(Incidentally, it's pronounced 'Woodhouse')

What can you say about this guy? What can't you say? There have been few writers in the history of written English who can manipulate the language like Wodehouse can. This guy is a true master, gifted with language as Mozart was gifted with music. Let's see what some other people have had to say about Wodehouse.

Dr. Glynn Baugher: "P.G. Wodehouse [is] a master of diction and clarity of style. If you want to take the slower route to enriching your reading vocabulary, you could not do better than to read the ninety-seven (at least) books by Wodehouse. Along the way you would relate vocabulary to good prose style, for his is one of the most varied, lively, and imaginative of English prose styles. And your health would be better for all the laughter: I know of no funnier writer when he is at his best, and the list of his best runs to about thirty books."

Okay, at the moment I cannot find any other useful things that people have said about Wodehouse. As this is only one page on the site, I cannot dedicate the appropriate amount of time to research what I would need to make this a page worthy of the man. I can't even find a bloody picture! The Usenet fan group was no help at all. The only picture I could find from them was one of Wodehouse's grave! Some fan club. All of my Wodehouse books, for some inexplicable reason, are conspicuously devoid of anything remotely resembling reviews or quotes. They are all just stories, from cover to cover. So this is what there is otherwise, as in the down and dirty.

Here are some of my favorite word manipulations and downright clever constructions from the endearing Wodehouse:

Scott Kapel

The speed at which the train was now proceeding had begun to render conversation in anything but stentorian tones somewhat difficult.

Leave It to Psmith

"Do please, gentlemen," said Mr. Bellamy, "let us try and endeavour and---er---attempt to steer clear of what you might call---er---"

. . . . "Verbal attacks," said Mr. Robins. "Personal animadversions. Vituperations...will get us nowhere."

Big Money

"If I have a fault---which I am not prepared to admit---it is a perhaps ungentlemanly desire to pull that curious female's leg. ....In future I will moderate the persiflage."

Leave It to Psmith

...the croupier at the bottom of the table caught his eye and smirked congratulatingly, as croupiers do when somebody has won a parcel and they think that there is going to be something in it for them in the way of largess.

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets

"...his lordship was very neatly swindled by a criminal known, I believe, by the sobriquet of Soapy Sid, who scraped acquaintance with us in Monte Carlo...."

The Inimitable Jeeves

...the one deep love of his life was for this Enquiry Agency which he had created and nursed to prosperity through all the dangers and vicissitudes which beset Enquiry Agencies in their infancy.

Summer Lightning

He met [the eye] with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.

The Small Bachelor

...no matter what slings and arrows outrageous fortune might launch in his direction, Gally Threepwood could be counted upon to preserve the calm insouciance of a pig on ice.

Pigs Have Wings

If there's one thing Barmy hates it's being conspicuous, and conspicuous is precisely what a fellow cannot fail to be when he's in a motor coach with sixteen women of mature ages who alternate between singing ribald songs and hurling volleys of homely chaff at passers-by.

The Best of Wodehouse

What was actually in the champagne supplied to Barolini and purveyed by him to the public, such as were reckless enough to drink it, at eight shillings the bottle remains a secret between its maker and his Maker; but three glasses of it were enough to convert Teddy Weeks from a mild and rather oily young man into a truculent swashbuckler.

Ukridge

This apparent lunatic had a hard, athletic look, and he himself had not only allowed his muscles to grow flaccid but was at the moment full to the brim with tea and buns.

Quick Service

William Bates ... was not an abnormally emotional or temperamental man. Built physically on the lines of a motor-lorry, he had much of that vehicle's placid and even phlegmatic outlook on life.

The Heart of a Goof

He was not so sanguine as to suppose that he had actually checkmated an adversary of Mr. Cootes's strenuousness by the simple act of removing a revolver from his possession; but there was no denying the fact that the feel of the thing in his pocket engendered a certain cosy satisfaction.

Leave It to Psmith

She was seething with that febrile exasperation which, since the days of Eve, has come upon women who find themselves linked to a cloth-head.

Mulliner Nights

"We are too ready ... to dismiss as cowards those who merely require the stimulus of the desperate emergency to bring out all their latent heroism."

Blandings Castle

His was a fiery and arrogant soul, and he seethed in furious rebellion against the intolerable position into which Fate had manoeuvred him. He even went so far as to give the front door a petulant kick.

Leave It to Psmith

She had flung herself on the sofa and was now chewing the cushion in an ecstasy of grief. She gulped like a bull-pup swallowing a chunk of steak. And, on the instant, Egbert Mulliner's adamantine reserve collapsed as if its legs had been knocked from under it.

Mulliner Nights

Several attendants ... were dotted about the room, eyeing Berry in that cold, severe way in which barmen eye the obstreperous in bars.

Big Money

"Love's flame flickers and dies, Reason returns to her throne, and you aren't nearly as ready to hop about and jump through hoops as in the first pristine glow of the divine passion."

Very Good, Jeeves

He adjusted his pince-nez, and with their assistance was able to perceive that a fatuous smile of self-satisfaction illuminated the young man's face, giving him the appearance of a beaming sheep.

Blandings Castle

The heavy breathing that came through the window could only be that of a parsimonious man occupied in writing a cheque for a thousand pounds. ...in some respects it closely resembles the sound of a strong man's death agony.

Heavy Weather

"Your name came up the other day in conversation at home, and mother said you were a vapid and irreflective guffin, totally lacking in character and purpose."

Mulliner Nights

...his spirit was not so completely broken as to make him lie supinely down beneath that snoring. The sound filled him, as snoring fills every right-thinking man, with a seething resentment and a passionate yearning for justice....

Nothing But Wodehouse

At any moment, felt Mrs. Waddington, the policeman might come to the edge of the roof and look down: and to deceive him into supposing she was an ash-can or a milk-bottle was, she knew, beyond her histrionic powers.

The Small Bachelor

Somewhere in the world the sun was shining, the birds were twittering; somewhere in the world, lambkins frisked and peasants sang blithely at their toil (flat, perhaps, but still blithely)....

The World of Psmith

Whatever test cases Gally had been about to mention were wiped from his lips by the sudden ringing of the telephone, a strident instrument capable of silencing the stoutest talker.

Pigs Have Wings

No Israelite caught in a sudden manna-shower in mid-desert could have felt a greater mixture of surprise and satisfaction.

Big Money

As a rule, this masterful woman shared with Napoleon the ability to sleep the moment the head touched the pillow. Others might count sheep, but she had no need for such adventitious aids to repose.

Quick Service

...he had contrived with admirable skill to combine in his manner the inexorable rigidity of the G-man with the demure respectfulness of the butler.

Quick Service

As time becomes available, I will be ladling up more steaming bowls of rich, creamy Wodehouse.

(Yes, I do know that Kent Brockman said it first. I like it, O.K.)