Thank You, Jeeves

Do not wear black face
no matter your reasoning
it never ends well.

Honestly, most of this book had pretty A-class humour and Wodehouse's sharp comedic writing was brilliant in here. The reason why I gave this only a 3 stars is because, after about the 50% mark, there are a lot of racist themes that pop up and which unfortunately happen to be integral to the plot. Personally, I'm all for reading books in the context of the time period it's written in and that is the reason why I haven't already DNFed and rated it lower. It was uncomfortable to read and ultimately I just can't, in good conscience, give it anything higher than 3 stars.

Bertie Wooster is infatuated with the banjolele and in his steadfast determination to keep up with the instrument, Jeeves resigns from his service. Thrown out of his apartment for being a noise pollutant, Bertie finds solace in lodging at Chuffnell Regis, a cottage belonging to an old school pal Chuffy, who had immediately snapped up Jeeves as his valet straight after his resignation. As with any Jeeves story goes, things get complicated when American heiress Pauline Stoker, to whom Bertie had been engaged to for just two days some time ago, and her father turns up as guests of Chuffy, along with Sir Roderick Glossop.

Wodehouse stories are entertaining but they do follow a bit of a formula: Bertie and Jeeves has some sort of disagreement over some thing or other (a banjolele in this one, but it could be Bertie insisting on a certain tie, or being mad about a girl), and separately Bertie will get called into a situation where he sinks into trouble quicker than someone flailing in quicksand. Everything seems to get hopelessly messed up and entangled, but eventually by the end, Jeeves works everything out, usually at Bertie's expense (usually making a huge fool out of his employer, but which Bertie would be past caring about at that point), and also neatly finding a way to eliminate the thorn in their relationship at the same time. Jeeves always prevails.

This is primarily a reason why I love Bertie & Jeeves stories. Everything becomes so messy and then everything is neatened up so beautifully. Along the way, you get some really sparking examples of humourous writing. If Wodehouse set about trying to satirize the foppish, empty-headedness of the average upper-class young male specimen, he could not have done it better in the dynamic between Jeeves and Bertie. This book is no different in that regard and the writing, at least in the first half of this book, is one of the better examples in the whole series.

But then we come to the disastrous second half, to put things lightly, really did not age well. To summarize the offending plot element, a troupe of travelling musicians of African descent are in the Chuffnell Regis neighbourhood. Some terms are used to refer to them which were fine back in the 1930s, but certainly derogatory now - this I could have closed an eye to given the time period. It is however when Bertie finds himself in a sticky situation and then has to use “boot polish” on his face in order to disguise himself as one of the musicians in order to make his way out is when the trouble starts. I was hoping that this is just a transient scene which would end in a chapter or two, but nope - this goes on and on almost for the rest of the book, with other characters responding negatively to seeing Bertie in what is essentially blackface.

I reiterate that I'm a believer that books should be taken in the context of the time, age, and society it was written in. I don't know about Wodehouse's own personal belief systems and have not read up about his life at all, but taking the book on its own merit, I don't think that there was an overt racist agenda in this plot. It just read like an author who was reproducing the (harmful) values that has been ingrained into him by the time period and society he lived in, but not that he was enthusiastically goading people on to do harmful or malicious things. Nevertheless, there's no denying that reading it in 2022 was rough, which is why I could only rate it at 3 stars. If the plot element had been completely absent, this would be minimally a 4 star, if not higher.

If this is something you could probably stomach reading and you are already a fan of Jeeves stories, then this book would be good to check out, but it's not something I'd be actively recommending to people, and especially not those new to the series.

Having been written in the 1930s, there are certain aspects of this book which have not aged well. There is a distressing use of the term “ni**er minstrels” in the first chapter, although only by the least sympathetic characters; Jeeves and his erstwhile employer both employ the enlightned-at-that-time “Negro minstrels” to describe this group which never actually makes an appearance in the book but who's existence provides an impetus for two characters to don blackface. Kind of an interesting historical study of how such things were viewed by the upper crust.