Over Seventy - the sixth biscuit

Over Seventy by PG Wodehouse (Herbert Watkins: 1957) A self proclaimed "autobiography with digressions". Wodehouse pontificates on pretty much everything, using his status as a septuagenarian to wisely survey the world before him and the life he's led

Having decided to treat myself last week, I couldn’t resist more of the same. I never could leave it at just one biscuit. Just one scoop of ice cream. I always had to have two. Or more often, three. Occasionally four. Five once or twice, but never six.

So the treat this week was Wodehouse shaped. I love that guy. Like most people, it started with Jeeves and Wooster (courtesy of Fry and Laurie). But once I decided to read some of the books, I was hooked in whole other way. Read about it right here (for those GBR novices amongst you).

This, though, isn’t another typical Wodehouse book or short story. This is a memoir of sorts. Not for ole P.G. the introspective story of a life well lived. Not for him the listing out of events and friendships that spanned his years. Instead, Over Seventy is his 200-odd page response to a request from a journalist asking for some of observations of the world now that he was officially an old gent.

I was chuffed that the opening of the book does at least go over some biographical details. I wanted to know how it all started for Wodehouse, and I was given the facts of the matter in fairly short form. I even found out one or two things about his “process” that surprised me (you’ll have to read it to find out for yourself).

But then the book deviates. As Wodehouse argues, any book of his life would largely be taken up with “and then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote…” and so on.

So instead, we’re treated to his musings on any number of topics and trends, generously interspersed with an anecdote here and a by-the-way there.

It’s warming reading. It really is. It has the same escapism and old world humour that his fiction does. It wraps its arms around you, deposits you in an old leather armchair, lights the fire, puts a glass of port in your hand, locks the world outside, and does a thoroughly good job of entertaining you. It’s easy, and that’s its power. It comes off the page in the honeyed tones of your granddad.

All the more impressive given the work that’s gone into this. Wodehouse admits himself that he goes through small forests worth of paper in planning his books. Each sentence is formed, reformed, redrafted, edited, reshaped. He went to a lot of trouble to make his writing what it is.

There is a Wodehousian downside though, and one I’ve not come across before. With his other stories, there’s always a strong sense of “what next.” The scenarios he concocts are often complex and tension ridden. With this though, there was no real point. No end game. It’s more a collection of what he thinks about stuff.

Endearing, funny, clever, insightful in parts. But nothing to make you grab it and thirstily drink up a few pages, nothing to make you absolutely positively have to find out what happens. I wouldn’t dare go as far as to say it dragged (this is Wodehouse, after all) but the lack of urgency was an occasional but definite drawback.

Still huge amounts of fun though. Still something I loved. Still a writer that makes me feel wonderful to read.

8 GBR

Go read some Wodehouse. Now.

Next week, I may have to go back to reading something I don’t already love. I guess.

How I Escaped my Certain Fate - a funny start to y2k+12

How I Escaped my Certain Fate by Stewart Lee (Faber and Faber: 2010). One of Britain’s most acclaimed stand-ups explains how he became disillusioned with the industry and drifted instead into directing Jerry Springer the Opera. And then how he fell back in love with stand-up as he started to better understand his own brand of it and rediscover his audience. Includes transcripts from the three shows which marked his return to the world of stand-up.

Happy New Year chumps!! And welcome to a GBR 2012.

I (like you, I’m sure) have one or two rubbish New Year’s Day chores to do today. I’m supposed to clean out the fish tank. Also, I’m supposed to go for a run (which, after the December I’ve had, will be no simple thing).

And all after an evening which stretched into the small hours and was soaked in festive juice (otherwise known as gin, champagne, red wine, then champagne again).

So I’m putting it all off with a bit of fun first. Excuse me whilst I subject you to the first review of the year.

Stewart Lee is a bit of a hero of mine, for a few reasons that I won’t bore you with. Suffice to say I’ve followed him for a young age (in a healthy fan, not a borderline stalker, sort of way). So I’ve been meaning to read this since the paperback came out in August.

I was expecting transcripts of some of his comeback shows, split up by some narrative direct from the man himself. I expected him to explain how he was dragged him from the obscurity of directing one of the most controversial and successful musicals/operas of all time, back into the glaring limelight of alternative comedy and a late night half hour show on BBC3.

I was expecting it to be funny, of course, but also to give a bit of a peek into how Stewart Lee works, and what parts are played by the people around him (especially his 90s sidekick Richard Herring).

For the most part, the book delivered on these expectations. I don’t want you to think it didn’t. But it delivered more as well. Largely through the extensive footnotes, Stew (as his friends and me call him) constantly keeps you on his side of the bar. He doesn’t treat the reader as a member of the audience, he brings you behind the scenes with constant explanations of his thinking. The result is a more intimate book than I was expecting, and more intimate perhaps than Stew had intended.

By the time I put the book down, Stew had turned from one of my favourite comedians into a real person; from someone on stage doing an act into a man whose way of thinking and motivations I could begin to understand. Not inside and out, but a little.

And he does this without losing any of the humour. He doesn’t weigh the text down with emotion or with an overdeveloped sense of his ‘journey’. There are no X-Factor style cut-aways where we learn more than we wanted to about some semi-manufactured sob story. But he does slowly tell us why he gets on stage, why he writes comedy, why he’s made the decisions he’s made, and why he tells the jokes he tells (though of course he’d deny that he actually tells jokes). He tells us who his heroes are and why. He tells us whose work he dislikes and why.

In short, he lets us into his world in a more real way than his stand-up act ever has. And his world is an interesting one.

The form he’s chosen to achieve all of this can be a little distracting. In the sections where his shows are reproduced, constantly flitting between the transcript and his footnotes (where the real story lies) can be disorienting in places. But it’s a minor criticism, and I’m not sure how he could have achieved what he has here without this format.

This is essentially a funny book, and one that successfully brings us behind the scenes of Stew’s act without ever leaving it behind fully.

I liked it. I think you would too.

8 GBR

Not a bad start to the year then.

I now have about ten books lined up to work my way through, finally following up on a few recommendations you guys have given me in the last couple of months. All made possible by a well informed Santa who seems to have worked out how to order vouchers from Amazon.

Next week, something Arthur Conan Doyle flavoured.