Thursday, August 20, 2009

JEEVES IN THE OFFING

Background: Published in 1960 (U.S. title: How Right You Are, Jeeves)

This is the one where: Bertie and Sir Roderick Glossop become pals!

The action takes place at: Brinkley Court

Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Roberta “Bobbie” Wickham (“Aunt Dahlia, describing this young blister as a one-girl beauty chorus, had called her shots perfectly. Her outer crust was indeed of a nature to cause those beholding it to rock back on their heels with a startled whistle. But while equipped with eyes like twin stars, hair ruddier than the cherry, oomph, espièglerie and all the fixings, B. Wickham had also the disposition and general outlook on life of a ticking bomb. In her society you always had the uneasy feeling that something was likely to go off at any moment with a pop. You never knew what she was going to do next or into what murky depths of soup she would carelessly plunge you.”)

But she’s really in love with: Reginald “Kipper” Herring (“The salt of the earth. But nobody could have called him a knock-out in the way of looks. Having gone in for a lot of boxing from his earliest years, he had [a] cauliflower ear … and in addition to this a nose which some hidden hand had knocked slightly out of the straight. He would, in short, have been an unsafe entrant to have backed in a beauty contest, even if the only other competitors had been Boris Karloff, King King and Oofy Prosser of the Drones.”)

The task at hand: Keep Aubrey Upjohn from suing for libel over Kipper’s negative review of Upjohn’s memoir, keep Wilbert Cream from proposing to Phyllis Mills, keep Glossop’s identity secret while he’s undercover as a butler to observe Wilbert Cream for signs of insanity, and find Uncle Tom’s missing silver cow creamer—which Bertie and Glossop assume Wilbert Cream hse stolen—without arousing the suspicions of Mrs. Cream

Other characters include:
  • Aunt Dahlia Travers (“She greeted me with one of those piercing view-halloos which she had picked up on the hunting field in the days when she had been an energetic chivvier of the British fox. It sounded like a gas explosion and went through me from stem to stern. I’ve never hunted myself, but I understand that half the battle is being able to make noises like some jungle animal with dyspepsia, and I believe that Aunt Dahlia in her prime could lift fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated from them by two ploughed fields and a spinney.”)
  • Sir Roderick Glossop (“The eminent brain specialist…was a man I would have not cared to lunch with myself, our relations having been on the stiff side since the night at Lady Wickham’s place in Herfordshire when, acting on the advice of my hostess’s daughter Roberta, I had punctured his hot-water bottle with a darning needle in the small hours of the morning. Quite unintentional, of course. I had planned to puncture the h-w-b of his nephew Tuppy Glossop, with whom I had a feud on, and unknown to me they had changed rooms. Just one of those unfortunate misunderstandings.”)
  • Aubrey Upjohn, Bertie and Kipper’s former headmaster (“I was immediately struck by the change that had taken place in his appearance since those get-togethers at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, when with a sinking heart I had watched him reach for the whangee and start limbering up the shoulder muscles with a few trial swings. At that period of our acquaintance he had been an upstanding old gentlemen about eight feet six in height with burning eyes, foam-flecked lips and flame coming out of both nostrils. He had now shrunk to a modest five foot seven or thereabouts, and I could have felled him with a single blow.”)
  • Phyllis Mills, Upjohn’s stepdaughter (“Nice but goofy, Kipper had said, and a glance told me that he was right. One learns, as one goes through life, to spot goofiness in the other sex with an unerring eye, and this exhibit had a sort of mild, Soul’s Awakening kind of expression which made it abundantly clear that, while not a super-goof like some of the female goofs I’d met, she was quite goofy enough to be going on with. Her whole aspect was that of a girl who at the drop of a hat would start talking baby talk.”)
  • Mrs. Adela Cream, writer of mystery stories (“tall and thin with a hawk-like face that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. She had an ink spot on her nose, the result of working on her novel of suspense. It is virtually impossible to write a novel of suspense without getting a certain amount of ink of the beezer. Ask Agatha Christie or anyone.”)
  • Wilbert Cream, Adela’s son, “a willowy bird about the tonnage and general aspect of David Niven with ginger hair and a small moustache,” who Bertie and Dahlia mistake for his brother Wilfred, a notorious playboy and kleptomaniac
Bertie’s trials and tribulations include: Having to break into Wilbert Cream’s room to look for the cow-creamer and being caught by Mrs. Cream twice, being knocked into a lake by a dachshund, and once again being the fall guy at the end of the story (when Mrs. Cream decides Glossop-as-butler is an imposter and calls the police on him, Jeeves resolves the matter by saying that Glossop was undercover to observe Bertie’s inanity and kleptomania)

Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: Nothing, except maybe his short-lived plan to knock Upjohn into the lake and have Kipper save him from drowning (seriously, how many books does Wodehouse use this plot in?), thus earning his gratitude and ending the libel lawsuit, which of course goes awry

First paragraph: “Jeeves placed the sizzling eggs and b. on the breakfast table, and Reginald (‘Kipper’) Herring and I, licking the lips, squared our elbows and got down to it. A lifelong buddy of mine, this Herring, linked to me by what are called imperishable memories. Years ago, when striplings, he and I had done a stretch together at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, the preparatory school conducted by that prince of stinkers, Aubrey Upjohn M.A., and had frequently stood side by side in the Upjohn study awaiting the receipt of six of the juiciest from a cane of the type that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as the fellow said. So we were, you might say, rather like a couple of old sweats who had fought shoulder to shoulder on Crispin’s day, if I’ve got the name right.”

