This is my favorite Wodehouse title. Not favorite
book, not by a long shot, but certainly my favorite title. (Isn't there something so evocative about that word 'Indiscretions'? It has the air of Jeeves tactfully sweeping Wooster's latest idiocy under the rug.)
This book is one of many proofs that Wodehouse's true genius lay, not in merely creating a comic idiot--which he certainly could do, for no one is more deft when it comes to daft--but in creating a
noble comic idiot, an idiot that the reader loves and roots for and sympathizes with. The tragedy of this idiot--and thence the comedy--is
not the fact that he's an idiot. It's the fact that no one bothers to look past his idiocy and see his pure heart and his ready humor and a hundred other qualities that your average highbrow lacks.
I recall a brief image in a
Peanuts special that sums this character type up nicely. Charlie Brown gallantly throws his jacket over a puddle for a passing girl. The girl, though by no means adverse to this gesture, reacts, not with thanks, but with prim indifference--and as Charlie makes ready to go on his merry way, he slips on the jacket and falls flat on his face. Such is the fate of the Wodehouse hero, but unlike Charlie, he hasn't time to be depressed as long as there are people around that want helping.
So here's Archie Moffam (pronounced "Moom", I'm told, though that never figures into the story). He's pretty much just Bertie Wooster in a different suit, but I love Bertie too much to be overly critical. And the premise allows Wodehouse to try something that falls strictly outside Bertie's formula--Archie, bless him, is a married man, with all the trials and tribulations that come with the job description. He's head-over-heels in love with his Lucille and can't think why she condescended to wed him. Unfortunately for him, neither can her father the American hotel manager. Still more unfortunately, Archie differs further from Bertie in having barely a cent to his name. He must find a way to earn some money.
...Or just deal with whatever random crisis the author feels like dishing up in any given chapter. It was originally published as a sketch series, after all.
Therefore, we have an escaped snake. We have a bet on a ball game. We have a sausage-selling amnesiac. Anything goes.
While the pacing and format isn't close to what Wodehouse is capable of, it's always fun to read about, and towards the end moments of genuine genius begin to shoot up like so many crocuses in the spring. They don't exactly make up for the format, but at times they appear to transcend it. (I call particular attention to a poem about a pie-eating contest that would arguably have been funnier out of context. Who knew Wodehouse could write genuine American comic verse?)
The dialogue is zippy enough to beg for a sitcom adaptation. Archie in particular is eloquent, though only when he's on top of the situation (needless to say, the presence of his father-in-law reduces him to babbling imbecility). Lucille, though not terribly deep, is sweet and funny and forgiving, everything a Wodehouse hero could want in his better half (or "better four-fifths", as Archie puts it). Other characters pop up with their own quirky storylines in tow, contributing the
Homer Price-like disdain for realism that would later form the bulk of the Mr. Mulliner series. It all comes to a sort-of conclusion that's extremely charming and makes you close the book with a smile.
Jeeves and Wooster it isn't, but once you've accepted that, it's great fun.
