Thursday 22 April 2010

So THAT'S why people always ask me how I get enough protein

P. G. Wodehouse's Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves is another hilarious exploration of the emotional roller coaster ride that is being married, engaged, or employed in the vicinity of Bertie Wooster. So many disasters are promised and narrowly averted in his presence that I wonder that neither he nor anyone else - especially the astute and extremely well-read Jeeves - has noticed this trend and suggested a thingummy to remedy it somehow.

Anywho, this novel picks up where the last Jeeves book I read (I can't even remember what it's called; perhaps I need a Wodehouse spreadsheet or something) left off. In this installment, Bertie is tempted against his will, again, to visit Totleigh Towers, the home of a drip named Madeleine who always threatens to marry him when her other relationships fail and her father who believes him to be an inveterate criminal.

This time 'round, the crisis is that Madeline and Gussie Fink-Nottle are about to break up over her insistence that he follow a vegetarian diet. He's cranky because he's feeling the lack of kidney pie and she's insisting that he be spiritual and sensitive like she and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley are/were. Anyway, it doesn't go well for them.

Besides enjoying myself in the reading of this book, it has also taught me why so many people ask me where I get my protein when they find out I'm vegan. It's not a league of uninformed health professionals responsible for imagining and propagating the myth that protein can be found only in flesh, oh no - it's Wodehouse! I'm certain that many, many more people in the world have read Wodehouse than have read dietary manuals and so I blame the Bard of Funny for this misconception and would have to kill him for it if death hadn't already killed him to death.

Vacation begins first thing Sunday morning and I don't know what kind of computer access I'll have while away. At the latest, I'll be back blogging in early May.

4 comments:

Stefanie said...

I get asked that question all the time too! I had no idea Wodehouse was to blame for it. You're right, it's a good thing he is dead or we'd both be after him!

Bookphilia said...

I knew you'd understand and sympathize, Stefanie. Damn his anti-veg eyes!

Gilion at Rose City Reader said...

Dietary concerns aside -- this is one of my favorites! Of course, every time, in every book, when he describes Madeline as they type of girl who says "the stars are God's daisy chain" I laugh.

There is a pretty good Wodehouse "spreadsheet" in book form, called Plum Sauce.

Bookphilia said...

Rose City Reader: Oh, I'll have to find Plum Sauce.

Have you read Leave it to Psmith? It's still one of my favourite Wodehouses.