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Rereading: The Inimitable Jeeves
Every time I pick up a Wodehouse book I'm struck anew by how good it is. The difference between the best Wodehouse pastiche I've ever read and the real thing is as evident after a few paragraphs as the difference between designer shoes and plastic knockoffs from Payless, and there are a few very talented pastichers out there. The voice is simply sublime, and sublimely difficult to imitate. Wodehouse is a comic genius with an incredibly fine-tuned ear for language. He's witty, always on-tone but always novel - for example, he rarely repeats his own humourous turns of phrase as often as the fanfic makes use of parodies of the "e. and b." style of abbreviation.
I read in an afterword-essay somewhere that when writing, Wodehouse would pin the typed pages of his manuscript all round the walls of his room, and then move the less-funny pages down a few inches, and then go back rewriting until each page had an equally funny peak. You can distinguish this easily as you're reading along. There aren't valleys. The valleys in the story action are still filled with clever turns of phrase, funny asides, rimshots, and subtle jokes. It makes the deftly understated sentimental moments between Jeeves and Wooster in the canon more affecting than the best-rendered of the expliciter slash in fanfiction.
On an unrelated note, I have about a litre of leftover charoset from Passover still. Somebody, please, help me eat this.
I read in an afterword-essay somewhere that when writing, Wodehouse would pin the typed pages of his manuscript all round the walls of his room, and then move the less-funny pages down a few inches, and then go back rewriting until each page had an equally funny peak. You can distinguish this easily as you're reading along. There aren't valleys. The valleys in the story action are still filled with clever turns of phrase, funny asides, rimshots, and subtle jokes. It makes the deftly understated sentimental moments between Jeeves and Wooster in the canon more affecting than the best-rendered of the expliciter slash in fanfiction.
On an unrelated note, I have about a litre of leftover charoset from Passover still. Somebody, please, help me eat this.
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