One of the funniest authors I know, maybe THE funniest, wittiest, best is P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse was prolific right up to the end of his long life. I like to go to sleep listening to his Jeeves and Wooster stories on my computer.
Wodehouse sets many of his stories in a bygone era when upper class young British men had valets and spent time at their clubs avoiding gainful employ and marriage. But the humor and the characters he creates are timeless.
Wodehouse creates fully realized worlds and characters I can only marvel at and enjoy and listen to instead of bad news on TV. One of his noteworthy characters is a pig – the Empress of Blandings.
The Empress has the distinction of winning the Fattest Pig prize at the Shropshire County Fair, somewhere near Blandings Castle, where she is doted on by Lord Emsworth.
The Empress is given several pounds of specialty pig food a day, plus treats, such as ice cream when she goes off her feed. Once, she gets into the booze, with predictably bad result.
Lord Emsworth, despite being an aristocrat, goes about in raggedy clothes and spends most of his time and all of his affection tending the Empress in her muddy pigsty.
The absolute devotion the Lord lavishes on the Empress becomes quite humorous over his many novels and stories set at Blandings Castle. Conversely, the lord’s feelings and reactions toward his sisters, his son, and various unwanted secretaries are tepid. He does enjoy the company of his aged butler, perhaps his only friend other than the Empress.
Lord Emsworth’s sister is constantly badgering him to be more Lord-like, to take an interest in affairs of the Shropshire County and the House of Lords. But he is not interested in the pomp and ceremony that accompany his station in life.
The only county doings Lord Emsworth cares about is the annual Shropshire Fair and that first prize Fattest Pig ribbon. He just wants to be left alone to tend the Empress at her pigsty, happy together in the mud and outdoors, away from annoying people and their expectations.
The Empress has her moods. When her beloved caretaker Wellbeloved goes to jail for drunkenness, the pig pines. She goes off her food, even the treats. The worst happens, she begins to lose weight. Lord Emsworth cannot sleep for worry that she will have to relinquish her title to a competing pig from the next castle over.
These characters are so well drawn. So funny, and ultimately, too, somehow sweet.
If you have never read Wodehouse, I urge you to do so. His stories are often silly, always witty, funny, and his command of the English language is the best I have read in contemporary times. (In times past, Shakespeare and Dickens.)
Though he pokes fun at the English aristocracy, Wodehouse is never mean-spirited. That impresses me – he can create “villains” whose main crimes are being human.
He wrote all the time. He lived in the worlds of his characters. I try to learn from him about plot – his are often complex and comic, but he brings all the threads together. I like to listen to the way he uses language – from classical references, to contemporary British and American sslang to the lyrical, with quotes from favorite poets, especially Shakespeare thrown in. His written vocabulary is immense.
I have to admit that I do not so much love Lord Emsworth’s fat pig so much as the fact that he loves her, and that Wodehouse creates this wonderful world she lives in.
You may have seen films of his Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. They channel Wodehouse’s most recognized, beloved characters -- – some of the best film humor I have seen. I watch episodes for free on YouTube.
If you are writing humor or if you just really need to laugh, tune in. It is so much happier than watching the news.