Bertie Wooster opettaa luovaa kirjoittamista
Wooster wisdom for writers
Suomen blogirintamalla on havaittavissa ennenaikaisia syysmasennuksen merkkejä. Täällä puolen palloa alkaa kirkastua - kohta koittaa kevät! Narsissit kukkivat jo, ja lopputalven takkatuli-illat kuluvat hujauksessa, kun käsillä on joukko uusia DVD-hankintoja. Viimeisimpinä viihteinä Harold & Maude (1971), moniaita tunteja DVD:llä juuri julkaistua Patrice Chéreaun huikeaa klassikko-ohjausta Wagnerin Ringistä (puikoissa Boulez) ja vielä useampia tunteja Jeeves & Wooster -sarjaa. Synttärilahjaksi ropsahti nimittäin 8 DVD:n levyn paketti Granadan tv-sarjaa, nimisosissa Stephen Fry ja Hugh Laurie.
Olen ollut kyseisen Jeeves-sarjan fani jo pitkään, mutta nurinkurisesti etsin kirjat käsille vasta hiljan. En vähäuskoinen kuvitellut, P. G. Wodehousella olisi olennaista lisättävää. Mutta kuulkaas nyt esimerkiksi seuraavaa pätkää, jossa Wooster filosofiseen tyyliinsä pohtii kirjoittamisen peruslähtökohtia niteessä Thank you, Jeeves (1934 - anteeksi lyhennys):
A thing I never know when I'm telling a story is how much scenery to bung in. I've asked one or two scriveners of my acquaintance, and their views differ. A fellow I met at a cocktail party in Bloomsbury said that he was all for describing kitchen sinks and frowsty bedrooms and squalor generally, but the beauties of Nature, no. Whereas, Freddie Oaker, of the Drones, who does tales of pure love for the weeklies under the pen-name of Alicia Seymour, once told me that he reckoned that flowery meadows in springtime alone were worth at least a hundred quid a year to him.
Personally, I've always rather barred long descriptions of the terrain, so I will be on the brief side. As I stood there that morning, what the eye rested on was the following. There was a nice little splash of garden, containing a bush, a tree, a couple of flower beds, a lily pond with a statue of a nude child with a bit of a tummy on him, and to the right a hedge. (...) Add a cat sniffing at a snail on the path and me at the door smoking a gasper, and you have the complete picture.
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End of winter in Robertson. A village of 1000 inhabitants does not provide a huge amount in the way of evening entertainment. We have spent a week in the cosy triangle of the sofa, the woodfire and the shelf that accommodates the DVD-player and the rather ugly and big, modern television.
Yesterday we watched Harold & Maude (1971), and during the past week or so we have spent copious hours watching 1) Der Ring des Nibelungen by Patrice Chéreau/Pierre Boulez - a Bayreuth classic recently released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon - and 2) the complete Jeeves & Wooster tv-series - 8 DVDs also recently released. The latter I got as a birthday present, along with several P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves & Wooster books that I hadn't for some odd reason even tried before.
I suppose I didn't think PGW would have that much to add, but how wrong I was. Listen to Bertie Wooster reflect on the merits of adding flowery meadows into one's prose (see extract above - apologies for shortening it, now you'll have to read the book)!