Jeeves comes through again

P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves, first published in serial form in 1933 and 1934 in the Saturday Evening Post, was just the second of his Jeeves novels, yet already the pattern these novels follow was established. This has everything to do with the short stories Wodehouse wrote in which he was able to refine his main characters, the hapless Bertie Wooster and his unusually wise manservant.

It may just be the second novel, but already Bertie has decided that Jeeves is past his prime. And so when his old pal Gussie Fink-Nottle needs help popping the question to Madeline Bassett, Bertie decides this is a job he must tackle himself. And then Bertie is summoned by Aunt Dahlia because her daughter's engagement to Tuppy Glossop, another pal, is on the rocks. Of course, Aunt Dahlia really wants Jeeves, not Bertie, to resolve the crisis, but again Bertie believes he is the right man for the job.

Of course, things go from bad to worse until Jeeves is finally called in to save the day. Bertie admits he needs help only when he unexpectedly finds himself engaged to Madeline and a drunken Gussie proposes to the wrong girl.

This novel doesn't have as many funny lines as a typical Wodehouse adventure, yet the humor is all there as always, just not as quotable. Jeeves's final solution to all problems, not just the romantic ones, involves having Bertie pointlessly ride 18 miles on a bicycle in the middle of the night. How can Bertie's midnight ride possibly solve all problems? Only Jeeves — and, of course, P.G. Wodehouse — could imagine it. But we can all enjoy it.

Kinds of readers

Books can be an interest, a hobby, a passion or a compulsion. Of course, to many people, perhaps most people, they can also be irrelevant.

Thomas Wolfe

I was reading about the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who according to Lawrence C. Powell, "read (books) insanely, by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands." Powell describes "a ravening appetite in him" that demanded that "he read everything that had ever been written."

Wolfe wrote the same way he read, compelled to put everything down on paper. His novels were still monstrously long even after Maxwell Perkins, his editor, cut out much of them.

Others have a book compulsion expressed in a different way. They don't necessarily read books, but rather just hoard them, accumulating as many as possible with little regard to their contents.

Those with just an interest in books usually express the wish that they could read more than they do. They may read an occasional best-seller, perhaps during a summer vacation or while on a plane, and they may have a few books in their homes. Mostly they regard reading books as a worthwhile ideal that can never be achieved in their own lifetime. There are simply too many other things to do.

Books are a hobby to collectors, those with an interest in certain books by certain authors. If they have enough money, they will be willing to pay high prices for these books. Collectible books lose value when they are handled, so if those who collect books also read books, they read less valuable copies.

A passion for books is what I have and have had for most of my life. There are many others like me. We are the ones who keep bookstores in business, although in the general population we remain a minority. We usually have at least one book in progress. We like to talk about books with others. We love the appearance of books on our shelves.

We aren't as crazy as Thomas Wolfe, but sometimes we come close.

Everyone knew Polly

During the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, many of the most prominent people in show business, crime, politics, law enforcement and the literary world knew Polly Adler. The reason lies in the title of Debby Applegate's 2021 biography, Madam. Adler's constantly moving brothel in New York City is where important people, including even many women like Dorothy Parker and Katherine Hepburn, went for fun.

A Russian Jew, she bravely traveled to New York alone in 1913 at the age of 13, although most of her family later followed. She struggled to make a living, finally turning to prostitution. She quickly realized this could be her ticket to success. Her plan was to retire early and find a good man to marry. It didn't quite work out that way.

Not a very attractive woman herself, she realized she would do better as a madam, and she worked tirelessly to hire better girls to attract better, meaning richer, customers. Prohibition came at just the right time for her, and soon she was selling illicit booze as well as illicit sex. She made big money, much of which went to bribing cops, many of whom betrayed her.

Later in life, Adler told her own story in her best-selling book A House Is Not a Home, published in 1953. The book was ghost-written and left out most of the names and most of the details. Applegate provides these in her account. The men who flocked to Polly's read like a Who's Who for that period of history: among them, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Milton Berle, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Wallace Beery, Paul Whitman, John Garfield, Joe DiMaggio, Huey Long, James Thurber, Desi Arnez, Walter Winchell and even the infamous Judge Crater, as well as such gangsters as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't come to her, but she claimed she sent girls to him.

