By Robert McCrum
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2004 530 pages, $27.95, ISBN: 0393051595
Reviewed in Good Reading, the Magazine for Book Lovers, ABN 38003 750 150, October 2005
The book is well written and easy to read though it hasn't much to say as, when not writing, Wodehouse seems to have spent all his time watching cricket, having a martini before dinner and going to bed. If he did anything else (apart from collaborate with Nazis that is) there is little evidence of it in this book.
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2004 530 pages, $27.95, ISBN: 0393051595
Reviewed in Good Reading, the Magazine for Book Lovers, ABN 38003 750 150, October 2005
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| Good Reading Magazine |
Like millions of others I had an early attachment to P.G. Wodehouse’s books having read them in omnibus version through four years of Scripture at Prospect High School in Launceston. Although I have returned to them over and over I’ve always had the impression that Wodehouse was born old and boring.
This biography indicates that I might have been right about that. Half way through the book there is an entire chapter on tax returns and during the first half of the book Mr. McCrum cranks the reader's flagging interest with frequent promises of more excitement during the chapters covering World War Two.
It appears, despite McCrum’s apologia, that Wodehouse was an outright collaborator except that unlike some others he was directly commissioned and sponsored by the Nazis. Previously I had always thought he was an innocent victim of circumstance who richly deserved the knighthood so remarkably bestowed in his last year (the Queen Mother was a fan).
The book is well written and easy to read though it hasn't much to say as, when not writing, Wodehouse seems to have spent all his time watching cricket, having a martini before dinner and going to bed. If he did anything else (apart from collaborate with Nazis that is) there is little evidence of it in this book.
There is much to enjoy in McCrum’s valuable and informed enthusiasm about Wodehouse’s writing, but he tends to dismiss the rest of Wodehouse’s life by saying what an odd person he was - oh and a Nazi collaborator, but lets draw a veil over that.
After reading Allan Jefferson’s 1996 biography of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in which it was proved that she was a willing member of the Nazi Party, I was never able to listen to her music again and having failed to give away her CDs I threw them out. After reading "Wodehouse, A Life" I honestly doubt that I will ever read another Wodehouse book again (don’t hold me to that) or have one in the house (ditto).
