The Novel Life of PG Wodehouse by Roderick Easdale

Author:Roderick Easdale
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wodehouse, Biography, Jeeves, Blandings, Humourist, Literature, Psmith, Dulwich College, Uncle Fred, Bertie Wooster, Lord Emsworth, Leol Yeo, Ukridge, Butler, Nazi propaganda, Guy Bolton, Tost, Remsenburg, Le Touquet, Cassandra
ISBN: 9781783338276
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2014-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Treatment

What is plagiarism? Did you ever see a play by Freddie Lonsdale called The Last of Mrs Cheyney? It was about a society woman who was one of a band of crooks, and this is revealed to the audience at the end of Act I. An exactly similar situation was in an American play called Cheating Cheaters. And the big scene in Act II was where the hero gets Mrs Cheyney into his room at night and holds her up for something by saying he is going to keep her there till they are found in the morning, which is exactly the same as Pinero’s Gay Lord Quex. And yet nobody has ever breathed a word against Freddie for plagiarising. Quite rightly. The treatment is everything. [Performing Flea]

Wodehouse was to be plagued by plots throughout his writing life. The actual technique of writing held no perils for him. He could write quickly and felicitously. What he had to have, though, was something to write about. When he worked on a daily column for The Globe that was no problem, for that day’s news gave him something to bounce off. But the blank piece of paper held a terror for him if he was not sure of the structure of the piece that was to fill it. With that firmly fixed, he could write rapidly and without anxiety. In the many letters in Performing Flea never once does he complain of difficulties with the art of writing, though he did complain as he got older that he could not write so quickly. What he is always complaining of is the difficulty of getting plots. One method was simple plagiarism, as the full text of two letters which appear in abridged form in Performing Flea illustrate. These extracts were cut out when the letters were edited for publication:

I have got a new system for writing short stories. I take a Saturday Evening Post story and say, ‘Now, how can I write exactly the same story but entirely different?’ ... I have faith in the method. It at least does this - it sets one thinking, - and then some other plot on quite different lines emerges. [letter, 2 December 1935 to William Townend]

I find nowadays that the only way I can get plots is by reading somebody else’s stuff and working from there. I was reading a book the other day, called No Hero, where the fatal paper is hidden in a man’s flask, and the man, who has always been a ready drinker, suddenly decides to reform and so does not touch the flask. If I can’t get something out of that, I’m not the man I was.

I don’t think there is any objection to basing one’s stuff on somebody else’s, providing you alter it enough. After all, all one wants is motives. [letter, 6 May 1937, to William Townend]

The idea of the flask came into use in Money In The Bank. Wodehouse adapted the idea into the tobacco jar of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.