P.G.沃德豪斯：英國的幽默大師和文學天才

By Charles Champlin

“I believe there are only two ways of writing a novel，” Pelham Grenville Wodehouse once said. “One is mine， making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether； the other is going right down deep into life， and not caring a damn.”

Never did an author describe his work so well. The adventures of Bertie Wooster and his valet， Jeeves， ignored real life about as totally as it could be ignored over the course of decades when they filled several novels and dozens of short stories， and they also became a PBS series，1 Jeeves and Wooster.

今年是英國幽默小說大師P. G. 沃德豪斯誕辰138周年。阿加莎·克里斯蒂、喬治·奧威爾、道格拉斯·亞當斯等人都是他的忠實讀者。《萬能管家吉夫斯》系列是他的代表作，更是英式幽默的典范，其影響力已經超越了文學領域，成為了英語世界的文化現象。

P. G. Wodehouse （pronounced Woodhouse） died in 1975 at the age of 93 after an astonishingly prolific2 life. He published 96 books，several of them collections of his 300 short stories. He collaborated on 16 plays and 28 musical comedies and for Hollywood wrote the scripts of 6 movies.3 In his early years he wrote under so many pseudonyms that his total output will probably never be known.4

Wodehouse sold his first article before he was 20 and received 10 shillings and sixpence for it.5 He was typing away on yet another novel， Sunset at Blandings， on the morning of the day he died. It was published posthumously6 in its unfinished form， with his notes for the rest. The world could never get enough of Wodehouse.

Wodehouse also wrote the lyrics for dozens of songs， and one of them， Jerome Kerns “Bill，”7 has become a standard.

Yet it was the Wooster-Jeeves stories that assured Wodehouse immortality， read and re-read in English and translated into many foreign languages. The character who became Bertie Wooster made his first appearance as Reggie Pepper in a story in 1915 and appeared under his own name in a collection titled The Man with Two Left Feet two years later. By then， Wodehouse was already in his mid-30s and well-known as a humorous writer for both print and the theater.

The stories seem to arise in the late Edwardian world of the British upper-class， in Mayfair flats and country houses， a time when rich and foolish young men thought about work without ever actually having to do any， and the young women they cavorted with were equally rich and foolish but also beautiful and desirable.8

It was， of course， a world Wodehouse created—and sustained in its airy distance from the real world—through two wars and a global Depression.9

Jeeves apparently got his name from a cricket10 player Wodehouse admired. His traits as the consummate valet， shrewder by several dozen IQ points than his amiably feckless master， may have been partly inspired by the displaced valet， Ruggles， of Harry Leon Wilsons American novel， Ruggles of Red Gap.11

Bertie Wooster， his brain a vast interstellar vacuum crossed by occasional wandering notions， was a dazzling invention， a farcical enlargement of every foolish chap， serenely selfassured with precious little justification.12

Wodehouse indeed worked with a kind of stock company of generic characters： Young Men， Young Women， Imperious Aunts， Pompous Aristocrats，13 all linked of course to The Perfect Servant.

Wodehouse had a dreadful14 early life. He was sent back to England at age two from Hong Kong， where both his parents were colonial workers， to be raised by two aunts （neither said to be the model for the awful Aunt Agatha in the TV series） and by a grandmother. He saw his parents every four years on their home leave.

He was shipped off to boarding school at five， thence to a public school and Dulwich College.15 Wodehouse and his wife spent the last 30 years of his life in Remsenberg， Long Island，and he became an American citizen in 1955. But he continued to write of the musical comedy version of England that he had created and populated so well. He was knighted16 by Queen Elizabeth only a few weeks before his death.

He was admired by writers as various as Hilaire Belloc， Evelyn Waugh and Isaac Asimov，17 and by readers in at least 80 countries. But he remained indefatigably modest， referring to his writing as “my stuff，” and pouring his self-deprecating views of himself into，18 of all people， Bertie Wooster.

In an interview Michael Phillips （an author and editor） said about P. G. Wodehouse， “In my opinion， he is the wordsmith and writing technician par excellence of all time.19 I could conduct a complete writing seminar using nothing but his books， and as works of fiction， they are also having eternally redeeming value.”

