What Ho, Pakcik!

What is Chi­nese New Year but an excuse to overeat, get annoyed daily by your long-winded pseudo-old-man of a 14-year old nephew (he keeps at it till I counter with “Whad­dya want, Pak­cik*?” and then he dis­ap­pears for a bit), forgo all forms of exer­cise, and oh, did I men­tion the overeat­ing? Still, what best time for for­ag­ing in my bed­room for books unread and to reread?

Let’s see, what have I here? Some Sand­man, the whole Fred­er­ica Pot­ter quar­tet by A.S. Byatt (The Vir­gin in the Gar­den, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman), and oh! half of the Story Teller 2 series from my kid­die days**. But what’s this? Good ole P.G. Wode­house, he of the pro­lific com­i­cal gen­tle­men nov­els filled with trou­bled lovers. My favourite books of his, though, are his solo works, arguably bet­ter than his more beloved series (e.g. Psmith, Jeeves, Bland­ings Castle).

P.G.Wodehouse's French Leave

French Leave cov­ers (l-r): 1955, 1959 & 1992.

This round I chose two stand­alone books: French Leave and The Luck of the Bod­kins. The for­mer is a racous round­about across the French Riv­iera involv­ing sis­ters from an Amer­i­can egg farm, local police­men, a Mar­quis and his writer son, and not one, but two bot­tled water mil­lion­aires; the sec­ond details the shenani­gans sur­round­ing three love-struck cou­ples on board a cruise ship with a python, a pearl neck­lace and an ever-present, ever-troublesome ever-garrulous stew­ard. And that’s just the plot.

Seri­ously though, the best part is the comedy.

Of course, since dear departed Wode­house has been writ­ing since for­ever, I found it delight­ful to get online and look up past cov­ers of his books, some since the ‘50s. And what a trea­sure trove I’ve uncov­ered! (No pun intended.) Some find may find these cov­ers dated or worse, ugly, but to me, they are lit­tle time cap­sules where we find traces of another era, per­haps a period more inno­cent, more glam­orous, more flip­pant. At least, that’s the way Wode­house would see it.

P.G. Wodehouse's books

Some­thing Fishy (1957), The Luck of the Bod­kins (1948),
Ser­vice with a Smile (1962)

He had always main­tained that there were two ways of writ­ing a novel, one that is true to the real­i­ties of the day, harsh or oth­er­wise, and then there was his way. His hand is always light and gen­er­ous. Some crit­ics have renounced his sto­ries, accus­ing him of recy­cling his plots (which weren’t entirely true though a cer­tain frame­work ran through the back­bone of all his books, i.e. lovers sep­a­rated by miserly uncles or over­pro­tec­tive aunts or quite often, both).

Me, I believe he is the most mag­nif­i­cent excla­ma­tion the Eng­lish lan­guage has pro­duced that if you write well, if you can engage and amuse the reader, who’s look­ing at the plot any­ways? (Though many of the writ­ers he has inspired, inc. Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratch­ett and Stephen Fry, do man­age both the humour and the plot bits.)

Per­son­ally, I find no bet­ter way of dri­ving away the hol­i­day blues than to curl up in bed with a good vol­ume of Wode­house, and per­haps a pineap­ple tart or two. You might just find your­self greet­ing your open house guests with a “What ho!” or a “Right ho!” (though they must won­der who this Ho fel­low is…)

-

N.B. You can find some of P.G. Wodehouse’s books at Project Guten­berg free for down­load as they are in the pub­lic domain. I rec­om­mend The Man With Two Left Feet and A Damsel in Dis­tress.

* “Pak­cik” = “Uncle” in Malay.
**A whole post on this next month! Promise!

28 Comments

  • wow… that’s a lot of book. how do you man­age read­ing books and read­ing blogs at the same time. i know i men­tioned about find­ing time… but books + blogs = dif­fi­cult task.

  • That’s easy: dur­ing CNY in Malacca, I had no inter­net = no blog read­ing! :)

    I did take one day out to the local Cof­fee Bean to make use of the WiFi, but other than that, just spent most of my time at home read­ing and eating.

    Blogs are great though, I love read­ing them. So maybe the solu­tion is to bal­ance both of them? One way is to jug­gle sev­eral books simul­ta­ne­ously, e.g. one book by the bed, one in the car, one in the kitchen… It’ll take longer to fin­ish them, but once you’re done, you’d have read sev­eral books instead of slog­ging through just one!

  • Of course, it’s also a sneaky way of evening out the odds.

    Chances are there might be a lousy read in there some­where, but I would have read two or three other good ones in the mean­time too. ;)

  • Hey Uncle, I’ve for­got­ten to wish ya a (belated, sorry) happy new year aye? See you this Sats­day with your roast chickin!

  • Oh, me and my “roast chickin” will be there alright. ;)

    I’ll even bring food…

  • Menny Kah, thanks for the visit. Hope to see you at the break­fast club, next month?

  • Haha… That’s bril­liant! Now if I apply spooner­ism with ya, it’ll be Tak Keh? As in that diva tak “care” if peo­ple think she’s wear­ing a wig? Hee hee.

    And yes, see you next month at the Break­fast Club. I’ll even have an incey-wincey role to play also… ;)

  • Never tried Wode­house before Kenny but will check them out. Love the cov­ers you posted — very comic-retro.

