P. G. Wodehouse: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: A Peach of a Bio on Plum
Review: I am somewhat diffident about biographies, and I think our age has no taste for them. The reason is that they reveal more about the author than their subject. So unless you're a voracious reader, you'd far rather read something else. Bios of Wodehouse are particularly suspect. Firstly, hardly anyone is as good a writer as PGW, and therefore the bio will be less engaging than its subject. Secondly, hardly anyone in the hard-bitten writing trade is as amiable as PGW, and therefore their bio will be less enjoyable than their subject. Regardless of these obstacles, there is still good reason for the itinerant biographer to charge ahead: that is because PGW has been the object of a sustained attack, and mired in a smokescreen of disinformation. Someone must rise to the challenge to clear the air, and hopefully, his good name.

And someone has. Stephen Fry, who gave us the unforgettable Jeeves in the wonderful videos of Jeeves and Wooster, long ago raised one eyebrow (Jeeves' equivalent to two thumbs up) in favor of Donaldson's vita, and for good reason. Having full access to the collected papers of Richard Usborne (author of Plum Sauce) re: Plum's Berlin broadcasts, she delves in to set the record straight, so that, as writer Evelyn Waugh devoutly hoped, Britain can at last hug its greatest national humourist to its bosom.

That cloud dispelled, she takes us on a walking tour of the sorts of places we tourists are anxious to visit: Plum's ancestral home, where we search the grounds for a bevvy of aunts, his young days as a schoolboy and sportsman, where we look for the type of Malvern House, to the Hollywood stint whose flickering light would grace so many books, the clubs and cronies forever resonant in "Drones" and "Blandings," the pekes of Ukridge's dog wash, and a lifelong devotion to the "dumb chums." And of course we wonder whether Plum ever smothered Ethel's upturned face with kisses and called her "My Rabbit."

The mind boggles at the enormity of her task, but Donaldson has somehow won the day. Twin souls with the reader, she seems to share our distaste of bilge literature and instead shows us how Plum shines through in his engaging and enjoyable books. How can one reply but in the words of one Wooster to another soul who saved the day? Donaldson, you're a wonder.