Good lines: Wodehouse on the literary life

 

    "Bingo sat down and wrote a story about a little girl called Gwendoline and her cat Tibby. The idea being, of course, to publish it in Wee Tots and clean up.

    It was no easy task. Until he started on it he had no notion what blood, sweat and tears are demanded from the poor sap who takes a pop at the literary life, and a new admiration for Mrs Bingo awoke in him. Mrs Bingo, he knew, did her three thousand words a day without ricking a muscle, and to complete this Tibby number, though it ran only to about fifteen hundred, took him over a week, during which period he on several occasions as near as a toucher went off his onion."

From 'The Word in Season' in A Few Quick Ones.

    "One of those ghastly literary lunches. I don't know why I go to them ... This one was to honour Emma Lucille Agee who wrote that dirty novel that's been selling millions in America ... The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required ..."

From The Girl in Blue.

As found in Wodehouse Nuggets: An Anthology edited by Richard Usborne, a collection of nearly two thousand "nifty one-liners ... celebrating Wodehouse's inimitable style".

Comments

[Susan in TX]

Wodehouse is hard to beat! This one had me lol, "The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required ..." :) Thanks for sharing these.

[adele geras]

I am laughing out loud, as they say. But really, I am. These quotes are marvellous...thank you.