Uncle Dynamite

First - these Collector's Wodehouse are great books to read - the print is not squished or hideously smeared as so often is the case in the paperback editions. The paper is not cheap, but bright, the type attractive and easy on the eye, and the spines hold together and allow you to enjoy the book more than once - a must for a Wodehouse novel!The plot - must I? Really - no one does plots like Wodehouse does plots - why spoil all the fun by listing names and places and a few isolated incidents? Plot outlines are fine for your ordinary book, but I refuse to sink to such a level of humdrum Utilitarianism for Wodehouse!Not counting an unbeatable earlier short story, "Uncle Fred Flits By" found in "Young Men In Spats"  Young Men in Spats (Collector's Wodehouse) along with this title "Uncle Dynamite" there are three other novels featuring Lord Ickenham, aka Uncle Fred - the finest of the four by far is, "Uncle Fred in the Springtime"  Uncle Fred In The Springtime ; later in life the author also gave us "Cocktail Time"  Cocktail Time ; and "Service With a Smile"  Service with a Smile . All offer a front row seat for the zany breath-taking productions of Wodehouse's most daring master of ceremonies. Where Jeeves might be said to operate his magic tricks behind the scenes, off stage, Lord Ickenham delights in operating the most brazen impersonations and deceiving stratagems front and center, and without benefit of a net for the perilous heights of his tightrope act. Someone once wrote - quite perfectly and most cunningly - that Jeeves might be Iago, called back to do penance for his crimes as a comic character. One might say the same for Lord Ickenham - for his confidence man is on such a high order as to suggest Felix Krull himself has returned to Earth and is serving out a wild Purgatory.Although even as a boy Uncle Fred was pegged by his peers with the moniker 'Barmy', meaning silly, foolish, or eccentric, one should not underestimate his abilities. He certainly doesn't - "There are no limits to what I can accomplish" - and he doesn't fail to deliver! Though purely altruistic in nature, Lord Ickenham is nothing less than Anarchy let loose in the staid world of Upper Crust England. Those who come in contact with him when in full regalia stagger away as if hit by a human tornado - even the book's most unflinching character, his nephew Reginald's proud and cold beauty of a fiancee, Hermione, finds herself completely undone by his potent perpetrations of perjuries. After running down his nephew Reginald to Hermione with twenty minutes full litany of lies, falsehoods, and the most monstrous untruths, unprecedented in number even for so grand a fabulist as himself, Lord Ickenham shakes his head before the now revolted and stunned young woman and announces with a straight face, "One wonders if Reginald Twistleton knows the difference bewteen right and wrong."Some of this dash is decidely out of tunes with British behavior - the frontier spirit of twenty years spent in all sorts of odd jobs in America has carried over in Lord Ickenham's sixties into an unbeatable energy and unbridled optimism - the more mindboggling his situation, the greater his creativity in response. In the end Lord Ickenham emerges as Cupid in all his glory, and his God of Love proves an irresistible force majeure in breaking up unhealthy relationships as he rights wrongs and sets love on its proper course, all done with an unsurpassed hilarity.Lord Ickenham is of course Wodehouse's alter ego in much the same way several of his leading characters might be said to be. All writers of course write fiction - some are honest enough to admit it. Wodehouse writes lies in excelsis and flaunts his ruses in both form and content. What seemingly could be less natural and thus less truthful on the surface than farce? But it is just this up front admission of untruth that serves the author's noble purpose of first tantalizing us with the confusing image of goodness wrapped in falsehoods, then perplexing us as he sets his deus ex machina, Lord Ickenham, to reordering the chaos he stirs up into a better world of sweetness and light. Wodehouse finds in Lord Ickenham a doyen among his champions of the justice in comic misrule and mischief. Where Wodehouse in person was shy and rather dull, his creations take the most extreme chances and color every scene with gobs of personality. The various plots cooked up as he goes by the fun-loving Lord are merely a complex and highly evolved reflection of the author's own efforts to find natty devices and secondary themes.How remarkably far along Wodehouse has carried what are essentially the very basic simple house rules of Scribe's theater. Aesthetically, Wodehouse is untouched at balancing a vertiable Chinese acrobats troupe of characters aloft and gyrating madly for a full 300 pages. Some call it farce, I call it high art.It also helps to read Wodehouse with a background in the Classics - What could possibly be droller than the mother of a modern young girl named Hermione, daughter of Helen of Troy, having as a mother "a woman in her late forties who looked like a horse."The 'lost' Helen must be reborn in some guise, so Lord Ickenham, the de facto ruling chieftan of the entire melee that is the story decrees young heroine Sally Painter (though Ms Painter is actually a sculptress, another of the endless verbal jokes) as looking like "Helen of Troy after a facial." and a world deprived of beauty has been righted.

