If you have not watched Laurie and Fry's TV Series "Jeeves and Wooster", make it a point to do so. It's really a funny, intelligent series. The use of language is clever and the two have their characters nailed down. My wife and I just finished going through it for the 3rd time.
Wooster is a rich nitwit, Jeeves is his valet. They get into impossible situations usually involving Wooster or one of his inept friends getting into trouble with the law or a woman and have to get bailed out in some equally impractical way.
Yes but then read the books. Wodehouse was a supreme prose writer. Carve up those words, as must happen in adaptations, and you lose an immense amount of the fun. Just try it if you don't believe me. Joy in the Morning is one of my favourites.
The amazing thing about Wodehouse is that his stories came almost entirely out of his head and secondhand sources. By no means did he lead the kind of life described in his peerless stories.
But please don't read "Ring for Jeeves" as your first Wodehouse book. I don't know what happened to that one, but it's several notches below the rest, IMO.
I'll vote for 'Psmith in the City', 'Joy in the Morning' and 'The Code of the Woosters'. Also there is the somewhat obscure 'Laughing Gas'.
It's interesting that you say "notches below the rest." That literally may have been true, given that Wodehouse measured how many times he'd revised a page by pasting it higher and higher on his study wall (or some wall somewhere, don't remember exactly what I read). Pages started at the bottom near the floor. A page was ready to release when it had attained a certain height.
And if you must watch any season, watch Season 3 as it's them at their peak. (S2 is good, S1 fun but less clear voice as it uses a few Monty Python tricks, and S4 sadly their patchiest as they had guest stars forced on them.)
I have never watched any of the video series. The books are classics at comedy. I wish 'Pigs have wings' is available on iBooks. Stories involving Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Hon. Threepod etc.. are hilarious and make up a good lazy Sunday afternoon.
Strange and wonderful to see this on the front page. If you haven't read Wodehouse, I'd highly recommend starting with "Leave it to Psmith": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Psmith
Some of the earlier Psmith stories are in the public domain:
I have to know: What do those Americans who only know him as House think when they see his earlier stuff? Is it a bit of a mind blow?
While people are recommending stuff, yes watch J & W, and Fry and Laurie's comedy shows, both are brilliant, but do not miss Blackadder. (Well, skip season 1 until and if you become a hard core fan as even us UK fans find that one a bit hard going.) Worth watching S2,3,4 as not only are these two in it, but you're going to see Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean and Jonny English) at his arguably best, and many other brilliant UK comic actors. (Actually, IIRC, S3 and S4 are the ones that bring him to the fore. In fact Im not sure he was in S2 at all. Cant remember.... Im old!!!!) Blackadder S4 is truly an awesome comedy series. Its worth watching fully and properly just to see how they ended it. Do not skip the series for the ending, you will ruin its power. Let it build up, then tear you to pieces.
Personally speaking is cracked me up when House first started and the US treated him like a proper normal actor, while we in the UK knew his comic roles. But, brilliant for Hugh as he could almost start a new career as a serious proper actor with out the "baggage" of comedy. You guys, if you haven't already, now have the sheer delight of checking out his back catalogue.
I was going to add some YouTube links, but as I was going through the site looking for some gems, I realised I would end up adding so many links I would look like an automated spammer. So, you know, hit YouTube, search, and loss a few (un)productive hours laughing :)
Oh and thank you America for giving him a chance to be a proper actor. I don't think it would have happened in the UK. Type-casting and all that.
Interestingly, I was introduced to Hugh Laurie by way of Blackadder.
When I wan in high school our local public television satiation (WILL) would run episodes of several 1970s and 80s british sitcoms. Among them were Blackadder, Are you being Served? and Fawlty Towers.
I love the Jeeves and Wooster books and TV series. My first Django project was: http://jeevesandwooster.eliseratcliffe.co.uk/. This is a website with information about the Jeeves and Wooster TV series. By the way, I'm very much a beginner programmer so would really appreciate any feedback on the site.
Most older nerds grew up around comedy like monty python, stephen fry plus books, D&D, Warhammer etc etc. Even if you didn't watch much of them you at least knew of them and had heard the catch phrases etc.
We used BBS's for communicating but i was really expensive as it was a phone call, often interstate.
There was no such thing as reddit or the internet, the memes were catch phrases from these collective activities and back then it wasn't cool to be a nerd. No such thing as BroGrammers back then.
Hugh Laurie was a major influence for a older generation of nerds, which is why it is front page.
""" Who are your favorite authors?
Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse, Ruth Rendell.
...
