Dear Listener,

The only way you can spoil a Wodehouse story is by not reading it.

Welcome to Hitchens' Razor.

What is the irresistible charm of a Wodehouse story on a teenage boy living in a remote village on a mountainous high range in tropical south Asia? What's Jeeves and Blandings Castle books doing there? This episode is about the English language maestro P.G. Wodehouse - a glimpse specifically for foreigners to Britain.

English has always been a confusing language for foreigners. Their struggle, when studied along the semantics and phonetics of this enigmatic language presents a satisfying conclusion that it is nothing but a mish-mash of received, paradoxical words and phrases devotedly practised over multiple millennia. Its vocabulary thus enriched with 'stuff' borrowed, stolen, or sometimes grabbed from other places - just like the word 'grab', which has now seemingly been inculcated into the cultural lexicon as an inappropriate but accepted verb everywhere - most noticeable in coffee shops. Why would you grab a coffee? just take it, especially if you have paid for it. Anyway, the victim languages, that is to say most of the foreign languages, albeit complex, are often complete and superior to English - what you speak is what you write is exactly what others read in other languages. Have you ever wondered why English language cannot handle a genre like Magic Realism?

Yet, the language survived, it proliferated, and even ruled. I suppose a few British and Irish people accepted its frailties and went beyond them; they managed to put words in a certain order, which not just transformed the sentences and the stories, but made the language itself irresistible to outsiders. At the perch of that bunch of doyens is P.G. Wodehouse.

There are certain things that can be experienced, but not explained. To get a novel right, an author needs to consummate four 'P's, says Stephen Fry: "Place, People, Plot, and Prose". The place is more or less unchanging in Wodehousian tales - all set in 18th century England or New York. The people he created, perhaps, we could credit him lucky to have had the friends, family, surroundings and upbringing for those imperishable characters. The plot, paraphrasing Wodehouse's own words, "if you get the love story correct, then plot will follow". But, the prose, that's what sets him apart. The way he puts one word after another, separated by those impeccable punctuation, and the interweaving of expanding humour realised without any profanity, but with clever juxtaposition of words and ideas in those lines leaves a literary equivalent of umami in reader's mind. Nobody knows how he managed that. I am safe of not abusing the word 'genius' here.

I know what you are thinking listener: Well, that's all good, but there are about a 100 books, where shall I begin? Whom should I acquaint with first? Is it Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Lord Emsworth, the Efficient Baxter, or PSmith with a silent 'P', or all the overbearing aunties? Oh, please tell me where should I begin?

Well, start at 'Something Fresh'.

It is the first book in Blandings Castle series. We are introduced to Blandings Castle and Lord Emsworth, The Efficient Baxter, and a perfect love story. Ehh… not between Emsworth and Baxter, but others in the story. Anyway, here are few lines from the book 'Something Fresh', that might release you from the furies of indecision. Here you go:

"The sunshine of a fair spring morning fell graciously upon London town. It was the sort of morning when air gives us a feeling of anticipation, a feeling that, on a day like this, things surely cannot go joggling along in a the same dull groove, a premonition that something romantic and exciting is about to happen to us."

"One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. The odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss her was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species."

"They made poor old Percy look an absolute ass." Well, Nature had done that already, but I'm bound to say they improved on Nature's work. I should think your cousin Percy must have felt like a plucked chicken."

"Science with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologised to by a pretty girl.

"Ashe was becoming conscious of an undercurrent of something not altogether agreeable in the conversation. It lacked the gay ease of their first interview. He was not apprehensive lest she might have guessed his secret."

"Trouble, after all, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder."

"Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth's indefatigable Private Secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime: he simply suspected them."

Alright, that hopefully is the impetus you were craving. Remember, you can only spoil a Wodehouse story by not reading it.

Happy reading time!

Cheers.