Jeeves in the Springtime by P.G. Wodehouse

Coming up with original comments to make about books in a series that are so similar to one another is hard. Wodehouse just has a knack for not fixing what isn't broken. I had to check my pronunciation of his last name. It is "wood-house," as in Emma. Because I typically come across new authors over the Internet or in books, I don't always hear names, and I need to take care of my pronunications, for it could turn embarrassing. I was fortunate I never referred to Albert Camus and Marcel Proust before I learned how to pronounce them. They were French, though, so I suppose I have an excuse. My British pronunications are usually spot-on, though one does have to watch for the worcestershires and gloucesters and whatnot.

Anyways, I can make at least one new observance here. Jeeves in the Springtime was a collection of some of the first Jeeves and Wooster short stories. The characters seemed rather embryonic in form, at least compared to what I had read and seen beforehand. In the first story of the book, Wooster becomes acquainted with Jeeves, and they have a few fallings-out before Wooster acknowledges Jeeves' mental superiority. Herein lies the basis upon which the other stories are built.

In the eponymous story, Jeeves is engaged, disengaged, and re-engaged, in a Wooster-ish fashion that I found detracted from his normally aloof, unadulterated ethos. I prefer Jeeves to be the uninvolved, almost asexual manservant he appears to be in the later works. It adds to the delightfully confounding dichotomy of the superior man subservient to his inferior. It would seem that Jeeves has no other ends, that he desires to attain nothing else in life, but the satisfaction of his employer. It is this distinct irony that perpetuates the humor in these books.

So there you have it. Some quasi-intelligent musings on my gym literature. I couldn't do cardio without it.