The Pothunters Book

When Douglas Adams calls you the greatest comic writer ever, that is pretty high praise in my book, and Adams' high opinion of P.G. Wodehouse led me to take the plunge and try his first novel. Wodehouse was truly prolific, writing nearly 100 books over the course of his seven decade career, but I decided to start from the beginning with his debut, The Pothunters, first published all the way back in 1902.

This book is set at an English boarding school, and is categorized as one of Wodehouse's "school stories," but it doesn't seem quite sure what it wants to be. It is part YA mystery in the Hardy Boys vein, with the main plot revolving around some missing trophies that the students are trying to recover. But at times it drifts into becoming more of a sports story - it reminded me a lot of those baseball novels that American kids devoured in the 1920's, only featuring boxing and cricket instead. And at other times the story is more overtly comic. Wodehouse doesn't center the narrative around a single character, but jumps from boy to boy and scene to scene instead.

It certainly feels like a debut novel. But it's a quick, breezy read, and at times it's truly funny. For instance, this discussion of an obnoxious teacher's pet made me laugh out loud (emphasis added):

"'What sort of a chap is he? I hardly know him by sight, even.'
'Should describe him roughly,' said Dallas, 'as a hopeless, forsaken unspeakable worm.'
'Understates it considerably,' remarked Vaughan. 'His manners are patronizing, and his customs beastly.'
'He wears spectacles, and reads Herodotus in the original Greek for pleasure.'"

Other times Wodehouse will be going on about life at public school or a description of some sporting event pretty matter-of-factly, and suddenly drop some one-liner that made me smile:

"When one member of a public school falls out with another member, his politeness in dealing with him becomes so Chesterfieldian, that one cannot help being afraid that he will sustain a strain from which he will never recover."

"What is life without a water-wagtail's egg? A mere mockery."

"The most deadly error mortal man can make, with the exception of calling a school a college, is to call a college a school."

"'It passes out of the realm of the merely impudent,' he said, with a happy recollection of a certain favourite author of his, 'and soars into the boundless empyrean of pure cheek.'"

Good stuff. I hear that his later novels are much better, but even Wodehouse's earliest work makes for a pretty fun read. 3 stars, recommended.