PG Wodehouse's language shimmers, much as his character Jeeves enters a room. It is just there, bright and intelligent. To be honest, what it says might not be terribly deep, but it says a great deal about how to say something. For those for whom English a second, third, or fourth language, learning tongue can be an aduous task. Once the basics have been learned, one could do worse than learn of its possibilities of playfulness than reading a stack of Wodehouse comic novels and stories. It might not be of any use in speaking American, but it is still fun.
I was just puttering about with a few omnibuses of Plum's prose, intending to wing off a few juicy bits. However, soon I became quite perplexed. Here is the nub, the point, the gist, if you will. It's terribly difficult to tear chunks of meat bleeding from the body of the work without feeling, well, a bit rude about the whole thing, if you know what I mean. It's the whole rhythm of the words and the nonsense piled upon gorgeous nonsense that is the thing, of course. But in any case, here are a few quotations that you might enjoy. Those that really make my point require noding the novel.
"I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I alway come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.
"Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises its eyebrows, and can't make out what you are talking about."
Right Ho, Jeeves1934
"A chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him."
The Code of the Woosters(1938)
Authors on Plum Wodehouse:
Evelyn Waugh: "He will continue to release future generations from captivity which may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in."
Douglas Adams: "One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one of its greatest practitioners ever was a jokesmith. What Wodehouse writes is pure word music."
This year is the 25th anniversary of his death.