Post Ain8wHfBFfDPWCck40 by fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk
(DIR) More posts by fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk
(DIR) Post #Ain046LaJENh9S6wE4 by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T15:56:47Z
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So, I'm reading a lot of PG Wodehouse stuff for research for a project, and one thing I just don't understand:He talks a lot about struggling to get plot ideas, and here and there gets irritated at the idea that someone else might have taken one of his plot ideas. But...I love Wodehouse's plot work, and he's a genius writer, but his plots in particular are really generic? Executed with perfection but they're all on the level of "boy in love with girl who's dad is mean."
(DIR) Post #Ain0Bd2x8Dxcatz9WK by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T15:58:08Z
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Like I think of Wodehouse as doing highly generic derivative work, but doing it so insanely impossibly well that it rises to art. Like having Shakespeare write sitcoms. But so it's baffling to me that he could ever feel he couldn't think of a plot or that someone might take one of his plot ideas. The real genius is the pacing, comedy, and intricateness, not originality.
(DIR) Post #Ain0N2ttLdOTxpBugy by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:00:11Z
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And to be clear, this stuff comes up incessantly in his letters over the years, written to many people. He seems to have agonized over it and I really don't understand - it's like a huge lack of self-awareness that doesn't square with his typical simple honesty in other domains. Possibly I'm just completely missing the point here?
(DIR) Post #Ain0XLwTPG8pusJUvo by Aradayn@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:02:04Z
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@ZachWeinersmithMaybe he has a different definition of plot than is typical?
(DIR) Post #Ain0XrhhJjKuQJe9LM by StrangeNoises@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:02:10Z
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@ZachWeinersmith he must have really wanted to do some different plot. different with the characters though, i mean, i can't see Bertie Wooster going on a Hero's Journey…
(DIR) Post #Ain1KOoTWLeX0gxYA4 by sc_griffith@mathstodon.xyz
2024-06-10T16:10:54Z
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@ZachWeinersmith maybe by plot he means comical complication?
(DIR) Post #Ain1TeuL3DP5X67KzY by DrorBedrack@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:12:36Z
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@ZachWeinersmith maybe your idea of "plot" is different from his. For you it's the basic premise, but for him it's a later stage, the why and how things happen.Or: he was bad at it, he knew he was bad at it, he struggled with it, and every time he eventually settled for something derivative.
(DIR) Post #Ain26efNsiAu4viXNw by dougfort@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:19:39Z
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@ZachWeinersmith Shakespeare DID write sitcoms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_comedySurely you must see that Madeline Basset's ongoing threat to marry Bertie is deep literary material, pulled from the Jungian shadow.
(DIR) Post #Ain2ppiPeHu1NRg0Tw by markrstoll@masto.ai
2024-06-10T16:27:47Z
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@ZachWeinersmith I think the point is that no one reads PG Wodehouse for the plots!
(DIR) Post #Ain5Cc6qbKVbkR60xs by nj_kruse@mstdn.dk
2024-06-10T16:53:08Z
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@ZachWeinersmith Perhaps he needed to obsess over something other than pacing, comedy, and intricateness for the magic to happen.
(DIR) Post #Ain5Rj9OhkIVvgUmWm by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
2024-06-10T16:57:04Z
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@cassandracorvid No, he stole that too. See, for example Ruggles of Red Gap.
(DIR) Post #Ain87S4imSmZ2eKdGa by dan131riley@federate.social
2024-06-10T17:26:51Z
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@ZachWeinersmith Shakespeare mostly didn't come up with his own plot ideas either, and arguably his most original were the rom-coms. But he still found time to complain about Kit Marlowe. (I should go re-read some Wodehouse...)
(DIR) Post #Ain8wHfBFfDPWCck40 by fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk
2024-06-10T17:35:50Z
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@ZachWeinersmith perhaps his idea of plot is more zoomed-in than yours? "boy in love with girl who has made some sort of promise to his cousin whose dad is mean and has a prize pig"
(DIR) Post #Ain8ykyzDIy51w4Dg0 by lawrenceevalyn@zirk.us
2024-06-10T17:36:10Z
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@ZachWeinersmith this is a really interesting question — I think it must be the intricateness that he thinks of as the plot. I do think of his works as “densely plotted”, in the sense that there will be a dozen overlapping subplots that are always making progress and all combine at the conclusion. Wilde at his best accomplishes the same, but I think it’s a genre that depends on the details for greatness — if stuff stops happening, the witty narration grows tiresome
(DIR) Post #AiojXr5VgME40ww8XI by kentwillard@zirk.us
2024-06-11T12:01:04Z
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@ZachWeinersmith Wodehouse plots were repetitive (engagements, gambling, & stealing paintings). To quote Twain's preface to Huck Finn, "... persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."Sometimes we enjoy the characters so much that we don't care about the plot.
(DIR) Post #AiolxIaMmd0cRdd6R6 by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
2024-06-11T12:28:07Z
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@lawrenceevalyn I think an underappreciated aspect of this is that the dialogue in Wodehouse being goofy and repetitive actually allows for the complex plots. Bertie's little discussions of things are like little reminders of what's happened so far and what the current stakes are.
(DIR) Post #Aipqy90kYnWdy79XP6 by johnhattan@dobbs.town
2024-06-12T00:58:59Z
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@ZachWeinersmith honestly, I love humor (the darker and drier the better), but I've never been able to connect with Wodehouse.I think reading his stuff just transports me back to my childhood watching B&W PBS dramedies because I'd already seen everything on the other three channels.