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8.27.07
The Bastard Son of P.G. Wodehouse
By Mark Grueter
I recently showed Curb your Enthusiasm to an older friend who had never seen the series. Aside from laughing here and there, he just kept on saying how Larry David reminded him so much of Woody Allen. It is true to an extent, and common enough for people to compare Larry David to other Jewish comedians, most notably, I suppose, Woody Allen. The influence is largely self-evident. Jason Alexander, who plays George Costanza on Seinfeld - the character based on David himself – has acknowledged he was doing an Allen impression during the early episodes (because the lines reminded him so much of Allen’s humor).
Much more compelling, however - if you dig a bit deeper - is the profound resemblance of Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm humor to P.G. Wodehouse’s comedies. On the surface, the comparison doesn’t make much sense: The British-born Wodehouse had a decidedly English sensibility and wrote novels. David has a decidedly Jewish-American sensibility and writes television shows. And yet, after immersing oneself in both worlds for awhile, the similarities start to glare.
The first story I like to tell on the theme of a Wodehouse-David connection comes from an interview I read with Wodehouse’s wife, Ethel. She said that her husband, while apartment hunting in New York, insisted they find a place on the first floor of a building because “he never knew what to say to the lift-boy” – in other words, he didn’t want to be bothered with making small talk just to get home. My immediate thought after reading this bit was that it was straight out of Seinfeld. One readily imagines Larry David or one of his characters taking the same anti-social and seemingly bizarre stance. But is it all that strange an attitude to have? No, I don’t think so. Many people secretly identify with such anti-social impulses, and this is one reason why Wodehouse and David are so popular: they tap into things people think about but don’t usually talk about or admit.
A key similarity between Wodehouse and David comedies relies on the following inversion: both treat traditionally significant matters with remarkable flippancy while treating traditionally insignificant topics with horror. In Wodehouse, for example, there is almost nothing worse in the world than having to judge a baby contest or give a talk to schoolchildren. Larry David, in Curb, is bewildered and appalled to find that the bathroom door at a friend’s house doesn’t lock, and he refuses to relieve himself unless his wife Cheryl stands guard.
On the flip side, actual life and death serious matters in both Wodehouse and David comedies are constantly laughed at, euphemized and shrugged off. Let’s take, for instance, the miracle of life. In “The Suicide,” George says that childbirth is “disgusting.” Babies and kids bear the brunt of many jokes in both comedies. P.G. Wodehouse says all babies look like Winston Churchill. He writes of a particular baby that it resembles a “homicidal fried egg,” of another, a “poached egg.”
An entire episode of Seinfeld belittles the idea of having to go see a couple’s new baby: “you gotta see the baby!” Elaine mock-chants. And then when they all finally do go see the baby, the foursome agree that it’s an extremely “ugly” infant. Kramer even performs one of his pratfalls upon first seeing the baby, he’s so shocked by its hideousness. In “The Briss,” Jerry and Elaine are sickened at the sight of a friend breast-feeding, and are later taken off the roles of godfather and godmother for not demonstrating a genuine interest in the child’s wellbeing. Again, the suggestion that babies are ugly is not something people will talk about, but it’s something we’ll think about. In another episode, Jerry and Elaine have a conversation about how it means nothing to procreate because practically anybody can do it. “What’s the big deal?” bemoans an irritable Jerry. Of course, none of the Seinfeld characters ever have any children.
Likewise for Wodehouse, marriage and children spell death to comedy. The Psmith series ends after he marries Eve. (A married Uncle Fred is the notable exception here, except that he only appears in stories when he’s very far away from his wife – we never meet the woman.) The best comedians: Psmith, Bertie, Jeeves, Ukridge, Gally are all childless bachelors - Wodehouse suggesting a correlation between ‘settling down’ and losing one’s sense of spontaneity, fun and humor.
