Wodehouse was profound at times; he just wasn't pompous about it. He tossed out startling zingers not to be preachy, but just to move his plots along.
"As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people."
He said that in describing a minor character in "Life at Blandings." Baxter, as it turns out, had not yet reached that point in his life.
The last three chapters are astonishing. The rest ain't bad.
Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson is sufficiently ignorant not to have noticed that the British Empire became the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1949.
I don't expect that I'll get a gravestone - we didn't bother for my father, whose memorial is his name on some 25 patents and some 0.9 metres of documentation at University of Melbourne
I won't do as well.
)
ated)
ams
lib
ed
.ness,
er,
Pratchett isn't in the least preachy or pompous - he's just got more to say than Wodehouse, and his way of saying it is no less funny. His literary in fluences do include Wodehouse, but the Wikipedia articles groups Wodehouse with a bunch of equally talented writers " P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, Jero me K. Jerome, Roy Lewis,[119] G. K. Chesterton, and Mark Twain.[120]"
Roy Lewis was initially unfamiliar, but I found that I'd read - and greatly enjoyed - his "The Evolution Man" which is what Wodehouse might have writt en on the subject, if he'd known about human evolution.
I think you've got the wrong thread, or subthread ;-)
I was replying to Phil, is Sloman in this topic at all? I (reluctantly, since he seemed to come back a changed man), killfiled him again, when he went back to dozens of lines of indiscriminate quoting.
,
Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson does make this kind of mistake all t oo often.
Since I'm posting via the new Google groups, there's nothing indiscriminate about my quoting - I've got to go through everything I post taking out the extra lines that Google insists on stuffing in, and I snip everything that I think I can get away with. Sadly, you have to leave some text to provide context - Fred Abse may think that I could get away with less, but that's a matter of taste.
I got a nice copy of the 11th printing, and read it with great pleasure. Thanks for the steer!
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
What's amazing about his writing is how plain it is. He puts simple words together, perfectly. Like a good circuit design.
I like his writing partly because it's so visual. Jane Austen is like that; you can really see the scenes. The opposite stuff is the interior-psychology Henry James sort of dreariness.
Also a good yarn: Pelican at Blandings. All of the pig books are good.
I wonder why few if any of his books have become movies.
Got it, read it, and yep it is a good read. The Best???? No.
Read some Honor Herrington books, some Flandry books, some Retief Books, and some Miles Vorkosigan books. All just as good if not better.
?-)
RE Vorkosigan, I really like some of Bujold's 'romance' type novels too. Curse of Chalion comes to mind.
I've just got myself addicted to Patrick O'Brian.. (Jack Aubrey) He's got that dry British wit.
George H.
O'Brien's love stories are so tiresome, though. I quit after about the fourth or fifth book because I couldn't stand Maturin and whatzerface.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Don't know who Maturin is. The story about Maturette and the guys was much more interesting than a romance novel. It was tough because I don't really speak the language but I read it in the original French edition, very much worth it:
Steven Maturin is half of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin duo. Master and Commander, and all that.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
s,
o. Curse of Chalion comes to mind.
got that dry British wit.
Oh, I started with the fifth book. (Well I tried the first, Master and Com mander.. but I pooped out after ~50 pages. And then a friend told me to st art with #5.... so far it's fine. Squid raining from the sky is a bit of a stretch.. but no worse than Tarzan or other 'stories'.
George H.
Well, he (Maturin) seems to get over the 'love of his life' in book six.
George H.
I loved the Retief books. :)
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required