Wodehouse: A Life FROM THE PUBLISHER
"P. G. Wodehouse is a comic writer of genius best known for Bertie Wooster and his omniscient manservant Jeeves: the pig-loving peer Lord Emsworth - and a regiment of aunts and butlers. But although Wodehouse and his work have become indissolubly part of the English language and literature, the writer himself is enigmatic. His life, notorious for one historic blunder during the Second World War, remains remarkably unexplored." "Based on research throughout Britain, Europe and the United States, Wodehouse: A Life goes deep beneath the surface of Wodehouse's extraordinary career, and reveals as never before the complexity of a writer who liked to maintain, against all the evidence, that his life was a 'breeze from start to finish'. In a portrait of a quintessential English writer and his times, Robert McCrum describes Wodehouse's beginnings in Edwardian London, his golden years on Broadway in Jazz Age America, and his adventures in thirties Hollywood. Wodehouse: A Life is a journey through some of the twentieth century's most turbulent decades, and it culminates in Wodehouse's controversial wartime experience: his internment in Nazi Germany and the broadcasts from Berlin, a fateful decision that haunted him to his death in 1975, and still affects his reputation." Wodehouse: A Life is the story of an Englishman who served to represent the essence of his age and country, but who, tragically, ended his life at odds with both. This biography brings to life the worlds of Wodehouse's century, while never forgetting for a moment his comic genius.
SYNOPSIS
To generations born a decade or more after the Second World War, P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1875) is a good, fun read and a prime source of humor perfect for public broadcasting. However, as journalist and author McCrum points out, toward the middle of his life Wodehouse emulated Wooster by broadcasting a series of talks on German radio during his internment in the Second World War. Wodehouse was apparently unaware of the consequences or the ramifications of his talks, which consisted largely of self- deprecating humor, but which also contained references to situations in Germany that implied all was a breeze, and no one had any need to worry much about the intentions of the Nazis. The rest of the world already knew better, and Wodehouse stopped being breezy, or funny, for a very long time to a large number of people. McCrum includes a welcome list of Wodehouse's literary progeny. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Janet Maslin - The New York Times
… Mr. McCrum, the literary editor of The Observer, faces formidable obstacles here - not least of them the existence of numerous other Wodehouse biographies, including a couple of recent ones. But he surmounts them with an invaluable portrait, thanks to a broad, incisive and complex understanding of Wodehouse's psyche. He also adroitly balances analysis of life and literature, mingling them aptly when necessary.
Stephen Fry - The Observer
While not claiming to be a literary biography, McCrum's book allows [the] connections between early life and final artistic flowering to be perfectly made. The rest is supremely well told and, considering its lack of eventfulness... surprisingly riveting.... No lover of Wodehouse will want to be without this masterly appraisal of the good life of a good man. Who happened to be a very, very great writer indeed.
Publishers Weekly
In his authoritative biography of P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), British author McCrum (My Year Off), literary editor of the Observer, rightly identifies the crisis over the great, if na ve, English humorist's 1941 radio broadcasts from Germany (which led to accusations of his being a "Nazi stooge") as "the defining moment of Wodehouse's life." While the broadcasts and their aftermath get the most scrutiny, McCrum ably surveys a 75-year writing career that began in 1900 and ended only with Wodehouse's death at 93. He succinctly covers all the major topics-Wodehouse's creation of the immortal Jeeves and Wooster; his triumphs as a lyricist for the musical theater; his frustrating stints as a scriptwriter in Hollywood; his tax troubles; his love of animals; his post-WWII U.S. exile; his long and successful, if apparently sexless, marriage. McCrum is franker on this latter subject than previous biographers and also dispels a myth or two. While Wodehouse largely left his financial affairs to his wife, Ethel, "in important literary business Wodehouse was always clinically decisive." When his new literary agent, Paul Reynolds Jr., wasn't successful, he fired him. Earlier studies have tended to be partisan or personal and stronger on some aspects of Wodehouse's varied life than others. For balance and readability, this popular biography, like Jeeves, stands alone. 16 pages of illus. not seen by PW. (Nov. 29) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
McCrum, literary editor of the Observer (London), contends that P.G. Wodehouse's contributions to American and English literature have been largely overlooked. While one could challenge his conclusion that Wodehouse can be favorably compared with Jane Austen, McCrum does offer a thorough and readable account of his subject's long life and prolific literary career. McCrum takes the reader from Wodehouse's school days at Dulwich to his successful work as a Broadway lyricist and a master storyteller of Edwardian times who gave us Bertie Wooster and Jeeves to his darkest hour during World War II and final years of semi-exile in America. He offers his most spirited and convincing analysis in countering accusations that Wodehouse knowingly collaborated with the Nazis; his interpretation is entirely consistent with the portrait of "Plummie" as a shy man who dealt with painful realities by avoidance and by devotion to the works of his imagination. Though McCrum comes across as a bit of an apologist for Wodehouse, this work is thoroughly researched and well written; it will please Wodehouse aficionados and general readers alike. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/04.] Anthony J. Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A graceful biography of the most British of all humorous novelists. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975) was born at the height of the Victorian era to middle-class colonial administrators who left their children in the care of a nanny in England and barely saw them during their childhood. Wodehouse compensated, McCrum argues convincingly, as a youth by throwing himself cheerfully into the hierarchical world of the English boarding school, as an adult by throwing himself into work. Fortunately for readers around the world, his work turned out to be the creation of a series of brilliant comic archetypes: first, Psmith and Ukbridge, then the immortal manservant Jeeves and his foolish but sweet employer, Bertie Wooster, in a series of novels anchored in the secure Edwardian world of Plum's young manhood. (His lively lyrics for Broadway's pioneering Princess Theatre musicals, and his long-term sojourn in America, are also given their due.) Wodehouse put his foot wrong only once, when as a resident in occupied France he was interned by the Nazis during WWII and foolishly agreed to several radio interviews that forever tarnished his reputation and prompted charges of treason in his besieged homeland. British publisher/author McCrum (My Year Off, 1998, etc.) doesn't gloss over the appalling lack of political sense that embroiled Wodehouse in this public relations disaster, concluding that "the moral test with which Wodehouse was confronted in June 1941 was one that was beyond him"-obsessed as always with the need to work and the desire to please his audience. But he judges his subject gently, backed up by no less an authority than George Orwell, as a duffer rather than a traitor who paid theprice in declining sales and dismissal as the bard of a vanished age after the war. His biographer captures the warmth and charm of a man who wanted only to amuse, who loved his party-girl wife and his Pekinese dogs and his daily exercise. A bit long, but a fitting tribute to one of the great purveyors of light-though not insubstantial-entertainment. Agent: Michael Sissons/PFD
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