The pervasive, irreverent attitude toward the subject of Death in both their worlds is even more peculiar. First, Seinfeld: In “The Pony Remark,” when word comes that a relative has suddenly died, Jerry’s father Morty can only think to complain about how the passing will cause him to lose his non-refundable “supersaver” plane tickets back to Florida. Morty spends his time at the funeral trying to persuade a doctor to write him an absence note he can present to the airline. In another Seinfeld episode, when a neighbor goes into a coma, Kramer cares only to the extent that his vacuum cleaner is in the guy’s apartment.
Also, an inordinate number of scenes on Seinfeld and Curb are set in funerals or wakes, but curiously enough, the actual dead person in the room is almost always ignored.
And again for Wodehouse, death is nothing but fodder for laughs. In P.G. Wodehouse’s English Clubs, members routinely bet on who in the club will die next, typically resting wagers on the older, more bloated members. Galahad Threepwood relays the pseudo-sad story of his young friend and clubmate Buffy Struggles - “the rankest outsider” in one of these morbid contests – who was nevertheless the first to die, after he was randomly “run over” by a hansom cab while walking through Piccadilly Circus.
In Psmith, Journalist (1915), the preposterous hero Psmith and his sidekick Billy Windsor - as editors of a muckraking New York City newspaper - are perpetually at risk of being murdered, but the Englishman Psmith never appears to worry, and instead turns it all into travesty. When his hat gets shot off the top of his head, Psmith complains only to the extent that he’ll need to replace the treasured item, while pleading with the police to recover reimbursement funds from the assassin. After a gangster named Francis Parker sticks a gun into his ribs in the backseat of a car, Psmith acts as if nothing abnormal has taken place, and proceeds to handle the ordeal with cool wit and defiance. Driving uptown through Manhattan, Psmith begins the exchange:
"Did you ever stop at the Plaza, Comrade Parker?"
"No," said Mr. Parker shortly.
"Don't bite at me, Comrade Parker. Why be brusque on so joyous an occasion? Better men than us have stopped at the Plaza. Ah, the Park! How fresh the leaves, Comrade Parker, how green the herbage! Fling your eye at yonder grassy knoll."
He raised his hand to point. Instantly the revolver was against his waistcoat, making an unwelcome crease in that immaculate garment.
"I told you to keep that hand where it was."
"You did, Comrade Parker, you did. The fault," said Psmith handsomely, "was entirely mine. Carried away by my love of nature, I forgot. It shall not occur again."
Psmith goes on in this ridiculous vein for some time and avoids being killed somewhere north of the city after creating an atmosphere of distraction and chaos. When death does occur in a Wodehouse novel, it is completely euphemized. Characters simply “hand in their dinner pails” - as if that were all that was to it. There is no mourning or tragedy.
David also shuns and mocks sentimentality, and again reveals a near fascination with death. The final episode of Season Five of Curb is about the death of Larry David (before he eventually comes back to life). His deathbed sermon is worth recalling as an extended exercise in anti-social (yet principled) behavior. He curses himself for having donated his kidney, which was the cause of his demise. He attributes his excellent health up until that point to having “avoided good deeds” his whole life. He (correctly) accuses his manager and good friend Jeff of essentially stealing $5,000 off of him and makes Jeff promise to give the money to Cheryl. Larry asks his wife for permission to “fool around” in heaven, and says he doesn’t regret not traveling more because he once went to Europe and thought it “no big deal.” Just after he passes away, instead of mourning Larry’s death, talk between friends and family erupts into a huge argument. Off to heaven, Larry proceeds to debate his guardian angels on the epic topic of DVD cover placement. It ends badly with guardian angel Dustin Hoffman telling Larry to fuck off.
Perhaps Wodehouse and David ridicule death in part to cope with the thought and reality of it, but the lengths at which they do so can appear callous and misanthropic. But it’s funny, and that’s all that matters for most of us.
From death to nothing: On the subject of “nothing” we observe a special tie between Wodehouse and David. Though critics have recognized Wodehouse’s masterful comic talent, it is said that his novels are about “nothing.” Roger Kimball, writing recently in The New Criterion, makes the case: “He came bearing pleasure, not insight,” concludes Kimball. Similarly, Seinfeld was pitched and produced as a show about nothing. “Everybody else is doing something. We’ll do nothing,” insists George Costanza. But does anyone really believe Seinfeld and Curb are about nothing, that the shows contain no ideas, no philosophy at all? Or that Wodehouse’s understated inversions are completely devoid of any message?
