OLD FAVES RE-ENJOYED IN 2010
Two of my favourite authors are PG Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer, and I returned to a couple of their books in 2010.
I read a bunch of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories (collected in Carry On, Jeeves and The Inimitable Jeeves).
These stories are told from the point of view of the dimwitted but kind hearted Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. He's an independently wealthy man-about-London, who gets himself into trouble (usually when trying to help his friends), and is always saved by Jeeves, his genius gentleman's personal gentleman. The price is usually an item of clothing that Bertie has purchased without Jeeves' approval (purple socks, multicolored spats, a straw boater, etc.) The most brilliant bit about Wodehouse: His similes...
"The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can't think what the deuce to do with the body."
He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!"
He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
As for Heyer, I re-read two of the best: Frederica and Cotillion.
Frederica is a practical young woman tasked with caring for three trouble-making brothers, a gorgeous and overly romantic sister, a man-hating governess, and a large, excitable dog. Alverstoke, the most selfish man in London, is sucked into helping Frederica extricate her charges from one mess after another, and of course they fall in love. The charm of the story comes from the contrast between the world-weary Darcy-esque hero, and the earnest, high-spirited Merrivale family.
In Cotillion our hero, Freddy, is another Bertie Wooster--a fashionable but dumb young man about town. His orderly bachelor life is turned about when his cousin Kitty strong-arms him into a fake engagement, and he finds his hands full of troubles and responsibilities. Freddy surprises everyone (including himself) with his problem-solving abilities, and wins over Kitty who's always had a crush on her more dashing cousin Jack. This book contains my favorite Heyer scene of all time: Freddy and Kitty see the Elgin marbles (or "They've got no heads!")Both books have the same plot--falling in love while helping the heroine fix everyone's problems--but in one scenario the two leads are played by intelligent people (Frederica and Alverstoke), and in the other by two idiots (Freddie and Kitty). The former is more touching, and the latter is funnier. Both are my idea of the perfect romantic-comedy.
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“Oh, Meg said I must go see the marbles which Lord Elgin brought from Greece! She says everyone has seen them! They are at Burlington House, she told me.”
As the carriage wended its way southward again, Freddy confided he would not object to taking a look at them. “Deuce of a dust kicked up about ‘em!” he said. “Seem to be all the crack, though.”
But when, having, as he put it, dropped the blunt for two tickets of admission and a catalogue, he confronted these treasures of ancient Greece, he was quite dumbfounded, and only recovered his voice when he was called upon to admire the Three Fates, from the eastern pediment. "Dash it, they've got no heads!" he protested.
"No, but, you see, Freddy, they are so very old! They have been damaged!" explained Miss Charing. "Damaged! I should rather think so! They haven't any arms either!
" Well, if this don't beat the Dutch! And just look at this, Kit!”
" 'Birth of Athene from the brain of Zeus'," said Kitty, consulting the catalogue .
"Birth of Athene from what?"
"The central groups, which are the most important features of this composition, are missing," said Kitty in propitiating accents. "And the catalogue says that the metopes are not in good preservation either, so perhaps we should just study the frieze, which is excessively beautiful!”
But the disclosure that he had been maced of his blunt by a set of persons whom he freely characterized as hell-kites only to see a collection of marbles of which the main parts were missing so worked upon him that he could not be brought to recognize the merits of the frieze, but seemed instead to be so much inclined to seek out the author of this attempt to gull the public that Kitty hastily announced her wish to visit St Paul's Cathedral, and coaxed him out of the building.
