
Review of Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse
Wodehouse is grandmaster of comedic writing. Possibly the funniest writer of all time when adjusted for humor inflation.
It’s all very prim and proper, with some hedging, and hemming and hawing, and quibbling and quarrelling and snorting and guffawing, but when it comes right down to it, it’s downright mean, despicable and inordinately hilarious out of all proportion to the circumstances on the page. The laughs his writing induce transcend the genre of stiff-fluffy-collar drawing room, snifter-swirling, snivel-simpering chortles. Your own double-chin will wobble and flecks of precious liqueur will flow from your vibrating lips. The uncontainable breadth of his sly, wry, wrathfully polite sentences are timed to perfection, tuned to impeccable pristineness. He’s a joy to read. A cynical, rollicking locomotive of emotive, frolicsome prose.
This is a wiggling bellyflop of a book. A hazardous, inveterate circuitous exploit, drawn out into an odyssey of gruesome semantics. Dynamite quips and landmine gags await you.
Our main protagonist dude’s got swagger, and has reached such pinnacles of taste, magniloquence and good-breeding as ordinary folks only dream of. He’s a ringside enthusiast of boxing matches, immanently single, and tasked to track down his dissolute, souse-of-a-cousin who has taken up with a lady of questionable background and foreground who has eyes on the family jewels. He takes in his entertainment on the way and stumbles into a predictable but nonetheless enjoyable plot which undermines his honor, challenges his wit, and places him at the forefront of an endless barrage of wisecracks, whimsical descriptions, stentorious flimflams, and billowing, cheesy Wa-Wa-Waaaaa moments. That’s just the tip of the proverbial laugh-berg.
Pick up something by Wodehouse, anything by him, and be transported by an imagination as limitless as it is potent. Discover the comedic potential of a tea time that never ends. The man was prolific, and I foresee many hundreds of droll afternoons passed in fancy contemplation of his works, all the while overcome by elegant, belligerent paroxysms of mirth.
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