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A review by tome15
Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse
4.0
Wodehouse, P. G. Cocktail Time. 1958, Uncle Fred No. 3. Norton, 2013.
P. G. Wodehouse deals with time in a strange way. We are hardly aware in this third Uncle Fred Ickenham appearance, first published in 1958, that there might have been a world war, postwar poverty in Britain, and an ongoing Cold War. Except for an occasional topical reference, characters talk as if they were still living in the Edwardian era. The comedy comes from our appreciation of an argot that no one—Edwardian or Cold Warrior--ever spoke, unless he or she happened to be a character in a Wodehouse story. For example, a woman who knocks a man unconscious with a blackjack is said to have “biffed him on the napper with a cosh.” The plot is the usual mayhem that results from Uncle Fred’s attempts to spread “sweetness and light” by meddling in other people’s romances. Uncle Fred may be a man of retirement age, but he has a sunny, “boyish outlook on life” that is simply irresistible.
P. G. Wodehouse deals with time in a strange way. We are hardly aware in this third Uncle Fred Ickenham appearance, first published in 1958, that there might have been a world war, postwar poverty in Britain, and an ongoing Cold War. Except for an occasional topical reference, characters talk as if they were still living in the Edwardian era. The comedy comes from our appreciation of an argot that no one—Edwardian or Cold Warrior--ever spoke, unless he or she happened to be a character in a Wodehouse story. For example, a woman who knocks a man unconscious with a blackjack is said to have “biffed him on the napper with a cosh.” The plot is the usual mayhem that results from Uncle Fred’s attempts to spread “sweetness and light” by meddling in other people’s romances. Uncle Fred may be a man of retirement age, but he has a sunny, “boyish outlook on life” that is simply irresistible.