  • Yo Kennyyyyy!I couldnt make it to the Lit­blog­gers’ thingy! For­got that I had cello lessons! What a waste !I had already dry-cleaned my labuc­cied bustier for the occa­sion!! But pray tell, how was it?

  • enar arshad wrote:

    hi,
    thanks for drop­ping by. i have no prob­lem about the libnk to my blog.i am actu­ally reviv­ing my pas­sion to write poems and i do love to read. the book book i read this year ( being this is only feb) is the mem­ory keeper’s daugh­ter by kim edwards.

  • Eliza D,
    I love those cov­ers too! I’m hop­ing to bring back more retro-style designs to cov­ers myself — maybe even local books?

    The Quiet Storm,
    What a shame. I was look­ing for­ward to meet­ing you but saw no one match­ing your descrip­tion at the Break­fast Club. I’ll wrote more about it tomor­row, after I’ve recov­ered from this long day — five events/functions from 9:00am Sat­ur­day till 1:30am the next day! :P

    Enar,
    I’m glad you are writ­ing poems again. They are good. Look­ing for­ward to read­ing more of them!

  • dreamer idiot wrote:

    Hi Kenny,

    I am the main admin­is­tra­tor of puisi-poesy, so would like to thank you for vis­it­ing our blog. We are try­ing to fos­ter a poetry read­ing com­mu­nity in Malaysia, includ­ing Malay puisi and sajak, but haven’t been able to get that side of it going yet, so have con­cen­trated on poetry writ­ten in Eng­lish instead, because that is what most of us are more famil­iar with. We hope to ven­ture into local writ­ing later, when the time is right, and per­haps start a lit­er­ary jour­nal of sorts.

    Cheers. Hope you’ll visit us from time to time. :)

  • Heya Dreamer Idiot,

    A lit­er­ary jour­nal sounds like a fine thing to aim for; you can count on my inter­est and help in spread­ing the word when­ever it comes out. :)

    Did I meet you at the Read­ings @ Seksan’s yes­ter­day? So hard to tell when we don’t know the real names of the blog­gers, heh heh.

  • Kenny

    I grew up with P G Wode­house and remem­ber A Damsel in Dis­tress, altho I can’t exactly remem­ber what it’s about. But he’s best known for his Jeeves and Bland­ings Cas­tle sto­ries. There’s even a British TV series called Jeeves and Wooster, star­ring Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Lau­rie (Dr House) as Bertie Wooster.

    I must go and down­load his books from Project Guten­berg. Thanks for the tip!

  • Glad to have you drop­ping by, Chet!

    Yes, I do know the series, and I am a big fan of Mr. Fry, though I haven’t seen the series yet. Fry him­self is huge admirer of Wode­house (and Oscar Wilde, whom he por­trayed in the film titled, strangely enough, Wilde).

    A Damsel in Dis­tress pro­vides a small les­son in the end about how funny mem­ory can be and how badly it serves us… ;)

  • Was there a line in the book about the damsel cry­ing and adding a star to the sky? I have the quote in my scrap­book and I’m quite sure it was by PG.

  • No, I don’t think so, but do let me know if I’m wrong. It seems a tad too sen­ti­men­tal & ele­giac, even for Wodehouse.

  • I need to unearth the scrap­book from the many boxes in the store room.

  • I’m sure there will be many trea­sures there. Likely you will have an enjoy­able time side-tracked by old books you’ve for­got­ten about… :)

  • Kenny, one sim­ple ques­tion for you. I had a read of “Bro­ken Morn­ings” — it is very good — why hasn’t a pub­lisher taken it up yet?

  • Uhm, cos I haven’t sub­mit­ted it to any­one yet?

    That’s my dirty lit­tle secret, Tunku. Despite being “brave” enough to put it online for all to read and crit­i­cize, I haven’t found the courage yet to send it to a real publisher.

    Per­haps I worry about the length of the sto­ries, that pub­lish­ers would want some­thing meatier. But I’m begin­ning to enjoy these brief tales of mine, and have decided to write more in this vein rather than a longer, typ­i­cal short story form (as I had ini­tially planned).

    The other obsta­cle would be my own mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence which keeps bug­ging me with the ques­tion, “How are you going to sell this in the local market?”

    Would Malaysian read­ers want this?

  • Would Malaysian read­ers want this?”

    You won’t know if you don’t try.

  • Oh you shame me, Chet, with your words. Yes, I guess I won’t till I try. And if I believe in Yoda, I’ll do more than just try…

  • Kenny — why not pitch to book to Eric Forbes? Very short sto­ries are fine. Peo­ple have lit­tle time these days! Also, it’s a fan­tas­tic cover.

  • With your encour­age­ment, Tunku, I shall! :)

    Basi­cally I need to gather up a few more sto­ries and start pitch­ing to pub­lish­ers… I believe I will leave Bro­ken Morn­ings as a free online sam­pler though, and pitch a new book, with most of the sto­ries in Bro­ken Morn­ings, plus many more new sto­ries and a new title. And a new cover design! :)

  • Kenny, your Bro­ken Morn­ings has a nice cover too. Lovely model. ;-)

  • Thanks, Eliza. The orig­i­nal pho­to­graph was taken by Evan Welsch; I then pho­to­shopped the heck out of it, and voila! Will be design­ing more book cov­ers in com­ing months, so keep an eye on this blog! :)

  • […] when I was home in Malacca for the hol­i­days? So many books, so lit­tle time. I doubt any of us will ever fin­ish read­ing all the books we own, […]

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