That Wodehouse novels and Seinfeld/Curb are ostensibly about “nothing” intrinsically suggests the opposite. How else to explain the devotion to both comic talents among hordes of thinking people? A writer such as Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott makes repeated references to both Wodehouse and Seinfeld on his blog, typically to make rhetorical points. About “nothing” indeed - that is the clever deception.
We observe a host of other similarities, such as the whiff of anti-intellectualism that pervades the atmosphere in both comedies, much closer to actual philistinism than Woody Allen’s witty critiques of intellectuals. Wodehouse, for instance, frequently ridicules poets and satirizes the notion of the artist as “genius.” On Seinfeld, a performance artist is depicted as a fraudulent, uppity bitch, and in another episode George too rails against the concept of the “delicate genius.”
Despite all apparent connections, it seems the originators of Seinfeld have not read Wodehouse. During a stand-up routine produced for an episode, Jerry quips, “Have you ever noticed how all butlers are named Jeeves? Why is that?” One can never know for sure, but that just doesn’t strike me as something a Wodehouse fan could ever say. That moment wrecked any notion I’d ever had that Jerry and Larry were closet Wodehouse fans.
Before The New Republic dispensed of his services as Senior Editor - after an embarrassing episode on the Interent - Lee Siegel published a screed on Larry David’s supposed “insignificance.” He accused David of reversing and spoiling the tradition of comedy by empowering the big guy over the little guy, rather than the other way around. A wealthy, powerful Larry David on Curb argues with an array of retail clerks and secretaries, and usually wins, at least on points. In his analysis of comedy, Siegel overlooks Wodehouse, a comedian who has also been accused of empowering the big guy. The young, rich smart aleck Psmith, for example, always manages to best the vapid secretary Baxter.
And while practically everything else in life is sneered or laughed at, both David and Wodehouse reveal a passionate love, indeed reverence for the sport of Golf, an obviously bourgeois and conservative pastime. Elements like these prompt many critics to categorize Wodehouse as reactionary, which is essentially what Siegel concludes about Larry David. That these claims are untrue and miss the point hardly seems to matter. We recognize in Wodehouse and David qualities that go far beyond the envious complaints of careerist critics like Lee Siegel. Trying to explain the jokes to someone like Siegel, however, might only taint their wisdom and effect.
Nevertheless, someone should state for the record that Siegel’s critique of David is an utter distortion of the facts, inspired, most probably, by Siegel’s inability to get the jokes. By staging battles with service and retail workers, David is not stomping on the “little guy” but is rather bemoaning the rigmarole of daily, illogical bullshit that we all have to put up with for no comprehensible reason. David’s frustration is with society itself, which he targets by exposing fraudulence, idiocy and above all, irrationality, on the ground level. Cries of “what’s the difference?” or “it doesn’t make any sense!” are Davidisms that people identify with because we are often helplessly asking the same questions and making the same points ourselves. David argues with all comers, strong and weak, if he suspects duplicity or nonsense - Siegel conveniently forgetting to mention David’s notorious fights with Ted Danson and others of an equal or near-equal social standing, such as his showdown with the president of HBO. David quarrels on matters of principle and is usually right, even when he winds up the butt of the joke. There’s really nothing conservative about it. On the contrary, by battling bureaucracy and authority and by questioning everything, David’s character on Curb executes the very sort of “genuine opposition” that Siegel claims to favor.
With Seinfeld, Larry David set about to annihilate the sappy “feel-good” aspect of sitcoms. The motto of the show was, “No Hugging, No Learning.” PG Wodehouse, whose own characters made it a point to shun societal notions of growth and emotional maturity, would have been proud. It’s funny because it’s realistic. So then the question might arise: what does any of this mean? Well, nothing, of course.
Find a list of Mark Grueter's published work here. He can be contacted at markgrueter@gmail.com.
