Interesting Stuff

I have been indulging myself by reading P.G Wodehouse’s Leave It To Psmith (note that the P “is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.”). In his beautifully debonair style, Wodehouse has delivered a fascicle of wit, with memorable characters and jocose scenes.

On an as-yet-unrelated note, I have endeavored for months to desist from ending my sentences with prepositions. However, I have begun to question this goal, as it can lead to rather stilted circumlocution. The tipping point came when I read the following sentence in Wodehouse’s tome:

‘Have you considered that the tenancy of such a position throws you into the constant society of Comrade Beach, than whom it would be difficult to imagine a more delightful companion?’ [asked Psmith]

Although this is a paragon of proper preposition placement, it took three readings for me to correctly parse it. Consequently, I am seriously considering tolerating the dangling preposition so that my listeners/readers can more easily understand the sentences which they are used in. Yech. That sounded horrible. We’ll see about this. In the meantime, I think many people would enjoy reading Wodehousian stories, despite his overt erudition (Firefox’s dictionary tooltip can alleviate this problem, though I have taken to simply putting my book on top of my dictionary when I read).

Starting the day after tomorrow, I will be on a road trip with some friends to the east coast. Most importantly, I will be spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square, though we’re also going to Boston, Washington D.C., Niagara Falls, Chicago, Toronto, Pittsburgh, and the rest of New York City as well (not necessarily in that order). I shan’t update during these next two weeks or thereabouts, so don’t expect anything from me.

In deference to the great enjoyment afforded me by the television show Jeeves and Wooster, I have begun to read the stories upon which the episodes were based, in the form of The Jeeves Omnibus by P.G. Wodehouse. While not exactly funny, these tales are immensely entertaining. The one blot on the Wodehouse escutcheon, however, is his debonair employment of obscure persiflage. This veritable patois made me reach eftsoons for my dictionary, which I have kept open for the nonce. Wodehouse’s Britishisms are easy enough to decipher, but his vocabulary provides a greater challenge. His writings are quite amusing nonetheless, and I highly recommend them.

For the Firefox users among you, I’d like to use the previous paragraph as a plug for the dictionary tooltip plugin. Once this is installed, you can double-click on a word to find its meaning, searching any of about a dozen different online references. It even claims to be able to translate from different languages, though I haven’t been afforded a chance to try that part out yet.