Some of the more than 600 women who worked for Polly Adler later became famous, including Martha Raye and Dorothy Lamour.

In the end, Applegate's book is less the story of a notorious madam than a history of an era, or a series of eras — the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, Broadway, the Jazz Age, organized crime and World War II in America. It is all there in this book, and Polly Adler was right in the center of it all.

No rules

W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

I would change that a little bit: "Fortunately, no one knows what they are."

If I were to compose my own three rules for novelists, they might be something like:

1. Time should move only in one direction, from past to present.

2. The good guys must always win.

3. It should always be clear to the reader what's going on.

But if my three rules, or any three rules, were followed, many of the greatest novels, including many of my own favorites, would have never been written. Sometimes backstories are necessary. Sometimes heroes must die, or at least take their lumps.  Sometimes early confusion in a novel makes the clarity at the end sweeter.

Children need rules. Drivers need rules. Banks need rules. Writers don't need rules. This is what leads to creativity and originality.  Some novelists write books without chapters. Some have sentences that go on for pages. Some have stories that jump back and forth in time. Some kill off their main character in the middle of the story. Some of these efforts please readers and/or critics. Some don't. That judgment, not adherence to any rules, ultimately determines quality.

Woody's defense

Even Woody Allen apparently thinks the furor over his marriage to Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, decades younger, and Mia's accusation that he molested his own daughter represents the center of his life, for he devotes more attention to this than anything else in his 2020 autobiography Apropos of Nothing.

In contrast, he gives just a few sentences to most of the many films he directed. He writes just one paragraph about Magic in the Moonlight, yet neglects to even mention the title. He has made so many movies, in addition to all the other aspects of his long career, that if he gave each one the attention it deserves his book would be much longer than the 392 pages it already is.

That Allen writes so much about Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi, now his wife of many years, seems justified, for too few others have been willing to tell his side of the story. He says that Mia has always been something of a mental case, abusive to her many adopted children, yet she is so beautiful and such a good actress that he cast her in many of his movies even after she started making accusations against him. And her innocent appearance and acting talent also helps explain why her accusations were almost universally believed.

Allen points out that the official investigation into Mia's charges found no evidence of guilt on his part. Soon-Yi was neither his daughter nor stepdaughter — he was never married to Mia — and she was over 18 when they began their relationship, he says. She was only too happy to escape Mia, who once struck her with a phone, Allen writes.

Although he works hard to defend himself, especially against the charge that he abused his own daughter, Dylan, he is otherwise quite self-effacing in his book. He says he loves making movies, but doesn't regard them highly and never watches them or reads what others write about them. He has no interest in awards. He claims to be unworthy of being mentioned in the company of great directors, even though he has actually been in the company of many of these directors, who have welcomed him as their equal.

He repeatedly claims not to be an intellectual, despite the intellectual pretenses of many of his films, especially the dramatic ones few people actually enjoy watching. His comedies did much better at the box office. He does admit to a comedic gift, which shows up on every page of his autobiography, even when he is describing the worst aspects of his life.

Celebrating kinkiness

Kinkiness has been around for a hundred years.

Well, not kinkiness itself. Who knows when that started? But rather the word kinkiness, which was first used in print in 1924, according to There's a Word for It by Sol Steinmetz, a book I open each year at this time to  celebrate words that have just turned 100.

The Roaring Twenties were well underway by 1924, and anything goes, or went as the case may be — even kinkiness apparently.

It seemed to be a good year for slang terms, many of which were welcomed into the language and continue to be used today. Here are some of them: blah, flub, gotta, ho-hum, hooey, magic bullet, malarkey, naysaying, pix, racketeer, sexpert, shush, socko, stinko, stoolie, swoosh, two-time, uh-huh, wisecrack, wow and you-hoo.

That year brought us more serious words, too, such as beautician, headcount, house-train, hype, interstate, Leftist,  photocopy, pressure group, pull tab, superego and voyeurism.

