Customer Reviews

Psmith, Journalist

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Psmith Journalist" is the third Psmith novel and finds the hero cavorting in the New York City of 1914, as he unilaterally takes over a weekly newpaper, runs afoul of politicians and gangsters, and consorts with other gangsters to arrange for his protection. This sounds rather grim but actually Psmith continues to delight us with his humorous language and indomitable aplomb. As with the other early novels the final plot resolution is rather weak but not without being preceded by a hundred-odd pages of hilarious dialog and action. Moreover, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into the New York of a distant year, with which the author was intimately familiar.

I love Psmith, in all his forms - there are four novels with Psmith and this is one of the best - but they are all great. He is one of the best characters created by Wodehouse.

Now, I wanted to recommend two books here for you, one more Psmith book that is great:

Leave It To Psmith: A British Humor Classic

And this one - a book by Wodehouse about Wodehouse - and its interesting because he was a journalist and knows about newspapers, its very funny and entertaining too.

Not George Washington: A British Humor Classic

Enjoy!

Readers of Psmith's previous adventures (Mike and Psmith, Psmith in the City) will appreciate Psmith's adventures in darkest New York. Wodehouse limbers up his dese, dems, and doses as he introduces us to "Bat" Jarvis and his gang of lowlifes, with whom Psmith interacts in an amusing manner-- even, at times, becoming strenuous in his defense of justice and his own corpus! Psmith bonking miscreants over the head with a stick? Yes! Psmith disarming pistol-wielding evil-doers? Yes! And along the way, much of the artful and absurdly witty banter that Psmith and Wodehouse specialize in is served up in heaping dollops. Enjoy!

This isn't Wodehouse's funniest novel, but it is definitely the most exciting, with a more dramatic plot than usual. Psmith takes on a crooked slum landlord, hounding him through the pages of 'Cosy moments' a bland family paper that he has transformed with the help of assistant editor Billy Windsor. Psmith is a wonderful character, languid, frivolous and comic on the surface, tough man of action underneath, a modern Pimpernell. there are some wonderful comic characters, especially Bat Jarvis, the tough gangland boss with a passion for cats. I wish Wodehouse had written more about Psmith, he could have been the hero of a whole series of thrillers, with Mike Jackson as his stalwart sidekick. Instead Wodehouse married him off in the next Psmith novel (Leave It To Psmith) and we hear no more of him, what a pity!

This book is an absolute laugh. Psmith is always unique but I really loved this one. My favourite is Mike and Psmith. I'm a wannabe journalist so I really sympathized with Psmith's need to get himself a good story. Buy the omnibus comrade, you'll never regret it.

Very funny. I love how Wodehouse uses language. If you like that sort of thing and you haven't read Wodehouse before, shame on you. If you do and you've read other Wodehouse books, well, it's like that.

This was the first Psimth book which I read, and though there was a bit of the real world, and sentimental stuff too (unlike the Jeeves' series), I thouroughly enjoyed it. A must read for Wodehouse fans.

This sharp and witty book is a must for any intellectual humanoid! The language is simply divine! It is a younger Frasier Crane working a Ph.D in linquistics of English, full of energetic laughter and irony.

Maybe I've had an overdose of Wodehouse lately, having read Piccadilly Jim, Biffen's Millions, Plum Pie, and this book practically in a row, but I was simply not entertained by Psmith Journalist at all.

Perhaps it was Jonathan Cecil's reading (and I know that had a lot to do with it). His characterizations are indistinguishable and his attempt at an American accent is laughable (if you have heard any Monty Python, you'll recognize it).

But I think that could have been overlooked (or overlistened?) if the story had grabbed me. It seemed to be about Psmith taking over a New York rag and making it into a scandal sheet, involving a boxer somewhere along the way, but I can't be sure. I just didn't care, and I found nothing funny at all.

There is nothing to offer the casual Wodehouse fan in this novel. However, I will read his work again, as he has so much to offer in other books.

But I really think it's mainly Jonathan Cecil's fault.

I must confess I have not bought or read this book but I was astonished when browsing through Amazon.com I came across it. The publishers have chosen for its cover a portrait of Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, as painted by the great Joaquín Sorolla! I do not know about people outside the Spanish cultural mainstream, but I believe that a book about the laughable adventures of a semi auto-biographical journalist would be better introduced by a picture of Wodehouse himself, and not by the image of one of Spain's most thoughful and profound writers of all time. A shame.