The Code of the Woosters

I’m loving the audio books of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves series. This week I listened to The Code of the Woosters where Bertie’s aunt Dahlia forces him to track down an ugly cow creamer that his uncle is obsessed with. This leads to an amazingly comic odyssey in the British countryside.

Here are a few of the thousands of great quotations:

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

“It was a silver cow. But when I say ‘cow’, don’t go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.”

“I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well.”

“I suppose even Dictators have their chummy moments, when they put their feet up and relax with the boys, but it was plain from the outset that if Roderick Spode had a sunnier side, he had not come with any idea of exhibiting it now. His manner was curt. One sensed the absence of the bonhomous note.”

“I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.

The book’s delightful from start to finish. How does Wodehouse do it?

He’s a comic genius if ever there was one.