P.G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master

by Pramod K. Nayar

Postcolonialism as a critical approach and pedagogic practice has informed literary and cultural studies since the late 1980s. The term is heavily loaded and has come to mean a wide, and often bewildering, variety of approaches, methods, politics and ideas. Beginning with the historical origins of postcolonial thought in the writings of Gandhi, Cesaire and Fanon, this guide moves on to Edward Said's articulation into a critical approach and finally to postcolonialism's multiple forms in contemporary critical thinking, including theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak, Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmed. Written in jargon-free language and illustrated with examples from literary and cultural texts, this book addresses the many concerns, forms and 'specializations' of postcolonialism, including gender and sexuality studies, the nations and nationalism, space and place, history and politics. It explains the key ideas, concepts and approaches in what is arguably the most influential and politically edged critical approach in literary and cultural theory today

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[David Kindred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a slog to get through. For the researcher, it has plenty of information about the what's when's and where's of Wodehouse's work, but not enough information about Plum, himself, or any of the desired behind-the-scenes of the development of his characters. It became more interesting from WW II through to the end of his life, but I cannot heartily recommend this book to anyone but the Wodehouse scholar. It simply doesn't paint enough of a picture of the man, himself, to make it very interesting to the average Wodehouse fan.

[Mark Nenadov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Wodehouse and I found some great tidbits in here, but it seems to lean too heavily on lengthy letter excerpts and seems rather listish and perfunctory at times.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I’ve fallen off a bit on my drive to read all the P. G. Wodehouse ouvre in order, I can feel my juices beginning to bubble up about it again after reading this delightful biography of the master. I don’t know what to think of Jasen as a biographer–I tend to believe that he’s a poor one from the showing on this book, as he tends to simply list events in Plum’s life, interspersed with excerpted letters by and to Plum. And Jasen makes no bones that his book is an unbiased study of Wodehouse, from the subtitle to the treatment. On the other hand, I don’t know how you could treat Wodehouse in any other way, for he truly had lost any malicious bone in his body at approximately the age of 25, as if mean-spiritedness was a baby-tooth that one lost and promptly forgot about.

I bought this book years ago for its secondary bibliography, listing all the stories and books. With something roughly like 90 books to his credit, sometimes with similar titles between novels, different titles for American or British publication, and all eminently re-readable, it’s quite a chore to keep them straight in one’s mind. With an accurate list at hand, the only problem is finding the damn things.

I believe Frances Donaldson has written a more traditional biography (did I read it back when I first discovered Wodehouse in the stacks at the University of Texas?), which I should acquire and judge against Jasen.