
PG Wodehouse secures redemption as British Library acquires priceless archive - samclemens
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/27/pg-wodehouse-archive-british-library-redemption-nazi-collaboration
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whowalrus
This news item is an eye-opener for me. As a Wodehouse fan I'd always assumed
the Nazi broadcast incident was a small blip in his life. Did not realize it
had such a major impact on his life.

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roter
George Orwell wrote in 1946 a reasoned defence of Wodehouse[0]. In particular
the final paragraph:

> In the desperate circumstances of the time, it was excusable to be angry at
> what Wodehouse did, but to go on denouncing him three or four years later —
> and more, to let an impression remain that he acted with conscious treachery
> — is not excusable. Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting
> than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely
> the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In France, all kinds of petty
> rats — police officials, penny-a-lining journalists, women who have slept
> with German soldiers — are hunted down while almost without exception the
> big rats escape. In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are
> uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and
> Communists who were advocating it in 1940. I have striven to show how the
> wretched Wodehouse — just because success and expatriation had allowed him
> to remain mentally in the Edwardian age — became the corpus vile in a
> propaganda experiment, and I suggest that it is now time to regard the
> incident as closed. If Ezra Pound is caught and shot by the American
> authorities, it will have the effect of establishing his reputation as a
> poet for hundreds of years; and even in the case of Wodehouse, if we drive
> him to retire to the United States and renounce his British citizenship, we
> shall end by being horribly ashamed of ourselves. Meanwhile, if we really
> want to punish the people who weakened national morale at critical moments,
> there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing.

[0]
[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/plum/english/e_plum](http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/plum/english/e_plum)

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sriram_sun
Thank you! As someone who grew up in India and inherited a significant number
of the Wodehouse collection from my Grandfather, I wasn't aware of any of
this. Not all of my friends were into this kind of humor, but to me it was the
British literary equivalent of the Three Stooges! There was a time when I'd
read paragraphs over and over just rotfl.

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lake99
> long tarnished by charges of Nazi collaboration

Is that an American or a British thing? I know quite a few diehard fans of
Wodehouse in India. One of them even sent me transcripts of his radio
broadcasts. The broadcasts seemed entirely innocuous to me. And my friends who
don't like Wodehouse's writings are not aware of the broadcasts at all,
suggesting that that's not the reason they don't read his works.

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neaden
British thing I believe, at least I've never heard it mentioned Stateside,
though Wodehouse isn't very famous here. I think a lot of people were angry at
him at the time is happened and stayed mad for the rest of his life.

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gadders
He really is one of the funniest writers ever in the English language.

~~~
wyclif
One of the greatest writers, even beyond considerations of humour. Reading PGW
for reasons other the pleasure is probably misguided, but if you want to
improve your English prose there is gold in those pages. This possibly
explains his enduring popularity in India.

~~~
not_that_noob
Condescending much?

There is a sophisticated and voracious readership of English in India. And it
has given the world many great writers with unparalleled output in English -
see
[http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/JLCMS/article/viewF...](http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/JLCMS/article/viewFile/26/25)

And the writer RK Narayan, with his distinct characters and humorous stories,
is the Indian response to Wodehouse. PGW is read, as he is all over the world,
for his humo(u)r, wit and brilliance.

~~~
Veen
I'm British and I make a living as a writer. I wouldn't find it condescending
to be told that I can learn something from Wodehouse - his prose is sublime.

Perhaps you overreacted to what was an innocent and general comment about
learning from Wodehouse's prose, rather than a condescending suggestion that
Indians could benefit in particular.

