“Hilarious”, says a quote on the front of this book. The same word is repeated four times, in quotes from reputable American publications. You can understand why British publishers might want to exploit this. Still, I’ll be the judge of that, I thought, and then started on this odd and most extraordinary book.
It begins in New Jersey, in roughly contemporary times (evidence suggests the mid to late 90s), with a narrator who sounds like Bertie Wooster, being awakened by his valet, Jeeves. The narrator, we quickly learn, is Jewish. He is staying with his aunt and uncle, for reasons, we learn later, of personal failure. He is a novelist who, after some success with his first book, has now been barren for six years. He has a penchant for Anglicisms, a weakness for English spelling (which he says he is too cowardly to reproduce in his writing), and a keen love of literature from this side of the pond, particularly favouring Anthony Powell and, of course, PG Wodehouse.
It is not as easy as it looks to pay decent homage to the man’s style. Sometimes even Wodehouse could look like a semi-exhausted imitator of himself, and that should be warning enough. Sebastian Faulks called his own attempt, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, “a nostalgic variation”, but even after a year and a half, the memory of all the jarring notes in both tone and plot make me wish I had never read it.
However, Wake Up, Sir! is another matter entirely. For a start, there is the question of style. Jonathan Ames has an almost freakish gift for Wodehousian apercus that PG himself never uttered, as far as I know. A woman has “copper, wiry hair that had a life of its own and not a very pleasant life at that”. When the narrator, Alan Blair, is punched by the enraged boyfriend of a woman he has unwisely solicited, he notes later in the mirror that his nose had moved from left to right, “like the English sentence”. As for Jeeves, in an interview between Blair and his valet-to-be, after Blair has expressed surprise at the name, Jeeves replies: “I can appreciate, Sir, your reaction. I imagine you are making reference to the character Jeeves in the novels and stories of PG Wodehouse.” This is audacity of a high order. The plot then involves reworkings of the old Bertie-has-to-steal-something-from-a-country-house-in-the-dead-of-night trope, allowing the reader familiar with Wodehouse to tick off the (often quite subtle) nods to moments in his work.
After a shortish while, though, you realise that much more is going on than mere cheek – superbly executed though that is. Blair is an alcoholic (huge intake, blackouts, the works) who also has to cope with other failures and anxieties, and Jeeves, although this is never pointed out, is a figment of his imagination: his conscience and his salve, both his loneliness and his respite from loneliness, internally embodied. In which case the word “hilarious” seems inadequate. The novel is extremely funny but it is also sad and poignant, and almost incredibly clever. Pouring the inner voice of the self-tormenting, sexually frustrated Jewish writer into the Woosterish mould is a great trick; and it’s also why you don’t have to be a Wodehouse fan to enjoy the book.
Many people have noted how they turn to Wodehouse for solace in troubled times; Blair and Ames have gone a step further. There’s also the intriguing possibility that the book itself is a dream, or a dream within a dream – hence the title. (They are also the opening and closing words of the novel.) The real mystery, though, is how it took so long – more than a decade – to get a British publisher. Did they think, perhaps, that Wodehouse fans would be offended, or wouldn’t get it? If so, it was an unworthy thought. Thank goodness it is finally here.
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