Status Updates From Blandings Castle and Elsewh...

'Schnellenhamer again, eh? This shall be attended to.'
He crossed to the cupboard and flung open the door. The magnate came out on all fours. Wilmot curtly directed him to the desk.
'Take paper and ink, Schnellenhamer, and write this lady out a new contract, with no weight clause.'
'But listen ...'
'Your sword, madam, I believe?' said Wilmot, extending the weapon.
'All right,' said Mr Schnellenhamer hastily.

"... not one of those men who can eat sandwiches aloofly and, as it were, surreptitiously. When he ate a sandwich there was no concealment or evasion. He was patently, for all eyes to see, all ears to hear, a man eating a sandwich. There was a brio, a gusto, about the performance which stripped it of all disguise. His sandwich flew before him like a banner."

The drama: "'On rising,' he told Wilmot, 'take the juice of an orange. For luncheon, the juice of an orange. And for dinner the juice –' – he paused a moment before springing the big surprise – 'of an orange. For the rest, I am not an advocate of nourishment between meals, but I am inclined to think that, should you become faint during the day – or possibly the night – there will be no harm in your taking ... well, y

"The advice all good doctors give to those who have been disappointed in love is to eat lightly. Fail to do this, and the result is as inevitable as the climax of a Greek tragedy. No man, however gifted his gastric juices, can go on indefinitely brooding over a lost love and sailing into the starchy foods simultaneously."

For description: "For he had always been a good trencherman, and sorrow seemed to sharpen his appetite.
And this was so during the days that followed. He found himself eating a good deal more than usual, because food seemed to dull the pain at his heart. Unfortunately, in doing so, it substituted another in his stomach."

THIS is irony - dramatic and situational. Also very funny: "Wilmot Mulliner drew himself up. It was his moment. His head was still aching, and he would have been the last person to claim that he knew what all this was about: but this he did know – that Mabel was nestling in his arms and that his future was secure.
'I ...'
Then words failed him, and he nodded."

Unhinged: "I endorse Miss Potter's view wholeheartedly and without compromise. I say the cuckoo does not cook. It wooks, so make the most of it!'
There was a sudden whirring noise. It was Mabel Potter shooting through the air into his arms.
'Oh, Wilmot!' she cried.
He glared over her back-hair at the magnate.
'"Wuckoo, wuckoo!"' he shouted, almost savagely."

"For there is no spiritual anguish like that of the man who, grown accustomed to opening the crackling envelope each Saturday morning, reaches out for it one day and finds that it is not there. The thought of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum cashier ceasing to be a fount of gold and becoming just a man with a walrus moustache had turned Wilmot's spine to Jell-o. And for an instant, as I say, he had been on the point of betray..

Reading Wodehouse makes me think how AI cannot possibly mimic Wodehouse

'I beg your purdon, Mr Schnellenhamer, that's wrong.'
A deadly stillness had fallen on the room. Eleven authors sat transfixed in their chairs, as if wondering if they could believe their twenty-two ears. Mr Schnellenhamer uttered a little gasp.

"'The ideal Nodder,' said Mr Schnellenhamer regretfully. 'I don't know when I've had a better. Always on his cues. Never tries to alibi himself by saying he had a stiff neck. Quiet ... Respectful ... What's that word that begins with a "d"?'
'Damn?'
'Deferential. And what's the word beginning with an "o"?'
'Oyster?'
'Obsequious. That's what he is. Quiet, respectful, deferential, and obsequious – that's Mulliner.'"

How Wodehouse plays with the telling of a scene is masterclass writing!!!!: "And as this was precisely what, in his present mood, Wilmot most desired to locate, you will readily understand how it came about that, some hour and a half later, he was seated at a table in this establishment, feeling a good deal better."

"There is not much scope or variety of action open to a man whose heart has been shattered and whose romance has proved an empty dream. Practically speaking, only two courses lie before him. He can go out West and begin a new life, or he can drown his sorrow in drink. In Wilmot's case, the former of these alternatives was rendered impossible by the fact that he was out West already. Little wonder, then, that as he sa

"He looked like a statue of Right triumphing over Wrong. You couldn't place it exactly, because it was so long since you had read the book, but he reminded you of something out of 'Pilgrim's Progress.'"

"It seemed to Lord Emsworth that there was a frightful amount of conversation going on. He had the sensation of having become a mere bit of flotsam upon a tossing sea of female voices. Both his sister and his niece appeared to have much to say, and they were saying it simultaneously and fortissimo. He looked wistfully at the door.
It was smoothly done. A twist of the handle, and he was where beyond those voices..."

'McAllister, I will raise your salary.'
The beard twitched.
'Dash it, I'll double it!'
The eyebrows flickered.
'McAllister ... Angus ...' said Lord Emsworth in a low voice. 'Come back! The pumpkin needs you.'

Started in the bus from work and a merrier trip it could not have been 🤣