Words of creation

Language shapes even creates, experience. Putting something into words brings it into existence.

Frank Cioffi, One Day in the Life of the English Language

Those words from Frank Cioffi may sound outlandish at first, but think about them for a minute.

The Declaration of Independence created the United States, although there was also a bit of war involved. The Constitution, just words on paper, created the government that nearly 250 years later continues to guide the country's path. The laws written by Congress and other governmental bodies control our lives.

Marriages are created by repeating two simple words: "I do." A marriage is a legal thing, a physical thing, a spiritual thing. Words also end marriages.

Friendships are formed and also ended with mere words. Words do shape and create experience.

Cioffi's idea is also a biblical one. Genesis tells us that God created the universe and everything in it with mere words. "In the beginning was the Word," wrote John.

Cioffi's book is about language usage, and his final point is this: If words are this important, we had better try to use them clearly and correctly.

A voice for everyone

Frank L. Cioffi

To my mind, the most interesting part of Frank L. Cioffi's book One Day in the Life of the English Language comes at the very end when he reflects on why proper language usage, which is what his book is about, is important.

"Language matters because its careful use makes society work more smoothly," he writes. This is one of those things that seem so obvious that we rarely give it much thought. Of course language makes society work more smoothly. To get along and to get things done, we need to communicate effectively with each other. That's what language is all about.

One of the many negatives about four years of an open U.S. border is that the majority of those flooding across that border do not speak English. This poses difficulties not just for assimilation but also for education, employment, law enforcement, medical care, shopping and even driving down streets and highways.

Yet even among those who speak the same language, misunderstandings and conflict can occur when one or more parties does not understand the meaning of words or cannot communicate clearly.

Cioffi goes even further when he says, "Giving everyone a voice is the start —no, more: a prerequisite — for a better, even a moral, culture." And so he moves from a smoothly operating culture to one that is better and finally to one that is more moral — all because of better language usage.

He is talking not just about speech, which has obvious importance. But now, perhaps more than ever before, it is important for people to be literate. So much communication is now done through texts, emails and other platforms that require reading and writing.

In a smooth running, better operating and more moral society, everyone has a voice, but that requires everyone knowing how to use that society's primary language.

Still learning the language

After 16 years of formal education and a lifetime spent working with the English language, including several years as a copy editor, I still do not know what terms like gerund and past participle mean. Nor do I care. So why did I read a language-usage book called One Day in the Life of the English Language (2015) by Frank L. Cioffi that is full of such terms?

Perhaps it was the title and the concept behind the book. Cioffi simply picks a day — Dec. 29, 2008 — and samples various newspapers, magazines and other publications printed that day and explores how the English language was used on that particular day. Mostly he finds fault, which is interesting especially when his target is The New Yorker, a magazine with a reputation for its careful editing.

The fact is, there is much disagreement about what is proper language usage, and Cioffi even concedes that writers and editors should follow the style of their own publication, even while insisting that his own views are more correct.

For instance, he says there should be a comma before the "and" in a series, as with "bell, book, and candle." The Associated Press Stylebook, which I followed during my long newspaper career, regards that comma as unnecessary. In other words, AP favors "bell, book and candle." I continue to follow AP style, and not just out of habit, except in rare instances where one more comma can add to clarity. Cioffi's view is that, yes, that last comma is usually unnecessary but should be used anyway because of those rare instances when it is helpful.

Most of his book is about as interesting as any English class about grammar and usage you ever sat through when you were in school, yet it does have its moments, such as when he finds fault with highbrow publications like The New Yorker. ( And when he writes about when to use such as and when to use like. Did I get it right this time?)

The time for low standards

Isaac Asimov

Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov famously said, "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."

Asimov was known for being a prolific writer, with hundreds of books to his credit. These included not just science fiction, but also books on science and such subjects as Shakespeare and the Bible. He was also noted for writing quickly off the top of his head. He didn't worry about drafts or revisions, and he left the editing to his editors.

Asimov would not have agreed with writing teacher Roy Peter Clark, who not only urged starting with a rough draft but also said, "Lower your standards at the beginning."

