Plumtopia Returns
Sebastian
Faulks has dared to tread the sacred turf and impersonate the art of the PLUM,
to a divided reception. Diehard fans of PG Wodehouse are outraged at Faulks
sacrilegious feat of writing a sequel to the famous Jeeves-Wooster series. The
other more tempered audience has expressed intrigue and admiration at his close
imitation of Plum’s stylistic tropes and his sheer chutzpah to imitate the
inimitable emperor of the English sentence. But I am not here to join a
bandwagon and add fuel to the fiery furore. Rather, it gives me an opportunity to
celebrate and delve into the unceasing pleasure of Wodehouse utopian world –
“Plumtopia” (courtesy: a blessed Plum fan)
Plum, as he
was lovingly called by his dear ones, believed in the lightness of being. He maintained a cheery disposition throughout
his life. He did not involve himself in the everyday care of life, leaving it
all in the able hands of his wife Ethel. Testing times of his life did not mark
him adversely. On the contrary, he continued to write comic pieces and jested
and broadcast humorous anecdotes after his internment with the Germans in the
Second World War. The ugly aftermath, which exiled him from his home
country and expatriated him to United States, was born by him with genial
happiness. Such a blessed soul could not help but paint an idyllic world in his
writings, imbued with humorous phrase, wit and the comic unsurpassed.
His critics accused him of churning out the
same story with variations over and over again. And indeed, it is intriguing that his ardent
readers awaited his next read eagerly, and haplessly absorbed his plots and
delightful recurring characters ravenously. Many a writer has been lost to the
dark recesses of forgetfulness but Wodehouse still sells along with
contemporary bestsellers. The plots of his stories are intricate with neat
twists and absurdity reigns supreme. The
Gentleman of gentlemen, the Edwardian Bertie Wooster, man of leisure but
undyingly kind and honey sweet is pursued relentlessly by lay women and
heiresses alike. He finds himself unduly
engaged, and in a mess in a country estate, not of his making, just everyday
turn of innocuous events. Cogs in the chaotic situation could be more such
incidents (of unpleasantness, inheritances or thefts) or men and women
entangled through an intricate vicious web. Jeeves, the erudite Butler, is the
only miracle man who can unwrangle the mess and set everyone free and good. Bertie
and Jeeves appeared in 1915 and were reworked by the author till their last
appearance in ‘Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen’ in 1974 when he was in his nineties. Non-Bertie
novels, the Blandings novels, The
Uncle Fred series, The Psmith novels and stories from earlier years are
indicative that his stories are somewhat
repetitive in nature – but the fanatic adherence of his followers to his
works is the magic of his language. When
we read him and assimilate him, the experience is like the man who drank his
first glass of sparkling French wine.
The word bubbles whizz and fizz in the mind creating ripples of savory
reading experience par excellence.
The characters acquired a life of their own beyond his
books. Lord Emsworth and his pig, Mr
Milliner, Jeeves…………are as alive as our real life best friends and we know them
warts and all. Their unfailing power to
woo and enthrall us is bewildering beyond reason. Wodehouse, though indicted of
creating scatterbrained female characters, evermore meddling, domineering and
stubborn, is also credited with creating women who are feisty, bubbly, witty
and with a mind of their own. And these
women were not always beautiful, young, rich or articulate to find love in
their lives. The standard prerequisites of heroines in romantic novels of his
age were subverted and they find love, companionship and joy irrespective of
looks, age and size. A true feminist agenda. “Lord Emsworth’s nephew Wilfred Allsop falls in love with his Uncle’s
‘pig-girl’ Monica Simmons, whose solid build and agricultural occupation could
hardly be less feminine. Wilfred Allsop
objects strongly when his friend Tipton ‘Tippy’ Plimsoll points this out. “I’m
sorry you think she looks like an all-in wrestler,’ he said stiffly, “To me, she seems to resemble one of those Norse
goddesses. However, be that as it may, I love her, Tippy. I fell in love with her at first sight.” A blogger writes , ‘In Wodehouse’s world, a man can have a crooked face and
a cauliflower ear, yet reign supreme. Just as it should be.’
Psmith is
the only character drawn from his own life. But he did not go on with him as an
older man because he thought that what made him funny as a young boy could not
be applied to an older version of him. Wodehouse always knew that wooly head Lord
Emsworth living in a castle was a
hilarious character he had created and he stuck with him. It isn’t every writer’s cup of tea to think of
comic sequences. It’s only if you view life lightly, are amused at life’s
twists and turns and are able to see the absurd in every person or situation ,
in short you are psyched with a funny bone , then you can dole out fiction like
PLUM, like 100 books in his lifetime. He
read exhaustively, like Shakespeare complete works throughout his life. And then, very skillfully he made a soufflé of
Cicero, Shakespeare and Spinoza and
delivered it to his readers laced with the right dose of humor.
He also
broke the standard cliché that books sell if they have hot sex in them. The
closest he came to sex in his books was a kiss on the cheek. He felt that sex could be funny, but he
refrained from it. And wow, still his
stories sell till today.
Delight in
the world of PG Plum and deliver yourself from the captivity of life!
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