorite (Bertie is the best first-person narrator), but there are a huge number of Wodehouse things I haven't read. Psmith was an early endeavor and not spectacularly successful, but the non-Bertie book I'm reading now (The Adventures of Sally) is pretty good.
There's a delicious Arthurian short story in which the damsel comes to the court of King Arthur ( ... )
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Sorry, I didn't realise you hadn't finished. Forget it - there's plenty more to read before you get there.
I have read a few of Dorothy Sayers' books, but I recall in the first Lord Peter novel that he worked out whodunnit because the villain was an anti-Semite. I can't recall any other references.
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