Jeeves and the King of Clubs by Ben Schott: Reviewed

In his latest work, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, New York Times and internationally bestselling author Ben Schott pays homage to the works of P.G. Wodehouse in a dazzlingly witty new novel.  The story finds Jeeves, an inimitable butler of superior intelligence, and Wooster, a foppish young gentleman of the type that Evelyn Waugh might have called a chum, back in London, and features a bevy of other familiar faces.  It is revealed that the Junior Ganymede Club, a private club for gentlemen’s personal gentlemen introduced in previous novels and of which Jeeves has long been a member, is also an informative branch of the Secret Intelligence Service, currently engaged in stamping out the rise of a fascist movement in Britain.  When Bertie is pressed into service, he gamely answers duty’s call, with Jeeves by his side to neatly disentangle him from the many friend-and-family-induced contretemps in which he inevitably becomes embroiled.  While Jeeves and Wooster veterans and novices alike will find much to delight them in Schott’s imaginative and playful resurrection of the beloved duo, it is, according to Publishers Weekly, “an essential volume for Wodehouse fans.”

Author of 71 novels, 42 plays, and 24 collections over the course of a prolific 73-year career, P.G. Wodehouse remains one of the world’s most celebrated comedic writers, and perhaps his most famous creation is the dynamic duo of Jeeves and Wooster. Before his death in 1975, Wodehouse had completed 15 Jeeves and Wooster novels, as well as a few short stories, all of which recount the pair’s misadventures with the marital, familial, and legal entanglements to which Bertie Wooster appeared so prone, and from which Jeeves would habitually extricate him in a fashion which Bertie deemed “terribly feudal.”  The novels were tremendously popular, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, and have been adapted for stage and screen on numerous occasions throughout the 20th century, perhaps most famously in the 90s television series starring popular double act Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the titular roles.  

Just as his characters captured the hearts of his readers, so, too, did Wodehouse’s distinctive turn of phrase capture the contemporary zeitgeist. Despite his working-class upbringing, Wodehouse imbued his works with a satirically heightened lexicon worthy of any Old Etonian, coining 26 new words and phrases ranging from “billiken” to “zing.”  Moreover, according to Schott’s ‘notes on the text,’ “the Oxford English Dictionary currently employs 1,525 P.G. Wodehouse quotations to help define entries,” illustrating just how pervasive the Wodehousian style became. It is this depth of research, moreover, that gives such verisimilitude to Schott’s own writing.  In addition to including all 26 of Wodehouse’s neologisms, Jeeves and the King of Clubs brims with references to “old beans,” “aged relatives,” and the obligatory “what ho’s” that are so emblematic of the original novels. 

Schott’s exceptionally faithful stylistic rendering may be attributed in large part to the fact that he was granted special access to Wodehouse’s writing for the purposes of research by the author’s estate, which has fully authorized the novel.  A long-time admirer of Wodehouse’s works, Schott describes in a postscript the pressures of following in the “patent leather footsteps of the greatest humorist in the English language.”  His primary goal in writing Jeeves and the King of Clubs, he goes on to explain, was to bring the classic characters to life for a new generation, and inspire readers to return to the original oeuvre.  “Nothing can cap perfection,” Schott writes at the close of the postscript. “My aim has been to establish base camp in the foothills of Plum’s [Wodehouse’s] genius, and direct climbers up towards the peak.” 

With Schott as his disciple, Wodehouse’s legacy seems to be in capable hands as Jeeves and Wooster continue to delight 21st century readers with their farcical escapades. Jeeves and the King of Clubs is an unmitigated romp, steeped in the characteristic style of its beloved predecessors, and rife with all the eggs, beans, and crumpets a true acolyte of the original works could desire.