Any downloadables at Barnes and Noble? Living in the Dominican Repiblic that is how I do all my reading now.
34 year old American here.
I know Wodehouse, and love him, but only discovered him through one friend, who lent me some books in high school. Not sure where he discovered Wodehouse; through his parents I imagine, who are educated, interesting and interested people.
I don’t think I have another friend who knows of Wodehouse. I’ve certainly never heard his name from anyone else.
In increasing order of certainty:
-
I can’t remember if Bertie had an apartment in New York for any of his visits, he might have. Part of the confusion is that Wodehouse also had quite a few other English characters visiting New York in other stories entirely unrelated to the Jeeves stories, and I know some of them definitely stayed in hotels.
-
Pretty sure that all the incidents of Bertie in New York were short stories, not novels. Episode 2 of the TV series you linked claims to be set in New York and also claims to be based on “Joy in the Morning”, a novel, but that novel takes place at Wee Nooke in Steeple Bumpleigh, not NY. The TV series was only loosely based on the books, though.
-
I’m absolutely positive that Bertie never permanently moved to New York in any of the novels or short stories. I thought you might have had some scoop based on some uncollected Playboy stories. But yes, he was definitely there in a few of the short stories, either dispatched on some mission by the fearsome Aunt Agatha or trying to escape her wrath!
As a side note, “Joy in the Morning” was the first novel Wodehouse published after the war and not long after his release from German imprisonment, which I think accounts for the happy upbeat title and generally sunny theme.
I was reasonably certain Bertie lives in New York for a longish period of time and has an apartment for the duration. Of course, Wodehouse plot details tend to become so fuzzy in my head(which I regard as a feature. Every re-read is a joy), that I couldn’t be absolutely sure. A little bit of research backs up my memory. The story I remembered was “A letter of Introduction” in which Cyril Bassington-Bassington (:D) comes to New York and is asked by Aunt Agatha to stay with Bertie, to whom she imparts strict instructions that C. B.-B. is to be kept away from the stage at all costs. Hijinks ensue. But he had an apartment.
This prompted a bit of research of my own, not that I doubt that Bertie did have an apartment there at some point. In fact I recall a story (muddled in my mind as usual) that I think takes place in New York in which Bertie, as a favor to a guest staying with him, allows the guest to claim that it’s his own apartment in order to impress a visiting relative, causing said relative to cast aspersions at Bertie as being a wanton freeloader. 
Damn, I wish I could better remember where that was from!
But in a quick glance at “Letter of Introduction” I couldn’t find any concrete evidence indicating that Bertie had an apartment, though I might have missed it. I was also reminded that it’s presented as a chapter in a novel – Chapter 9 of “The Inimitable Jeeves” – though really the book is a collection of short stories, many of which are, however, chronological. By Chapter 11 Bertie is suddenly back in London.
Anyway, I think the main point here is, New York apartment or not, Bertie still has his London home and is pining to “pop back to the cosy old flat in Berkeley Street” but cannot yet because of the wrath of the fearsome Aunt Agatha due to the “Glossop episode” of the previous chapter, the one where Bertie makes such a total ass of himself that Sir Roderick Glossop runs away convinced Bertie is dangerously insane!
In my browsing I was reminded of another one where Bertie wishes he could remain in New York forever, “Extricating Young Gussie”. Aunt Agatha is desperate to get Bertie’s cousin Gussie Mannering-Phipps untangled from a girl he’s seeing in New York, because the girl is on the stage and marrying someone in show business would bring disrepute on the family. Gussie’s mother the widowed Aunt Julia comes over to help. This is the one where (a) Gussie ends up engaged to the girl, (b) Gussie ends up going on the stage himself, (c) Aunt Julia meets an old flame from show business and decides to get married, too, and (d) Aunt Julia and the old flame, along with Gussie and his new fiance, ALL go into show business! Bertie is despondent of ever seeing London again, and when Aunt Agatha wires to ask what’s going on and if she should come over to help, Bertie wires back “No! Stay where you are. Profession overcrowded.”
Being fanciful, perhaps; but I wonder whether some of the lack of appreciation for Wodehouse among British folk, perceived by the OP, stems from the WWII-era situation referred to above, and told of in the link given – i.e. Wodehouse’s having then been in bad odour in Britain, because of his broadcasts made from internment in Germany. People regarding these actions of his as treasonous, and thus boycotting his books, and doing no recommending of them to succeeding generations?
