It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl in Blue
5 thoughts on “It was one of the dullest speeches”
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I am in permanent awe of Wodehouse’s command of plot and language,
Look at the role of “Agee woman”, “beastly”, and “simple” — how perfect they are for the tone (affronted) and the joke.
Yep, Woodehouse is amazingly good at using just the right words in just the right places.
I’ve never read Wodehouse. I’ve been meaning to, especially when I see quotes like this that make me laugh out loud. Those quotes come from a mind that thinks diagonally when everyone else is either zigging or zagging. I know a lot of people are worried about AI, but I maintain that a machine cannot ever compete with a Wodehouse. That’s my Turing test, anyway.
Unfortunately for us (though not for Wodehouse) he lived to the ripe old age of 93, so – at least for the greater part of the world – his books will not be in the public domain for another 22 years. Had Micky Mouse not needed extra protection (with the knock on effects outside the USA) and Wodehouse died just a bit earlier we could already be reading them for free.
I’m all for protecting author’s copyrights but I think that we’ve gone over the top for books written by long lived authors when they were young . Does “Rebecca” say really need 120 years protection?
Project Gutenberg has several Wodehouse books. I know two more are being worked on to go in this year.
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/783
That’s only a small patch on what ge wrote though.