The difference between roberts and Roberts

Coming out in 1928, between the first collection of Mulliner stories and Summer Lightning in the Wodehouse syllabus, Money for Nothing was written plumb spang in the middle of one of the master’s high tides of comic genius. And it shows.

We are offered free translations of what dogs are really saying when they bark, whine or snuffle. An extended lecture on roberts, and a man named Roberts who kept roberts. And our first look at Ronald Overbury Fish, who will soon figure largely in Summer Lightening (1930) and Heavy Weather (1933).

This first edition of the Last of the Fishes is far more self-assured and intelligent than his later avatar, testimony to Wodehouse’s ability to never let what he’d previously written get in the way of a good story—just look at Lord Emsworth who, we are told in the first of the Blandings Castle novels, was born in the 1860’s (Sunset at Blandings came out in 1977). Or Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, who manages to get married in two different books and yet pops up again and again in later stories, still single, broke and living in rented rooms or, more often, on his friend Corkie’s sofa.

Though the classically convoluted plot of Money for Nothing involves criminal deeds and nefarious ne’er-do-wells, it’s all good, clean fun. And as usual Wodehouse also displays his uncanny ability to render an awkward, emotionally complex scene in all its complexity—just listen to John and Pat’s midnight boat ride on the moat. Wodehouse is never all about laughs, nor without some startling insights into human nature. And Jonathan Cecil's sensitive, perfectly modulated reading expresses it all perfectly.

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