P. G. Wodehouse is inimitable20. His British humor defies21 description： It can only be experienced. The tales are filled with eccentric aunts， quirky characters，22 and crazy plots. And in between， youll encounter pure literary genius. He wields his pen with such skill that you are taken aback by the dry wit where you least expect it.23 He creates characters as alive as they are unusual in personality. And the word pictures are as ironic as they are memorable. While there may not be much of moral virtue within their pages， Wodehouses tales should be read for the sheer pleasure of having read them.

1. valet： 貼身男仆；PBS： 即Public Broadcasting Service，美國公共廣播公司。

2. prolific：（藝術家、作家等）多產的，作品豐富的。

3. collaborate on： 在……方面合作；script：（戲劇、電影等的）劇本。

4. pseudonym： 筆名，假名；output：輸出量，產量，這里指作家的作品量。

5. shilling： 先令，1971年前的英國貨幣單位，20先令為1鎊；sixpence：六便士。

6. posthumously： 于死后，于著作者死后出版地。

7. lyric：（常用復數）歌詞；Jerome Kern： 杰爾姆·克恩（1885—1945），美國音樂劇歷史上重要的作曲家之一，被譽為“現代美國音樂劇之父”和“美國劇場音樂的先驅”。

8. 故事發生在英國愛德華七世時代晚期的上流社會，那時，在倫敦梅費爾的豪華公寓和郊外的鄉間別墅里，富有而愚蠢的年輕男子想著工作卻實際上碌碌無為，與其一道尋歡作樂的年輕女子也同樣富有和愚蠢，卻也美麗而迷人。Edwardian： 英王愛德華七世時代的；Mayfair： 梅費爾，倫敦的上流住宅區；cavort： 嬉戲，尋歡作樂。

9. sustain： 保持，維持；airy： 快活的，無憂無慮的；Depression：大蕭條（指1929年至20世紀30年代早期的世界性嚴重經濟蕭條）。

10. cricket： 板球。

11. trait：（某人性格中的）特性，品質；consummate： 完美無缺的；shrewd： 精明的，機靈的；amiably： 親切友好地；feckless： 沒有決心的，沒出息的；Harry Leon Wilson：哈里·利昂·威爾遜（1867—1939），美國小說家、劇作家，代表作為 《風雨血痕》（Ruggles of Red Gap）。

12. 伯蒂·伍斯特的大腦如同一個巨大的星際空間，零碎的思緒飄蕩其中，這可謂是一個絕妙的人物塑造，以滑稽荒謬的方式放大了每一個愚蠢的人，這樣的人憑借著一點點可貴的理由坦然地維持著自信。interstellar： 星際的；vacuum： 真空，空間；farcical：滑稽的，荒唐的；chap： 家伙，小伙子；justification： 正當的理由。

13. generic： 非特有的，普通的；imperious： 專橫的，傲慢的；pompous： 浮夸的，華而不實的；aristocrat： 貴族。

14. dreadful： 糟糕透頂的，令人不快的。

15. boarding school： 寄宿學校；thence： 從那里。

16. knight： 授……以爵士品位。

17. Hilaire Belloc： 希萊爾·貝洛克（1870—1953），英國著名作家、歷史學家；Evelyn Waugh： 伊夫林·沃（1903—1966），英國著名諷刺小說家，代表作為《故園風雨后》；Isaac Asimov： 艾薩克·阿西莫夫（1920—1992），美國著名科幻小說家、文學評論家。

18. indefatigably： 不知疲倦地，不屈不撓地；selfdeprecating： 自我貶低的，謙遜的。

19. wordsmith： 語言藝術家，詞語大師；par excellence：杰出的，出類拔萃的。

20. inimitable： 獨特的，無法效仿的。

21. defy： 使成為不可能。

22. eccentric： 古怪的，反常的；quirky： 奇特古怪的。

23. wield： 使用，掌握；take aback：（常用被動語態）使吃驚，使困惑；dry wit： 冷面幽默。