In praise of P.G.-osis …

… Frivolous, Empty, and Perfectly Delightful. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The comic touches that bedizen Wodehouse’s prose are one of its chief delights. A drunken character is described as “brilliantly illuminated.” An overweight baronet “looks forward to a meal that sticks to the ribs and brings beads of perspiration to the forehead.” A woman supposed to marry that same stout gentleman has the uneasy feeling that, so large is he, she might be “committing bigamy.” A minor character “has a small and revolting mustache,” another “is so crooked he sliced bread with a corkscrew.” Wodehouse spun jokes out of clichés. His similes are notably striking. A man known to be unable to keep secrets is likened to “a human collander.” Another character is “as broke as the Ten Commandments.” The brains of the press departments of the movie studios resemble “soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.” These similes often arise when least expected: “The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.” There is a passing reference to “a politician’s trained verbosity,” a phrase I find handy whenever watching a contemporary politician interviewed on television. Like Jimmy Durante with jokes, so P.G. Wodehouse with arrestingly amusing phrases—he had a million of ’em.