My Man Jeeves

Jeeves -- my man, you know -- is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience. . . . In _My Man Jeeves,_ affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves -- the ever cool and capable gentleman's gentleman Jeeves who pulls hapless Wooster's fat from the fire time and again -- weave themselves through a series of delightful adventures. But the adventures are almost beside the point: what the Jeevs stories are about is the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is cool-headed and poised. A motley clutch of buffoons accompanies Jeeves's accounts of Wooster's misunderstandings, gaffes, and backfiring plans. This collection includes "Leave It to Jeeves," "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest," "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg," "Absent Treatment," "Helping Freddie," "Rallying Round Old George," "Doing Clarence a Bit of Good," and "The Aunt and the Sluggard." "Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale." -- Evelyn Waugh