Bertie fashion moment: None, again. Maybe I need to get rid of this category?

Slang I’d like to start using: “Beasel,” Bertie’s preferred term for Bobbie Wickham: “I could make nothing of this. It seemed to me that the beasel spoke in riddles.” Internet results suggest “beasel” either means “flapper,” “fiend,” or just “girl,” but the way Bertie uses it seems like a slightly nicer way of saying “bitch.”

Bertie gets no respect: “‘I see you have not changed since you were with me at Malvern House,’ [Upjohn] said in an extremely nasty voice… ‘Bungling Wooster we used to call him…He could not perform the simplest action such as holding a cup without spreading ruin and disaster on all sides. It was an axiom at Malvern House that if there was a chair in any room in which he happened to be, Wooster would trip over it. The child…is the father of the man.’”

Best Jeeves moment:
Jeeves: “I mistrust these elaborate schemes. One cannot depend on them. As the poet Burns says, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.”
Bertie: “Scotch, isn’t it, that word?”
Jeeves: “Yes, sir.”
Bertie: “I thought as much. The ‘gang’ told the story. Why do Scotsmen say gang?”
Jeeves: “I have no information, sir. They have not confided in me.”

Best bit of description: “The effect the apparition had on me was to make me start violently, and we all know what happens when you start violently while holding a full cup of tea. The contents of mine flew through the air and came to rest on the trousers of Aubrey Upjohn, M.A., moistening them to no little extent. Indeed, it would scarcely be distorting the facts to say that he was now not so much wearing trousers as wearing tea.”

Best bit of dialogue: Bertie’s explanation to Aunt Dahlia of why he doesn’t want to marry Bobbie Wickham, despite having proposed to her and been rejected in the past: “The male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine for the male non-rabbit) and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce…I’m one of the rabbits and always have been while she is about as pronounced a dasher as ever dashed. What I like is the quiet life, and Roberta Wickham wouldn’t recognize the quiet life if you brought it to her on a plate with watercress round it.”

My review: Four stars. Bobbie Wickham is delightfully madcap, plus we have Aunt Dahlia, the return of the cow creamer, Glossop bonding with Bertie (and revealing himself to have been at least slightly Bertie-like in his youth), and finally meeting Aubrey Upjohn, a nemesis Bertie has mentioned in many previous stories. About the only downside is that the book could have used a bit more Jeeves (he’s once again on vacation, “off to Herne Bay for the shrimping,” in the first half). Also, I do have to note that despite throwing tea and cucumber sandwiches at people when startled, overall Bertie seems to have become a lot smarter than in the early books—he still gets into scrapes, but his role is more the jaded, sarcastic onlooker and less the bumbling, blithering idiot. I’m not sure whether I approve of this or not.

Had I read it before? No! I would definitely remember Bertie getting buddy-buddy with Glossop.

Next up: Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN

After reading Frankenstein: A Cultural History, I rewatched Gods and Monsters and then decided to read the Christopher Bram novel it’s based on. It’s a good book, but mostly what struck me when I read it was how great an adaptation the movie is—like, pretty much spot-on, to the point where I’m not sure you need to read the book if you’ve seen the film. One thing I did like better about the book is that Whale’s housekeeper is Hispanic, which is so natural for the L.A. setting, whereas in the movie she’s played as rather quirkily (almost distractingly) Germanic by Lynn Redgrave; I would have rather seen the part cast with a Hispanic actress, and think that in seizing the opportunity to get a big name like Redgrave (even though she is brilliant), the filmmakers undermined the character a little—I found her more likeable in the book). Also, it’s much clearer in the book that the final climactic scene between Whale and Boone is something Whale’s been planning for a while, rather than something that spontaneously happens in the heat of the moment. But I do have to admit that Gods and Monsters is a much better title than Father of Frankenstein, and in fact I see that the current edition of the book is being sold with that title. The weirdest thing about this book is that it takes place at 788 Amalfi Drive in Pacific Palisades, and when I was in the middle of reading it, I attended a party at 1310 Amalfi Drive! Unfortunately I didn’t notice the coincidence until I got home from the party; otherwise, I certainly would have seized the chance to drive by James Whale’s house, the site of his tragic end (he drowned himself in the pool).

