“Chicken Heart”
Terry Pratchett’s last Discworld books don’t bear comparison to his peak works
True but not for the reasons you seem to be implying.
Could you explain what you mean by that?
Schulz himself wrote that it wasn’t easy to come up with new material on a consistent basis. Sometimes he would sit all day long and not think of anything, and then have dozens of ideas on the next. Where they came from remained a mystery.
In later years, he had a great many personal problems stemming mainly from an adulterous affair and the breakup of his first marriage. The quality of the strip also declined noticeably once he had a stroke (his hands trembled uncontrollably) and developed colon cancer.
Still, some of the years in between were glorious. Growing up, I had reprints of every strip that had been produced to date.
Hi, the reason’s Terry Pratchetts books suffered towards the end was due to his worsening illness.
It seemed that, after your description of Charles Schultz’s tailing off of quality due to lack of motivation, you were implying TP was due to that as well.
If I misread, my apologies.
Maybe you’re right. But I don’t think the fact that Wodehouse invented those characters early on necessarily means that the peak of his creative writing about them didn’t come much later.
Incidentally, though I’m sure you’re very familiar with Wodehouse, many folks who aren’t associate him only with the Jeeves and Wooster stories. This of course is far from true, and I don’t even think those are his best works, IMHO. Personally I found the Mulliner stories even funnier, and the many stories centered around Lord Emsworth and Blandings Castle, the Drones Club characters, and the Ukridge stories are strong contenders for some of the best stuff P.G. Wodehouse ever wrote!
I have the bio, and in fact many of the letters were written to his girlfriend.
I did assume that but I didn’t want to put words in your mouth.
How badly Terry’s early-onset Alzheimers affected his writing is debatable and probably unknown. He was 66 when he died, though, and his production had decreased greatly. That’s not a good age for most authors. The other people we’ve discussed - Charles Schulz, S. J. Perelman, Steve Allen - had declined long before age 66. Wodehouse was 66 in 1947 and I found that his peak had passed, although @wolfpup disagrees. That was when Wodehouse was exiled to America after his broadcasts in support of the Nazis. Not his best days. He did write 20 more novels, though. And of I agree that Wodehouse was more than Jeeves.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but let’s just say that Wodehouse was still going strong in the 50s and 60s, even if most of his signature characters had been invented earlier. For instance, Pigs Have Wings (1952) is a very fine Blandings novel. It’s one of many of which I have an original edition in my Wodehouse collection. Admittedly, the three collections of Mr. Mulliner stories, which I think might be some of the funniest material Wodehouse ever wrote, date back to 1927, 1929, and 1933.
FTR – I’m sure you know this but I have to say it for the benefit of others who may not – Wodehouse was interned by the Nazis after failing to escape from France when they invaded, and he never supported them. The broadcasts he made over German radio were intended to be lighthearted humour, and his only fault was his usual naivety in not appreciating how they might be perceived back in Britain. It was the same naivety that had earlier caused a scandal in Hollywood when Wodehouse described how the movie studios were able to pay him a lavish salary while doing essentially nothing for them.
The flames of hate against him were fanned by a disreputable British journalist who recorded a condemnation of Wodehouse so vicious that the BBC refused to run it, but were overruled by the British government. Yes, it was a bad time for this innocent childlike man who wanted only to write funny stories and lavish affection on his beloved dogs, but he did nothing wrong. In the end, his permanent move to the US was America’s gain and Britain’s loss. Wodehouse was finally awarded a knighthood in his final year, only weeks before he died.
The best summation of this period comes from Wodehouse himself. “I made an ass of myself and I must suffer the penalty.”
He was exonerated by the Cussen report, but that was a war secret and not released until five years after Wodehouse’s death. People thought what they thought based on what they heard. I’m going to repeat “Not his best days” and leave it there.
Hi again, sorry for the slow reply…
I agree, the TP reading list suggests not reading his first two books to start, but to begin around book 4 or 5. Similarly, when his illness began to affect his writing varies too. For me, it was unseen academicals but by raising steam / snuff it was markedly worse.
Anyhoo, apologies for the hijack, thank you for your insight.
Enjoying this thread.
I actually bought that one in Hawaii in 1989. Really enjoyed his essays about Cloud Cuckooland in which he recounted his re-reads and screenings of old books and movies.
For a very thorough examination of Boomer Humor (stuff created for, and then by, Baby Boomers), you should comb the used bookstores for Going Too Far by Tony Hendra. He skimps on SNL and focuses a little too much on National Lampoon (he was an early editor and contributor), The Committee, and Second City and its many offshoots. This is the definitive account of the humor culture that was bookended by Mort Sahl and The Onion.
Sounds interesting, I’ll look it up!
I just reread it and the early stuff is indeed good. Then he ends with a overlong section on NatLamp, using the book to settle a lot of old scores. A better work, covering more ground, is That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick by Ellin Stein.
Kilph Nesteroff’s The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy is probably the best recent general history. You can get lost for months on his Classic Television Showbiz site, with multiple long interviews. Before the book, he posted another ton of stuff on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, much of it about comics that didn’t make it into his book.
Also covering some of the same territory, but a bit older, is Gerald Nachman’s Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. 600 pages of small type. That ought to keep you out of mischief for a while.
If you want to stump the world at a trivia contest, the first book on 20th century humor is Thomas L. Masson’s Our American Humorists, from 1922.
I’ve read that one, and can’t believe it was that long. I tore through it. Excellent book, especially for this thread topic.
Am I the first to add Tom Lehrer?
No.
Mort Sahl - definitely… Plenty of stuff on YouTube… His documentary “The Loyal Opposition” is also online for free