A Gentleman of Leisure

Rating:
Summary: Early Wodehouse - Good but not great
Review: "A Gentleman of Leisure" was first published in 1910, which makes it one of his earlier works. In the United States it was originally published under the title "The Intrusion of Jimmy." This particular printing is from The Collector's Wodehouse series being released by The Overlook Press (in the U.K. it is The Everyman's Wodehouse series from Everyman's Library). The series is very nicely produced, the bindings are excellent, and the paper quality is high.

This particular story is about Jimmy Pitt, who makes a bet that "any man of ordinary intelligence could break into a house." There is some pre-history to the characters, which the reader is given in a hurry, and it feels a bit more forced than other Wodehouse books that I have read. I do not want to go into much detail about the plot, but it does develop in a familiar way to readers of Wodehouse, with many twists and turns. Still, there is something missing in the telling of this story. It lacks the easy flow that his later stories. Still, one can see the early elements of what would eventually make P. G. Wodehouse one of the great humorists of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Early Wodehouse - Good but not great
Review: "A Gentleman of Leisure" was first published in 1910, which makes it one of his earlier works. In the United States it was originally published under the title "The Intrusion of Jimmy." This particular printing is from The Collector's Wodehouse series being released by The Overlook Press (in the U.K. it is The Everyman's Wodehouse series from Everyman's Library). The series is very nicely produced, the bindings are excellent, and the paper quality is high.

This particular story is about Jimmy Pitt, who makes a bet that "any man of ordinary intelligence could break into a house." There is some pre-history to the characters, which the reader is given in a hurry, and it feels a bit more forced than other Wodehouse books that I have read. I do not want to go into much detail about the plot, but it does develop in a familiar way to readers of Wodehouse, with many twists and turns. Still, there is something missing in the telling of this story. It lacks the easy flow that his later stories. Still, one can see the early elements of what would eventually make P. G. Wodehouse one of the great humorists of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Yet another great piece of comic writing
Review: A Gentleman of Leisure is the first Wodehouse novel I have read which is not in the series which includes Jeeves. My initials misgivings were quickly overcome, however, when within the first chapters our main hero has not only made a bet that "any man of ordinary intelligence could break into a house," but is also attempting to win the bet. Sounds like a silly setup but the style with which Wodehouse leads the reader into it more than assured me I was going to enjoy the rest of the book.

Wodehouse's characters almost never work, rarely know what is going on, and are incredibly prone to misunderstandings. In other words, P.G. would have been a great writer for such sit-coms as Friends or Three's Company (with the caveat that Wodehouse is too consistently funny for either of these shows).

Wodehouse has a style of prose that makes everything he writes incredibly easy to read, even 90 years later as with A Gentleman of Leisure. His sense of comic dialogue is always right on and somehow the shear unlikeliness of every coincidental encounter goes unnoticed.

As always the plot (Jimmy Pitt, our lovable hero, is trying to woo his true love, Molly McEachern) is simpler than the characters. Fortunately it is upon the characters, and not the plot, that this novel relies.

Rating:
Summary: OK Comic Novel Foreshadows Better Stories
Review: First published in 1910, this is one of Wodehouse's earliest adult novels, and it shows. Wodehouse's fine comic prose is very much in evidence and makes it readable enough; the trouble is the blandly flawless straight-arrow protagonist and the soppy generic romance plot. There are some more successful comical secondary characters, including a New York burglar (whose colourful New York criminal dialect begins to grate after a while), and a jelly-spined hard-up-for-cash English Lord tyrannised by his overbearing Uncle.

Having read and loved some later Wodehouse, especially the Jeeves and Bertie stories, I soon found the more interesting elements of the book to be the foreshadowings of what was to come, viz:

· Lord Dreever is rather like Bertie Wooster might be if he was dependent on Aunt Agatha;
· Lord Dreever's unwanted betrothal would be relived by Bertie countless times;
· Jimmy is mistaken for a professional thief;
· and in the contrast between Jimmy's standard English and Spike's New York dialect lies the seeds of the juxtaposed Jeeves-speak and Bertie-speak that is one of the joys of those stories.

In brief, this is chiefly for the Wodehouse fan interested in following the Master's development as a writer.

Also published under the title 'The Intrusion of Jimmy'.

Rating:
Summary: Overlooked Early Wodehouse Gem.
Review: Very interesting one this. While obviously not of the quality of his later work(i.e. from Leave It To Psmith onwards) this is a key early Wodehouse text. It almost reads like an early prototype for the aforementioned Psmith book, with it's country estate setting complete with valuable jewellery and potential thieves. Add in a very Threepwood-like peer with the backbone of a jellyfish having to contend with a formidable Uncle and Aunt and you have all the key ingredients for a classic Wodehouse.

If you've read Leave It To Psmith then on no account miss this one, it's not the best of his early books(probably Pmith in the City) but it's the most prophetic.