Monday, January 18, 2010

A word from the Master.


Looking online to check Wodehouse's final score for the last entry, I found this superb quote, not from his fiction, but from the introduction to Summer Lightning:
A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained "all the old Wodehouse characters under different names." He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.
(Incidentally, the picture is the cover of the audiobook -- as an interpreter of Wodehouse, Martin Jarvis is the ne plus ultra.)

2 comments:

  1. I love reading and listening to Wodehouse.. I like to catch the BBC Radio 7 Listen Again series when they run in. In Dec it was Richard Briers in The Inimitable Jeeves. I am sure it will be on again soon.

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