“Uncle Dynamite”P.G. Wodehouse“He looked pleased with himself, and who shall blame him? A man whose mission is to spread sweetness and light and to bring the young folk together may surely be forgiven a touch of complacency when happy endings start going off like crackers all around him and he sees the young folk coming together in droves.” P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Uncle Dynamite, 1948Wodehouse published his first book, The Pothunters, in 1902, when he was twenty-one – his last, an unfinished novel, Sunset at Blandings, two years after his death at age 93, in 1977. In between were almost a hundred books – novels, short stories, collections and memoirs. He also teamed up with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern writing lyrics for a number of Broadway musicals, including “Sitting Pretty,” “Have a Heart” and “Oh, Lady! Lady!”. He was busy. Shortly before he died, Wodehouse sat for an interview with “The Paris Review: “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”Uncle Dynamite is, in reality, Pongo Twistleton’s Uncle Fred, a sixtyish gentleman whose full name is Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, Fifth Earl of Ickenham. He is a terror to his pleasant but witless and docile nephew, getting him into and then out of scrapes. Uncle Fred is described: “A tall, slim distinguished looking man…with a jaunty grey moustache and a bright enterprising eye, whose air was that of one who had lived life to the full every minute of an enjoyable life and intends to go on doing so till further notice. His hat was on the side of his head, and he bore his cigar like a banner.” His mission, as the rubric declares, is to spread sweetness and light.Besides his unparalleled mastery of the English language, Wodehouse’s genius was his ability to create plots beyond the imagination of the most visionary reader. He then employs a character with the brains of a Jeeves or the impish resourcefulness of an Uncle Fred to unwind what had appeared to be a skein of knotted yarn. And he does so in a surprising and humorous fashion. This is the third of five books in which Uncle Fred plays the principal character. As a reader you will wish for ten times that number.Wodehouse’s ‘bon mots’ are inimitable and they are found on almost every page: “A sort of writhing movement behind the moustache showed that Sir Aylmer was smiling.” “It frequently happens that prospective sons-in-laws come as a rather painful shock to their prospective mothers-in-law.” “She is taking a trip to the West Indies.” Jamaica?” “No, she went of her own free will.” “A thing I’ve noticed all my life is that the nicest girls always have the ghastliest brothers.” “’H’ar yer?’ roared Sir Aylmer like a lion which just received an ounce of small shot in the rear quarters.”In this story Uncle Fred is confronted with three young couples – one not paired as he believes they should be, two individuals are estranged and a third couple has the male in need of moxie to pledge his troth. The situation, to the reader, seems impossible to resolve. As Uncle Fred goes to work, Pongo (and the reader) become convinced Uncle Fred should be institutionalized. But resolutely and confidently he leads us down the path only he can see. In the final pages webs of intrigue and mayhem are untangled. Sweetness and light prevail.So, tomorrow, forget your favorite newspaper about some self-serving, hypocritical politician written by a snot-nosed, sanctimonious reporter; rather, pick up a Wodehouse. Instead of being depressed by the state of affairs in the country and the world, you will find yourself in the make-believe world of Edwardian England. A smile will chase away the frowns, laughter will replace tears of despair. You will be happier and so will your family and friends.