While I admired Isaac Asimov and have read many of his books, I write more in the way Clark suggests. Start with a draft and with low standards. And I mean low standards about everything — spelling, punctuation, grammar, factual accuracy, style, everything.

The important thing is to get your basic idea or argument or story down on paper — or on your computer — and then improve on it later. Spend too much time getting your first paragraph perfect and you can lose track of where you intended to go with your second paragraph.

Asimov, in effect, wrote nothing but first drafts, and perhaps he was not as far from Roy Peter Clark's thinking as it might first appear. He put down his ideas, and that was enough for his readers because they were wonderful ideas. He was never known for his style or for the grace of his language. He just wrote first drafts, and for him that was enough.

Joy and light, but not much else

It still baffles me that one must go to the mystery section of any bookstore to find the novels of Alexander McCall Smith. Even his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels are out of place there. In The Joy and Light Bus Company (2021), the most intriguing mystery is whether Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni will lose his shirt, his auto repair shop and his wife's detective agency by investing in a bus company.

Precious Ramotswe does have a client for her agency, a man worried that his aging father will leave his home to a "wicked woman," the nurse who had taken care of him for years. But this generates little interest. Let's get back to the Joy and Light Bus Company, readers are probably thinking.

The 22nd novel in the wonderful series retains the charm and humor that has made the series so popular, yet it lacks the cohesive strength of earlier books. McCall Smith does give us some weak surprises, but they are not enough to make a novel we will remember as fondly as some of the others.

Keeping pace

The art of reading is among other things the art of adopting that pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed.

Mark Van Doren, American poet

Mark Van Doren

I like Mark Van Doren's phrase "the art of reading." When we learned to read, it was a science. We learned the words, how to pronounce them, what they meant. We learned about punctuation. With time reading became an art, or it did for most of us. Two equally literate people do not necessarily read in the same way. One may see meanings and implications that the other misses. Writing that excites one person can bore another.

Van Doren's main point is about adopting the pace of the author. What does "pace of the author" mean? Well, compare David Baldacci with Henry James. Baldacci writes thrillers, with short chapters, mostly simple words and lots of action. You probably aren't going to read a Baldacci novel at a pace of one chapter each night before turning out the lights. It wasn't written that way. If you try to make such a book your bedtime reading, you will probably not get much sleep.

A James novel would be an equally poor choice as a bedside book. It wouldn't keep you awake, but would rather put you to sleep after a paragraph or two. (On second thought, it sounds like an ideal beside book.)

Seriously, to appreciate a Henry James novel or almost any work of serious literature, one needs to be wide awake, fully alert and willing to read at the same pace as the writer — slow and deliberate, in other words. A few pages at a time may be enough,

Read a Baldacci novel too slowly and you would forget what all the excitement is about. Read a Henry James novel too quickly and you will miss everything.

Campaign lies

George Orwell

During the political season — and isn't it always the political season? — one's thoughts can turn to George Orwell. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others," we remember from Animal Farm. It sounds like the double-talk we hear during political campaigns, doesn't it?

Politicians lie, of course. That's just what they do. They need to win votes, so they say what they need to say to win those votes. Thus, one group is told one thing and another group something else. How they act once in office often bears little resemblance to what they said on the campaign trail.

Listen to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's campaign ads this year and you might think he is a Republican and a friend of Donald Trump. I have known Sherrod since we were both in our 20s and have spoken with him many times and sometimes wrote newspaper endorsements in support of him, and believe me, he is not a Republican. Rather he is a Democrat running for re-election in Ohio, which is now a Republican state, and he will say what he needs to say to win votes.

Both presidential candidates have told us lies, but they seem to be different kinds of lies. Donald Trump exaggerates. He boasts. He promises impossible things. Yet there is a positive side to these lies. They at least tell us what he believes in, what he desires for the country, what he hopes to accomplish.

With Kamala Harris, we are left in the dark. Her campaign seems more designed to hide what she believes in, what she desires for the country, what she hopes to accomplish.

Orwell wrote, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." Word salad, in other words.