This is Marsh’s first use of a device that later becomes one of her
trademarks–the novel in which she spends many chapters introducing her
characters before the murder actually takes place. Alleyn is not called
in until page 94, by which time Marsh has given us an excellent portrait
of the village of Chipping and its denizens, including two poisonous old
spinsters, a pair of young lovers, an aging squire, a handsome but timid
vicar, a doctor with an invalid wife, and a Scarlet Woman. These folks
gather together to put on an amateur play; it will be a local charity
event, with the proceeds going toward a new piano for the parish hall.
There are considerable undercurrents of tension among the group. The
spinsters disapprove of the Scarlet Woman, though the squire and the
doctor rather like her; the squire is against his son marrying his
beloved, the vicar’s daughter; both spinsters are in love with the vicar,
who does his best to discourage them without losing charity. It’s an
interesting soup, and the two spinsters are especially well drawn. This is one of Marsh’s better outings to date.

Published late in 1910, this is one of Wodehouse’ earliest novels. Prior
to this he had published seven books of school stories, to which I’ll add
an eighth, Psmith in the City, as it involves two characters
from his school stories, a children’s novel, a book of newspaper columns,
a book about journalism, an Ukridge novel, and one other novel about
which I know nothing. As such, it’s in a transitional position between
his school stories and his first Blandings novel,
Something Fresh, published in 1915.
By 1915, Wodehouse had gotten his comedic style down pat. There’s little
difference in tone or skill between Something Fresh and its
1929 sequel, Summer Lightning.

But A Gentleman of Leisure is something else again.

The plot leaves nothing to be desired; it’s pure Wodehouse, with all the
elements we’ve come to know and love. It’s got thwarted lovers,
upperclass twits, imposters, jewel thieves, private detectives, a country
house, curmudgeonly aunts and uncles, and all the usual trappings.

What it doesn’t have is the easy, effortless tone of Wodehouse’s later
work. Bertie, Jeeves, the Earl of Blandings, and all the rest seem to
inhabit a timeless world of their own. This book, on the other hand,
seems too firmly grounded in the real world. The characters are too
real, and their reality demands that we take them seriously, despite all
of the ludicrous events going on around them.

The results are often painful. One doesn’t mind if Bertie Wooster is
caught stealing a silver cow creamer; it’s just the sort of thing that
would happen to him, and we know he’ll get out of it somehow. Bertie’s
world operates according to its own absurd rules–for example, if any
woman of any age decides that she wants to marry Bertie, then Bertie is
bound to go through with it unless she changes her mind. It doesn’t
matter whether he wants to marry her or not, or whether she’s entirely
mistaken about the nature of his regard for her. He’s not allowed to
tell her directly that he doesn’t want to marry her; although the phrase
seldom arises, this is the reduction to absurdity of the whole “breach of
promise” thing so common in Victorian novels. Instead, he must work
behind the scenes, with the help of Jeeves and his friends, to persuade
her that she’d really rather marry someone else. And, as one of the
other rules is that Bertie must remain a bachelor, he naturally and
inevitably succeeds. We know this; the dramatic tension is all about how
he’ll get out of it this time, not whether he will or not.

But in this book, it’s different. It seems mostly to follow the rules of
the real world. Consider Lord Dreever, a young, improvident Lordling
kept on a short leash by his wealthy capitalistic uncle. In a normal
Wodehouse novel, we’d feel sorry for him, and applaud his attempts to
squeeze a little money out of the old man. In Dreever’s case, I tended
to agree with the uncle. Dreever’s an idiot and a wastrel who’d clearly
run through any amount of money provided to him in a matter of months.
He’s not a scoundrel, there’s no harm in him, but there’s not much good
either.

The love interest is young Molly McEachern. Molly’s father wants his
daughter to marry a title; Dreever’s uncle wants his nephew to marry
money. To these two old men it seems a match made in heaven.
But it would clearly be a catastrophe for sweet young Molly to marry
Lord Dreever. And because of Wodehouse’ tone and the way the detail
grounds it in the real world, it matters. And consequently,
comic situations that I find hilarious in his latter books are positively
painful in this one.

So.

As a Wodehouse fan and would-be novelist, I found it fascinating–a
wonderful example of how not to build a comic soufflé. As a
reader, though, I wasn’t as pleased.

Chapter 40 and Chapter 41 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia! are now available for your delectation at Once-Told Tales

This concludes the novel! If you’ve been waiting until it’s all there to give it a read, now’s your chance.

Belles On Their Toes, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

This is the sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen, which I reviewed
some years ago.
If you aren’t familiar with that wonderful book, go read the review now.
I’ll wait.

Cheaper by the Dozen ends with the death of Frank Gilbreth,
motion studies expert and patriarch of a large family. His wife
Lillian, an equal partner in her husband’s motion studies work, must
decide whether to take the family to California, where the children can
be parceled out to various relatives, or to stay in New Jersey and try to
make her own way as a motion studies expert. She (with encouragement from
her children) chooses the latter. And just as the prior novel is the
story of Frank Gilbreth, Belles on their Toes is the story of
Lillian Gilbreth.