BETSY IN SPITE OF HERSELF

Sequel to Maud Hart Lovelace’s Heaven to Betsy. Betsy is now a high-school sophomore, and like any self-respecting teenager, she wants nothing more than to change everything about herself. She sets her sights on Phil Brandish, a rich newcomer to town who drives a bright red automobile (cars are still an exotic rarity in Deep Valley in 1907, and Lovelace adorably describes the red auto “passing with almost meteorlike swiftness, fifteen or twenty miles an hour”). Seizing the opportunity of a Christmas trip to visit her friend Tib in exotic Milwaukee (seriously: Lovelace makes much of Milwaukee being, as Betsy’s father says, “so German that it’s like a foreign city”), Betsy resolves to return “Dramatic and Mysterious,” which involves spelling her name “Betsye,” laughing and smiling less, wearing green all the time, sprinkling her speech with “foreign phrases,” and dousing herself in Jockey Club perfume. She does succeed in attracting Phil, but at the expense of fun times with the Crowd, of course. Her true friends don’t like her new personality (“Cab said she put on airs, acted la de da”), and Phil turns out to be a stick-in-the-mud who’s jealous of Betsy spending time with anyone else and talks about nothing but his car (and attempts to get “spoony” with Betsy by holding her hand, apparently an inappropriate liberty that prompts her to declare, “You might as well know, I don’t hold hands”). Betsy knows she doesn’t truly love Phil, “But Phil was big and handsome; he was rich and he was a junior. He was very exciting.” On the one hand, Betsy’s behavior is exasperating, especially when Phil dumps her for being her true, “silly” self and she’s so upset she once again loses the Essay Contest to Joe Willard, but on the other hand, I sort of appreciate that Lovelace doesn’t punish her too badly for it. Betsy learns she should be true to herself, but there’s something admirably assertive and healthy in her experimentation, as her sister Julia points out: “You wanted Phil, and you went out and got him. It took determination. It was all right. And you couldn’t have done it without a little of what Cab calls ‘la de da.’” “But I didn’t keep him,” Betsy responds. “Silly!” says Julia. “You didn’t want to.”

What I found most interesting about the book was the portrayal of Joe, Betsy’s future husband, who I never found that appealing as a teen (because he wasn’t overtly fun or funny, like the other boys in the Crowd) but is now starting to seem like a hot Mr. Darcy type to me. Before she starts going with Phil, Betsy decides Joe should become part of the Crowd, but when she invites him to drop by her house sometime, he rudely rebuffs her, saying it would “bore” him. Later, Miss Sparrow, the librarian, gives Betsy valuable insight into Joe’s character, revealing that he supports himself entirely on his own, working at the Creamery after school and on threshing crews in the summer to pay for his room and board and save money for college. Though Joe’s hard luck story verges on making him sound saintly, there’s endearing vulnerability about it too:
“He has no father or mother. He has to work for a living. And being barred from the usual things high school students do, he takes refuge in books…He isn’t a boy who pities himself. Not at all. He has to work, but he makes that an adventure. He would really like to play football or baseball after school, but he can’t. He has to go to the Creamery. So he just makes plans about playing them in college…His routine is quite satisfactory to him but only because he puts out of his mind the things he cannot have… If he let you draw him into your Crowd, he would constantly be embarrassed. He would be forced to admit that he isn’t, perhaps, quite as lucky as he thinks he is. Don’t you see, Betsy? Living as he does now, he doesn’t mind shabby clothes. But he is a proud boy. He wouldn’t like coming to call on you in shabby clothes. When you urge him to come he gets desperate. He just has to be rude.”
Awww. And how cute is it that, just like Elizabeth Bennet falling in love with Darcy after seeing his house, Betsy’s heart warms toward Joe when she learns that he “just about lives at the library”: “She loved the library too…the quiet, the smell of books.” Hooray for sexy, sexy libraries!

TRAFFIC

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us, by Tom Vanderbilt: As someone who’s always had a long driving commute (although ironically, I read most of this book while riding the Metro to work) and now lives in one of the world’s most infamous traffic cities, I found this collection of factoids about the psychology of driving fascinating. While not much hard information stuck with me (except, randomly, for the fact that about 75 traffic signals in L.A. run on “Sabbath timing,” where it’s not necessary to press the button to get a pedestrian walk sign from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, because Sabbath-observant Jews are not supposed to operate machinery on the Sabbath—and the city offered to install sensors that activated the walk signal automatically when a pedestrian was present, but was rebuffed because even passively triggering a device would be considered breaking the Sabbath), I do think the book made me a more thoughtful and careful driver. After being barraged with statistics and studies about how the human brain isn’t evolutionarily equipped to operate at the high speeds we drive, and how everyone thinks they’re a much better driver than they really are, and hundreds more odd quirks of biology and sociology that underscore how illogical people’s behavior behind the wheel can be, driving doesn’t seem the simple, casual undertaking it did before. (Not that I’m paranoid now—in fact, it seems miraculous that traffic functions as well as it does!) A worthy read for anyone who drives (or bikes or walks).