1923 comedy. Psmith finds himself at Blandings, impersonating a
squalid but trendy Canadian poet.
And although in reality the War had changed everything, there's
absolutely no sign of it here; that wasn't what people wanted to read
about for light relief, so Wodehouse simply ignores it. If anything
there is a transition in the other direction – from the world of
Psmith, which at least touched on problems of the real world (in
Psmith, Journalist in particular) if only for Psmith to put them all
to rights, to the world of Blandings, with its mixture of those who
form the obstacle course and those who have to pass through it in
their quest for a happy ending.
(There are some characters, like Baxter, whose sole purpose in life is
to be the butt of the joke, to be set up so that it seems reasonable
to them to do the silly thing and end up looking stupid. It's part of
Wodehouse's genius that I can enjoy reading about them.)
I was slightly surprised that a couple of crooks didn't really get an
ending at all – clearly they weren't going to be allowed to succeed in
their endeavours, but I'd have liked to see some suggestion that they
were still out there bickering and running complicated plots rather
than simply being dropped from the book once they'd been bested.
There is chivalry, and harmless amiable dottiness, and if there's any
common factor between those who prevail in the end it's a willingness
to be flexible and take matters as they come rather than to try to
force one's standards on other people. There are many worse messages
for an author to squeeze in among the jokes.
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