I Have a Wodehouse Problem. The Problem Is I Can’t Stop Reading Him

Blame it on my love of language, and blame that on my dad—the “it” being my unhealthy need for the stories of P. G. Wodehouse. The witty, wonderful, meandering, wise-cracking tales of Jeeves and Bertie; Empress of Blandings (a prize pig) and her superbly oblivious champion, the ninth Earl; Mr. Mulliner; and the rest. Jeeves, the erudite, infallible, not to mention outrageously loyal valet to Bertram Wooster, the quite undeserving but curiously endearing man about town, is likely the most famous of these characters. But they’re all terrific, I assure you.

Having enjoyed Wodehouse with my dear old pater (as PG would likely put it) in my teenage years, I grew up and put the author aside when I went to grad school, raised children, and adulted my way to the present pass, the context of which is the following: one pandemic summer, I chuckled through a volume of Wodehouse chanced upon at the cottage, and by 2022, my not-overly-delighted wife and I devoted valuable European-vacation time to searching out and visiting second-hand bookstores in hopes of finding some delectable paperback morsels. That the stock in, for example, London was not abundant surprised and reassured me. PGW’s not gone out of style.

But now it’s come to this: I need to ration my Wodehouse! Can’t do without the morning hit, the quick (and quickening) injection of “sunlit perfection” (Stephen Fry). To indulge too liberally would spell doom, so I limit myself to no more than three pages at a go, one go per day, with the first cup of coffee. Given this restriction, the morning Wodehouse doesn’t take up much of my day, but worrying about the role it plays in my life is another matter altogether.

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In an oft-quoted tribute of one master to another, Evelyn Waugh assures us, correctly, that “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own.” The pitch-perfect phrasing suggests a diagnosis for why my Wodehouse abuse problem is currently threatening to spin out of control. In July of 2023, I took on the headship of my academic department (of philosophy). Boy, is that an irksome captivity, the more so because it’s so damn cushy. Complaining of your lot makes you sound like Wooster expressing shock and dismay at the thought that there are people who have to do without a manservant.

In the meantime, my habit’s got so bad that I’m prepared to plead professional obligation in partial mitigation of it. For Wodehouse has an astute way with philosophy and philosophers. Arthur Schopenhauer—who maintained that life is a business that doesn’t cover its costs—is regularly name-checked; and on one occasion, Bertram W., with staggering implausibility, has contrived to become engaged to a woman who sets him the task of reading a fat book entitled Types of Ethical Theory. After ploughing through a wondrously rebarbative sample sentence, he finds himself in need of a restorative and an escape route. Jeeves remarks that the next philosopher in line was to have been Nietzsche, and: “You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir; he is fundamentally unsound.” Professional interpreters of Nietzsche (I’m one of them) might be well advised to set themselves the task of explaining just why Jeeves is wrong here to an imagined audience of Jeeves himself.

But no, the point of Wodehouse isn’t to further philosophy; it’s to revel in such marvels as “that sort of quiet air of being unwilling to stand any rannygazoo” found so often in headmistresses, sergeants major, police constables, some post office clerks, and, I’m afraid, all too many university administrators. So there it is, in a word, the source and taproot of my troubles: too great a fondness for rannygazoo—heaps of it, cubic yards. Impervious to its dangers, helpless in its presence, I confess: I have a rannygazoo problem. I swear I’m working on it (but not all that hard).