It’s hard to convey adequately just how silly Something Fresh, by P.G. Wodehouse, is. Let’s try this.
Like many fathers in his rank of life, the Earl of Emsworth had suffered much through that problem which — with the exception of Mr Lloyd George — is practically the only fly in the British aristocratic amber — the problem of What To Do With The Younger Sons. It is useless to try to gloss over the fact, the Younger Son is not required. You might reason with a British peer by the hour — you might point out to him how, in the one hand, he is far better off than the male codfish, who may at any moment find itself in the distressing position of being called on to provide for a family of over a million; and remind him, on the other, that every additional child he acquires means a corresponding rise for him in the estimation of ex-President Roosevelt; but you would not cheer him up in the least. He does not want the Younger Son.
Or perhaps:
The reason why all we novelists with bulging foreheads and expensive educations are abandoning novels and taking to writing motion-picture scenarii is because the latter are so infinitely the more simple and pleasant.
If this narrative, for instance, were a film-drama, the operator at this point would flash on the screen the words:
MR. PETERS DISCOVERS THE LOSS OF THE SCARAB
and for a brief moment the audience would see an interior set, in which a little angry man with a sharp face and starting eyes would register first, Discovery; next Dismay. The whole thing would be over in an instant.
The printed word demands a greater elaboration.
It was Aline who had to bear the brunt of her father’s mental agony when he discovered, shortly after his guest had left him, that the gem of his collection of scarabs had done the same. It is always the innocent bystander who suffers.
[Mr. Peters yells at Aline.]
How pleasant it is, after assisting at a scene of violence and recrimination, to be transferred to one of peace and goodwill. It is with a sense of relief that I find that the snipe-like flight of this story takes us next, far from Mr. Peters and his angry outpourings, to the cosy smoking-room of Blandings Castle. . . .
It doesn’t seem as packed with plot as a Bertie/Jeeves novel, but it’s extremely entertaining all the same.