Master? Great genius? Oh yes. One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one
of its greatest practitioners ever, one of the guys on the very top table of all, was a jokesmith. Though
maybe it shouldn’t be that big a surprise. Who else would be up there? Austen, of course, Dickens and
Chaucer. The only one who couldn’t make a joke to save his life would be Shakespeare.
...
We Wodehouse fans are very fond of phoning each other up with new discoveries. But we may do the
great man a disservice when we pull out our favourite quotes in public, like “Ice formed on the butler’s
upper slopes,” or “. . . like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying,
springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag” or (here I go
again) my current favourite, “He spun round with a sort of guilty bound, like an adagio dancer surprised
while watering the cat’s milk” because, irreducibly wonderful though they are, by themselves they are a
little like stuffed fish on a mantelpiece. You need to see them in action to get the full effect. There is not
much in Freddie Threepwood’s isolated line “I have here in this sack a few simple rats” to tell you that
when you read it in context you are at the pinnacle of one of the most sublime moments in all English
literature.
Shakespeare? Milton? Keats? How can I possibly mention the author of Pearls, Girls and Monty
Bodkin and Pigs Have Wings in the same breath as these men? He’s just not serious!
He doesn’t need to be serious. He’s better than that. He’s up in the stratosphere of what the human
mind can do, above tragedy and strenuous thought, where you will find Bach, Mozart, Einstein,
Feynman, and Louis Armstrong, in the realms of pure, creative playfulness.
From the Introduction to Sunset at
Blandings (Penguin Books)
Give me Shakespeare for tragedy, Shaw for wit and Wodehouse for light-hearted comedy with some bacardi and coke, and maybe an island in tbe caribbean any day. ( I prefer a warm bed for my nights though ;)
Also, reading Wodehouse will improve your life. Or make you smile. He's just so brilliant. I'll happily be flamed for submitting articles about such matters.
It is odd you call it "literary". Throughout his life I think Wodehouse was acutely aware that - his work will not be nearly as respectable as say Dostoevsky. Having read almost everything Wodehouse ever wrote (and foreword, preface whatever) - My assumption is Wodehouse will be probably amused to be considered in same league as Dostoevsky or Jane Austin.
I find it sad that, comedy is not considered nearly as respectable. Jeeves would certainly do his typical cough - if an Author of comedy is considered for Nobel prize in literature.
Dostoevsky wasn't particularly respectable when he got started, and Shakespeare was regarded as pop culture until the 19th century. These standards change over time. In fact, great art as often as not starts out as low and only gets deemed high culture once the prejudices of its time have worn off.
Interesting. But have times changed though? You will have to pardon my ignorance little bit because I am a non-native speaker of English (and hence uneducated in history of English literature), but even today you rarely see a comedy getting the Pulitzer. Of course, these awards don't mean much at the end of day but I get distinct feeling that even today - Comedy is considered low brow stuff even behind Fantasy. (Both are my favourite genres btw).
It's not, but it was traditionally regarded as a lower form than tragedy. For example, that's why Dante called his poem the "Comedy of Dante Alighieri" – he was doing something radical by taking the highest subject matter and putting it into the lowest form, vernacular comedy. (It didn't get called the "Divine" comedy until after he died.)
Sir, is it not the case that such an establishment as ours, indeed, does provide an endless source of discourse with regards ones inspirations? Were it not for P.G. Wodehouse, what good would one such as Steve Jobs, or any other manner of autocrat, be?
As the case shall be discovered, much in our circle is derived from sources beyond our own immediate horizons. P.G. Wodehouse, though not new, nor hackerly, certainly demonstrates a prowess with language most indoubtedly motivated by an inner force, a muse as you wish, which allows its effect upon the minds of many.
In short, if one cannot see P.G. Wodehouse in hackerdom, then it may well be simply because one has not read a single of his words. I encourage such circumstances to be resolved, post-haste, lest ye miss the beat of certain drums whose temper has wrought much upon our field ..
“She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.”
There's also the litmus test of the Wodehouse phrase: "The unpleasant, acrid smell of burnt poetry."
For me the HTML has loaded in 400ms, the three images after ~700ms. The text has nice contrast and a nice site. You could argue about the centering though. There are no distractions, you can read the text in calmness. I like that!
It took 4 seconds until the text was even shown and the site did not stop loading until 12s after I started. And now it seems to send a heartbeat every 60s to some tracker to tell it that I am still on the page.
Wooster is a rich nitwit, Jeeves is his valet. They get into impossible situations usually involving Wooster or one of his inept friends getting into trouble with the law or a woman and have to get bailed out in some equally impractical way.