I’m British, and have been aware of Wodehouse since childhood; my parents’ generation, who were in the thick of WWII, never badmouthed him to me over the broadcasts thing. I’ve read a handful of his books, including a couple of Jeeves / Wooster, and concluded that he isn’t my bag. I find his writing highly arch, and to me not very funny. Will admit that as regards humour, I’m hard to please. There are a fair few authors who do nothing for me, but who have very many devoted fans – many of those, people whose taste I respect.
The escapism factor, maybe? “Wodehouse World” would seem as different as anything could possibly be, from Russia since 1917. And / or: possibly Wodehouse was among the Western authors whose works were widely accessible in the USSR – perhaps because of his perceivedly depicting Western elites as a bunch of idiots?
There are certainly intelligent people who just don’t get turned on by Wodehouse, so we won’t hold it against you! 
I’ve loved him since the very first short story I read in an anthology, which prompted me to buy a book of his selected short stories and excerpts, and suddenly I was hooked. I started collecting, not to have a library but just to have more Wodehouse, and eventually got interested in possessing original editions which I’ve sourced from bookshops and individual sellers from all over the world.
But there’s much more to Wodehouse than just the humor and the plots. He is an absolutely master craftsman of the language with few equals, and certainly none I enjoy more.
As for the broadcasts, there were some particularly nasty individuals in the UK media after the war with no regard for truth who were determined to smear his name. I don’t know how wide an effect this had but he certainly didn’t feel welcome in the UK for a very long time. A long-time US resident, he was named to the Queen’s New Year’s Honour List only just shortly before his death. Wodehouse’s childlike naivety also got him in trouble with Hollywood after he bluntly stated in an interview just how grossly overpaid he was as a contract writer for the studios and how very little he actually did. Bad luck that this came at a time when the studios were under fire for their enormous profits and profligate spending.
No doubt about it! The Blandings stories are the consummate examples. Who of us wouldn’t like to live out his days as a doddering peer of good health and unlimited means in a vast and beautiful country estate, content to raise prize pumpkins and award-winning fat pigs, whose greatest problems revolved around the surly Scottish head gardener always wanting to pave over the Yew Alley, or the abject fear that his domineering sister might find out it was he who had fired the airgun that stung his loathed personal secretary, the Efficient Baxter, in the rear end?
As Evelyn Waugh so eloquently put it:
That’s actually the first Jeeves story, and somewhat dubious canonically. I remember reading it and feeling the characters ‘voice’ being different than I was used to. Aunt Julia is never referred to again in any of the subsequent books, and neither is Gussie Mannering Phipps, although a different Gussie is introduced (Fink-Nottle). I think that first short story was very much like a ‘pilot’ episode. Once the concept proved to be a success, the series got picked up, with a few minor changes in characterisation and a couple of actors getting switched around.
Isaac Asimov once collaborated in the compilation of an anthology of short stories combining elements of both crime and sport. In one of the stories, the sporting element was an event known as Boat Night (from context, some sort of revelry celebrating a boat race of some description - notabe rivalries may have been involved), and the crime element was represented by Bertie Wooster (under an assumed name) appearing before a magistrate the following morning to answer for a charge of stealing a policeman’s helmet.
That was the story that represented my introduction, in 1989, to the great man and his works, and I haven’t been able to get enough of him ever since.
Incidentally, I wonder how many Murkins were drawn into the Wodehouse web, as it were, by having delved into the backstory behind the old “Ask Jeeves” search engine (now simply “ask dot com.”
[And, quote from Evelyn Waugh re Wodehouse, and the Blandings scene]
I gather that at the end of the war, Waugh (whose views were “poles apart” from Orwell’s, on the political spectrum); and Sean O’Casey in Ireland; defended Wodehouse, on more or less the same lines as Orwell – that Wodehouse was (as reinforced by the cited, above) naive and unworldly to a very high degree: he would have been oblivious to the implications of what he was doing, and would have had no treasonous intention whatever. I find it touching that such very different and disparate writers were moved to speak up on behalf of poor old Plum.
