No 6: A Gentleman of Leisure by PG Wodehouse
What’s it about?
Jimmy Pitt, one of the nicest chaps one could ever meet despite a career in journalism, accepts a bet that he can commit a bit of light-hearted burglary without getting caught. The breaking and entering is, needless to say, pulled off with aplomb but when the inevitable mishap occurs he finds that the venue of the burglary is the home of Captain McEachern of the New York police department. It also transpires that Captain McEachern is the father of Molly, the very same beautiful young lady that Jimmy had met on the voyage from London. Complications, misunderstandings and resolutions ensue in true Wodehousean style.
What’s it got to do with leisure?
Beyond the title, not much. Wodehouse was plying his trade well before the concept of leisure as a managed community service so leisure in this context is the enviable and admirable state of not having to work for a living.
Why should I read it?
Because it is PG Wodehouse. Very few writers have a genuine and undisputed claim to virtuosity in the use of the English language but Pelham Grenville Wodehouse is certainly one of them. If you have never read Wodehouse you should start right now. If you have only dipped into him early in your reading career and found him too light for your heavy reading taste, it is time to revisit him with a fresh eye. However, A Gentleman of Leisure is one of the earlier works and, although charming in many ways, it is probably one for Wodehouse completists. If you are not already well versed in the world of Wodehouse you might be best advised to start with the Jeeves and Wooster stories before heading off towards Blandings. Once you reach the country house splendour of Blandings you will already be hooked and will be eager to plough on through stories of Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, searching out as many of the 70 or so novels and 200 or so short stories as you can find. At one level Wodehouse presents simple comic stories of hapless young men of the monied classes in the lovelorn pursuit, or the determined avoidance, of matrimony, falling foul of terrifying aunts, disapproving fathers and the best intentions of friends, domestic staff and small dogs along the way. Taken at face value, these characters and plots quickly become familiar and offer diverting entertainments to while away a pleasant hour or two. However, diverting entertainments do not inspire the sort of devotion and plaudits that Wodehouse has enjoyed since he first started writing about the enchanted and almost entirely imaginary world of the English Edwardian upper classes at play. What makes Wodehouse worthy of the highest literary accolades is the language he uses to tell the story. Simple to read and instantly engaging, his writing is so beautifully constructed that the reader only notices the highly complex sentence structure, the erudition of the references and the expertise of dialogue once they begin to look beyond the story and find themselves emerged in the language of arguably the greatest comic novelist of the twentieth century. Such is his mastery that it is almost an irrelevance to mention that his work also happens to be very funny.
the leisure manager’s library
An occasional series offering a guide to leisure-related literature