It’s as funny and heartwarming as its predecessor–I
enjoyed it thoroughly–though possibly a bit lighter weight, especially
toward the end. The two authors are the oldest boy and the
next-to-oldest girl, and both went off to college within a few years of
their father’s death. Consequently we cover just a few years in the
first half of the book, and a couple of decades in the second half.

Anyway, you should read it; it’s a classic.

High Society is the second volume of the saga of
Cerebus the Aardvark, comprising issues 26 through 50 of the original
comic book. And unlike the first volume, it’s essentially one long
500-page story.

The overall plot is remarkably straightforward if you don’t examine it
too closely. Cerebus stomps into the city of Iest after a long slog
through the marshes. He’s tired, he’s angry, and he’s looking for a
fight. He seeks out the best hotel in town mostly so he can get into a
brawl with the hotel guards over whether he can get a room or not. And
instead, everything goes suspiciously smoothly as soon as the desk clerk
learns his name.

It turns out that it’s all thanks to being the Supervisor of the Staff
Kitchen for Lord Julius of Palnu, a post Cerebus held for a time in the
previous volume. Lord Julius (who is played fetchingly by Groucho Marx–no,
really!) funds his government by selling titles to the highest bidder,
and as a result most titles in Palnu don’t mean what you’d think they
mean. Supervisor of the Staff Kitchen is in fact the title held by
the head of Julius’ personal bodyguard. As such, then, Cerebus is
presumed to have considerable pull with Lord Julius, and has been elected
by the people of Iest to be (I think–it’s a little fuzzy) Palnu’s
diplomatic representative in Iest. Hence his popularity and inability to
get into a fight.

This is just the first twenty pages, you understand. What follows is a
wild tiger ride in which Cerebus is kidnapped, rescued, manipulated,
outvoted, elected, and nearly becomes pope. (No, not that pope. A
different pope altogether.) It’s a tale of economics, politics,
religion, interest rates, graft, teamsters, surly farmers, and a couple
of whackos who talk like Yosemite Sam. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I
suspect I missed about half of what was going on.

In one regard I prefer the earlier Swords of Cerebus collections
(four issues per volume) to the new larger format–in the smaller
collections, each issue is preceded by an introduction. Not all of them
are timeless, but they not only provide interesting background to the
story, they also chronicle Sim’s growth as a writer and artist. For me,
comics illiterate that I am, it was a fascinating glimpse at how comic
books are created. I missed all that in the current volume.

Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable interlude, and one I intend to repeat
in a few months, just to see what I missed the first time around.

I’ve just posted the October issue of Ex Libris Reviews, our monthly book review. If you’re a regular reader of this weblog, then you’ve already seen my reviews and Deb English’s reviews, but you haven’t seen Craig Clarke’s reviews. So go see ’em!

The news of Donald O’Conner’s death prompted me to have a 2 Blowhards kind of moment the other day. As everyone knows, O’Conner was one of the leads in the classic film Singing in the Rain, arguably the best musical Warner Brothers ever made. It’s now clear that Singing in the Rain is an outstanding work of art–but that was far from clear to its creators when they made it. The movie was intended to be a sort of review–a retrospective of songs used in previous WB movies over the years, all wrapped up in a light-hearted romp. They did it for love, they had a good time, they pleased themselves–and somehow they created a work of art.

Much the same is true of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Chuck Jones makes it clear in Chuck Amuck that they weren’t trying to create anything timeless. They had to produce a certain number of cartoons of a precise length to accompany the studio’s live action releases. In general, Jones and his compatriots got little if any feedback on their cartoons. So they produced cartoons to suit themselves, and never worried much about how they’d be received. On the contrary–an edict come down from management that they were not to make cartoons about bullfights, because bullfights weren’t funny. They immediately realized that bullfights must have untapped comic potential if management was agin’ ’em, and made Bully for Bugs.

They never guessed how enduring and timeless their work would be…and yet the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons have been pretty much continuously on TV for my entire life. (The latest development is a new Duck Dodgers TV show featuring all new cartoons.) The best of these cartoons are clearly works of art. And again, that it’s art was completely unintentional.

Works like Singing in the Rain and What’s Opera Doc? are art by accident; and yet they are among the most charming, delightful, and timeless works of art of the 20th century.

What happened to elevate these works above their near-relatives? Why are they different? Was it luck? Was it the attitude–one might even say, the humility–of the creators? (I lean toward this view; An American in Paris has some fabulous moments, but overall it’s a much weaker film than Singing in the Rain–and it’s much more self-consciously arty). Did the fact that they were group efforts play a role?

What do you folks think?

Chapter 38 and Chapter 39 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia! are now available for your delectation at Once-Told Tales

This week: The Wrath of Basenis. Next week: The Thrilling Conclusion!

It’s not kind to laugh at another man’s terror, but Yahmdallah has posted a marvelous tale of his encounter with an absurdly large spider.

Ms. La Fetra, kindly just move along; there’s nothing you want to see here.

Forager 23 has an interesting couple of posts on the importance of artwork in superhero comics and on how film would be taught if he had anything to say about it. Neither comics nor film are really my thing–but I enjoyed the posts anyway. Go read ’em.