That was the yearly Oxford - Cambridge Boat Race, quite a big deal to the actual and aspiring upper classes from the late 19th century to maybe the '40s. Apart from respective alumni of those universities, allegiance was chosen as randomly as the rivalry between the Four Colours in the Byzantine Circus. Or by colour, Cambridge Light Blue, Oxford Dark Blue.
They really needed all the fun they could get back then
From “In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse,” by George Orwell (1946) (“in defence” against accusations of treason against Wodehouse for making a couple of radio broadcasts for the Germans to get out of German custody):
From the Orwell defense of Wodehouse:
Absolutely agree – not necessarily the part about presenting the English upper classes as “much nicer than they are” since I don’t know any and maybe they are really nice – but certainly agree that he mostly presents them as very conscientious and noble people, the occasional penny-pinching irascible uncle notwithstanding. His stories are full of young aristocrats accidentally becoming engaged and thus doomed to marriage because it’s just not done for an honorable young man to break an engagement, or refusing to borrow money from a friend but generously doling out to what he thinks is an old school chum, and so on. Of course there are characters like the pimple-faced Oofy Prosser, the millionaire at the Drones club, who is a tightwad with his millions but never misses a chance to fleece his friends, but we all know he’s really perfectly harmless.
And speaking of money, another trait pervading all the stories is that all the money troubles the characters have are all invariably superficial; they’re all basically financially set up for life, but are thwarted in their daily endeavors by the likes of, say, Bingo Little’s wealthy wife giving him only a paltry allowance and leaving him with insufficient capital for a satisfying flutter on the horses, or having a rich uncle acting as a trustee refusing to unbelt the millions for various superficial reasons. Meanwhile, no matter how poor they are, there is always the ubiquitous butler standing by with his silver salver. It truly is an idyllic world where troubles are minor and the sun is always shining.
Whatever the reason for Wodehouse not being more popular in the US it is not because of elitism in his books. Many aspects of elitist British society and culture has a fan base in the US. Downton Abbey anyone? Neither should Dynasty have ever been a success in the UK. A show about multi-millionaire Coloradans with perfect teeth and hair? Yes, that’s a natural tv export to the UK.
Damn. When I first read this post, I read it as Isaac Asimov writing a story with Bertie Wooster in it. It set my head awhirl.
(from the Isaac Asimov FAQ)
I agree with that part, but not with Orwell’s initial presumption - that people outside Britain regard Wodehouse as a penetrating satirist, and that only British people can somehow see that he’s not really attacking nobility. If I want biting satire directed at the English aristocracy, I read Saki(who is also a genius btw). I(or anyone in my acquaintance) have never thought of Wodehouse as doing anything other than writing ridiculously entertaining prose while also gently poking fun at some of his characters. Nor have I ever even come across a description of Wodehouse as a satirist taking aim at the English nobility. Hello Again, for instance, actually regards Wodehouse as elitist. Some people do say he satirizes fascists with Spode, but many others disagree even about that.
Huh. I did not know Asimov was a Wodehouse fan. Awesome. This is something I’ve noticed with all my Google searches about Wodehouse in the last couple of days. A LOT of writers seem to really like Wodehouse and hold his writing in great esteem.
I do think that the cultural setting of his books worked against his popularity in the US, simply because to really appreciate them one needed some familiarity with the norms and culture. The whole concept of what Wodehouse once called “knuts” – an archaic word referring to idle young aristocracy who whiled away their time in clubs and country house visits – would have been alien to most Americans. Even such small details as currency might have been bewildering – when Wodehouse characters talk about “a fiver”, say, they mean five pounds as valued at the time the story was set in. One tends to mentally translate that to something like five dollars, but the real value was more like around $150 to $200 today. And by the time they got to crowns and shillings and bobs, and the fine points of butlers, footmen, and tweenies, the average non-Brit would probably be lost.
Downton Abbey (which I love, BTW) doesn’t really have those kinds of nuances. You can enjoy the story with only the most superficial knowledge of the background.
Right – I was only agreeing with the part I quoted. Wodehouse was most certainly not a satirist.
Spode would be the one and only arguably satirical example, and even there, it seems clear to me that it was done more for the humor value than as political satire. “I know all about Eulalie” … LOL!