This is one of his very best. It is beautifully-constructed, in true Wodehouse style, being at the same time a fresh plot and the same old formula. It has the usual rogue's gallery of old and new characters: Lord Ickenham - the loopy Uncle Fred of other books - makes his appearnace with his suffering nephew Pongo, who still broods over that day at the dog races with Uncle Fred, but we are no wiser as to what happened that a wiser magistrate would have been content with a fine. But we are introduced to the copper who copped them - a worthy addition to Wodehouse's stable of constables still in my view led by PC Stilton Cheesewright - and we learn of their aiiases on that fateful day - which complicate the present plot. There is no castle but an ugly modern buuilding. There is the naive hero, the pretty girl, the standard mix-up to sort out in two love affairs; the are jewels and crooks and much else besides. It is a hoot.The only thing against it is the worst (only?) pun in the Wodehohuse oeuvre:Lord Ickenham: (of his wife) "She is taking a trip in the West Indies."Bill: "Jamaica?"Lord I: "No, she went of her own free will."

I listened to the audio-book narrated by Johnathan Cecil and it was fantastic. He did a great job bringing the characters to life, but he had some good material to work with. The book is funny, a true P.G. Wodehouse classic, one of the best I have experienced. Wodehouse creates some very complicated scenarios but somehow he manages to have everyone get a happy ending while giving the reader lots of laughs on the way. I don't want to rehash the plot as I am sure many persons already have, just be assured if you read this book you will get hours of joy and there are not many things that you can say will give a person that - I fully recommend this novel.

Bill Oakshott is in love with his cousin, Hermione. Hermione's father, Bill's uncle, is the fearsome Sir Aylmer Bostok, who has taken up residence in what should be Bill's home and refuses to be shifted. Bill needs to get the girl of his dreams and wrest control of his home from his uncle. This is easier said than done, as Hermione is now engaged to Reginald "Pongo" Twistleton. Pongo had been engaged to an American sculptress, Sally Painter, but they parted after Pongo refused to smuggle Sally's friend's jewellery into America.Who better to help than Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, fifth Earl of Ickenham, `one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet', better known to Pongo as Uncle Fred, now at leisure to spread sweetness and light as only he knows how as his disapproving wife, Jane, Lady Ickenham, is en route for the West Indies. Cue a visit to Bill's country home, where Uncle Fred can spin his usual schemes of disguise and impersonation.This, the second novel to feature Uncle Fred, is another superb farce in the great Wodehouse tradition.

P. G. Wodehouse, undoubtedly the funniest writer in English literature, the best user of the English language since Shakespeare (and, since Shakespeare did not invent Jeeves and Wooster, Lord Emsworth, Galahad Threepwood and, of course, Uncle Fred, he was nowhere near as funny as Wodehouse). In this marvellous book, Uncle Fred (Lord Ickenham) sets out to spread joy wherever he goes - often landing himself and others deeply in the soup, from which he somehow extricates one and all, with some of the sharpest, funniest use of language in any of Wodehouse's books. I am not a fan of everything Wodehouse wrote - the Psmith books, for instance - but anything involving Jeeves and Wooster, Uncle Fred and, especially, Blandings Castle, should be read over and over again. Wonderful writing, pure escapism, an absolute joy from start to finish.

I had not read this Wodehouse. So when I found a Bbc abridged version with Richard Briers and Hugh Grant I knew I needed the full version. I really love Jonathan Cecil reading Wodehouse. He is the master at all the different voices. Jeeves nd Bertie only really shine with his rendition. Anyway, this story is super, silly and splendid. The action always verges on farce, but never gets too uncomfortable. It differs vastly from Bbc. Get both! If you are a Plum fan you'll enjoy this little gem.

For anyone familiar with P. G. Woodhouse's writing this book is a true pearl. As always up to his best in this fantastic amalgamation of fun, snobbery and pure entertainment.Even though I am not a native to the English language - I do enjoy reading English books. And I must say that I thoroughly enjoy P.G. Woodhouse. Uncle Dynamite (Fred) was introduced in the Blandings Castle series and this series I also recommend. P. G. Woodhouse at his very best. ENJOY!René Olsen, Copenhagen, Denmark

An easy bedtime read, but found it a bit over long, it seemed to ramble on for ever, never really getting anywhere. Not to me one of Wodhous's finest.