Isaac Chotiner has a lovely review of P.G. Wodehouse's letters in the Atlantic. Wodehouse was in his country house in France when the Second World War broke out and failed to see the seriousness of the situation. He ended up interned in Poland, prompting the priceless remark that "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like…" and then agreed to give some readings on Nazi radio about his life as an internee. The English never forgave him. But his propaganda was sly. One talk began:
Young men, starting out in life, have often asked me, “How can I become an Internee?” Well, there are several methods. My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the Germans came along. This is probably the best and simplest system. You buy the villa and the Germans do the rest.
Isaac explores further:
Wodehouse’s remarks about fascism in his letters are typically dressed up in his language of choice (Hitler is called a "swine"), and—even if he was in plenty of good (or rather bad) company—he sometimes underestimated the threat of war until frightfully late in the 1930s. But he does seem to have diagnosed the menace beneath fascism’s bluster. Here he is in a letter from 1939:
The ghastly thing is that it’s all so frightfully funny. I mean, Hitler asking the little nations if they think they are in danger of being attacked. I wish one of them would come right out and say "Yes, we jolly well do!"
That this same man went along with the German government’s propaganda efforts shows that his comic gifts were matched only by—indeed, were built on—his penchant for repressing unpleasantness.
This deeply English impulse can be dismissed as frivolous, given the evil Britain faced. But the one thing fascism cannot bear is ridicule and humor. This deft avoidance of the humorless logic upon which most tyrannies rely is a very resilient form of resistance. So are the names Pongo Twistleton, Boko Fittleworth, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, Stilton Cheesewright, J. Chichester Clam, and Cyril Bassington-Bassington.
Time waster bonus: a web page that generates endless Wodehouse quotes. I just came up with this one:
"How much did gin did you put in the jug?''
"A liberal tumblerful, sir.''
"Would that be a normal dose for an adult defeatist, do you think?''
No surprise that Hitch had two books by his side before he died: Larkin and Wodehouse. I suspect he'd be rather proud of his young friend Isaac's essay.
The Dish 