P. G. Wodehouse is one of the greatest writers of all time. He has over 100 books to his credit. There are endless web pages devoted to telling you which are the best Wodehouse books.
But, what is the worst Wodehouse book?
My current candidate for that (dis)honor: Not George Washington.
One of Wodehouse’s early books (1907), co-authored with Herbert Westbrook, it is an autobiographically informed fictional account of a struggling writer seeking to make his way in the world.
It is a story with four narrators, none of whom is really all that interesting, with a plot that just barely holds together, mostly serving to introduce an even larger set of not very interesting people.
Even the title is odd; George Washington is never mentioned in the book; I suspect the title refers to Washington’s reputation for never telling a lie, but even that guess is a bit tenuous.
But, you don’t have to take my word for the fact that this book is not really very good.
Robert McCrum in his truly excellent Wodehouse biography (cleverly entitled Wodehouse: A Life) notes that Not George Washington is “now a very rare book,” a fact which has been corrected by the Overlook Press reissuing it as part of their Collector’s Wodehouse.
McCrum first explains the autobiographical nature of the novel—James Orlebar Cloyster is Wodehouse; Julian Eversleigh is Westbrook.
McCrum then notes this:
The plot turns on [Cloyster’s] cunning plan to maximize the sale of his writing by persuading four complete strangers to put their names to his work.
Obviously, this book is so bad that McCrum, writing a biography of Wodehouse, could not be bothered to actually read the novel. That summary is wrong, completely wrong.
1. Cloyster’s plot to have others publish his works under their names had absolutely nothing to do with maximizing sales. The point of the plan was to makes sure that Cloyster’s fiancée would not find out he was a successful writer because he had decided he didn’t want to marry her after all.
2. Cloyster persuaded three, not four, people to put their names on his work. There are even chapters with the titles “The First Ghost,” “The Second Ghost,” and “The Third Ghost,” so it doesn’t take much more than a glance at the table of contents to realize there is no fourth ghost. (I suspect McCrum got the fourth person from the fact that Cloyster eventually published his fiancée’s play under his own name.)
3. None of the three people Cloyster involved in his plot were “complete strangers” or even less-than-complete strangers. Cloyster’s relationships with all three are discussed at length in earlier chapters.
In other words, McCrum’s summary isn’t even ball-park close.
It would be impossible, literally impossible, to read the novel and write the summary in McCrum’s biography of Wodehouse. Indeed, it is hard to figure out how McCrum even got his “summary.” (If anyone knows, I would love to hear how this happened. Maybe I should write him to ask.)
When I recommended Wodehouse, I used to tell people it didn’t really matter which book they picked up first—they are all great.
This was not ever precisely true; Wodehouse’s earliest books were tales of life in English boarding schools; but until Psmith enrolled at Wrynken, the books are not Wodehousian. But, at least the school stories are charming in their own way.
After reading Not George Washington, however, I can never again pretend that all Wodehouse books are worth reading. This particular book is only worth reading if you are obsessed with reading every volume in The Collector’s Wodehouse.
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