‘To the philosophical student of golf like myself’ (said the Oldest Member), perhaps the most outstanding virtue of this noble pursuit is the fact that it is a medicine for the soul.’
Sport, in the hilarious fictional world of P. G. ‘Plum’ Wodehouse, is not exclusively about sweaty blokes in shorts, flannels or garish pullovers. Because they’re only incidentally about the game in question, just about any-one, sports fan or not, can read his tales of the ring, pitch or links with unalloyed pleasure. So when he writes about cricket, rugby or golf, it’s not all runs, tries and holes-in-one but friendship, competitiveness, and in the last of those sports, love. And being a tidy sportsman himself, he brings the ups and downs of playing the game vividly to life as few other writers can, for to Plum they were all part of the broader human comedy. So settle down in your deckchair with the second of Paul Kent’s occasional essays on Wodehousean subjects – it’s a trophy-winner!
Sobre el autor
Paul Kent is the Vice-Chairman of the P G Wodehouse Society (UK), and has been a fan of the great man for longer than he cares to remember. Between 2019 and 2022, he published a trilogy of books that offers a comprehensive tour of Wodehouse’s creative imagination – ‘This is jolly old Fame’, ‘Mid-Season Form’ and ‘The Happiness of the World’ – which seeks to prove that Plum was not just a great comic writer, but a great writer, period. Books 4 and 5 of the trilogy – respectively ‘Plum’s Literary Heroes’ and ‘Plum at the Theatre’ – are currently in preparation; and the first ten occasional essays entitled What Ho! are available now: they are Wodehouse on Food, Sport, Love, Money, Class, Cats, Dogs, Hollywood, Fashion, Childhood, and Faith.