Customer Reviews

Performing Flea

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This book was referenced by Robert McCrum's biography of Wodehouse. It is a series of letters written, over many decades, by Wodehouse to a school friend, who is also an author, though much less successful. The letters give a significant insight into Wodehouse's technique and his career progression both in the UK and on both US coastlines. It confirms the contradiction, which I first came across in McCrum, that Wodehouse's life was much more orderly, and work obsessed than a reader might infer from reading his work, which is whimsical and leisurely. There are also insights into Wodehouse's naivety, though I think this might be a bit contrived, especially during the war and post war years, when he had to try to atone for his broadcasts on Nazi Radio.
McCrum mentions that the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey had disparaged Wodehouse as a `performing flea'in a review, and that, at the time, Wodehouse was quite hurt. McCrum infers that Wodehouse's choice of the title for this book, was a way of responding to O'Casey's slight.
By definition, the choice of letters, must lead to a certain air of contrivance. However they are quite enlightening about a writer's methods, if nothing else. One thing I genuinely found surprising, was that I had not heard of most of the authors who Wodehouse mentions reading.