Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse – #1936Club

When I wrote about Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes, a body-swap comedy, I was wondering which others there were. Malie and Constance both mentioned Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse which, as luck would have it, turns out to be have been published in 1936. I have zillions of unread Wodehouses, but I decided to add another – or, rather, to listen to the audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil. And what a wonderful book it is.

The narrator is Reggie Swithin, the third Earl of Havershot. He is 28, has a face that he often compares to a gorilla, and has been sent off to Hollywood by an aunt to rescue his cousin Eggy from getting engaged to a gold-digger. This is all just a way of getting an earl to America, and specifically to Hollywood. Wodehouse himself worked on Hollywood scripts a good deal, I believe, and comes to the movie plot with a great amount of good-natured cynicism. Reggie is the sort of affable and daft hero of almost any of Wodehouse characters – indeed, as he introduces himself, he is ‘just one of those chaps’.

Eggy is engaged, as it turns out, not to the gold-digger but to Ann Bannister – who was previously engaged to Reggie. And Reggie, in turn, falls in love instantly on the train on the way to Hollywood – with April June, the wonderfully named and very beautiful film actress. He is in love devotedly almost before they’ve spoken, but Wodehouse fans know to distrust the sort Wodehouse woman who speaks affectedly of how she is only ever happy in the company of books and flowers, and thinks nothing of money.

Anyway, all of Reggie’s plans are put on hold by bad toothache, and he goes to a dentist. In the waiting room, he meets Joey Cooley – a golden-haired child who is considered the idol of American motherhood. Michigan mothers are en route to lavish praise on him as they speak.

Both go into their respective dentists for their respective operations, apparently of the sort that require being knocked out by gas. And, while under gas… they swap bodies.

The first Reggie knows of it is when he comes to, and his chair is surrounded by eager journalists. And so set in motion his life as a child star – with a strictly controlled routine, domineering protectors, and (most chillingly) diet of prunes for almost every meal.

We don’t see much as Joey-as-Reggie for the rest of Laughing Gas, but follow Reggie-as-Joey. Being Wodehouse, the stakes are hilariously low. He takes the metaphysical anomaly pretty well, and doesn’t waste too much time philosophising. Instead, he is chiefly anxious about having to kiss someone at the unveiling of a statue, and where he can procure some substantial food (leading to perhaps my favourite line – ‘I had had a rotten lunch, at which the spinach motif had been almost farcically stressed’).

Then, of course, there are various love entanglements – he has the opportunity to see April June in a less flattering light, and may just fall in someone else along the way…

Wodehouse is always wonderful, but some novels are better than others. For my money, this is one of the best I’ve read. He is so consistently brilliant in turn of phrase – the sort of thing he does that nobody else can do; a brilliant mix of hyperbole, litotes, inversion, and all manner of other linguistic tricks that somehow never get old. He was a comic genius.

It’s hard to remember exact quotes from an audiobook, but here are three that bat about online a lot:

• If Eggy wanted to get spliced, let him, was the way I looked at it. Marriage might improve him. It was difficult to think of anything that wouldn’t.

• I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves.

• It was a harsh, rasping voice, in its timbre not unlike a sawmill.

One I liked was along the lines of ‘It would have been alright if things were other than they were, but that is just what they, in fact, weren’t’. But line after line are brilliant, and I laughed my way through this. The plot is really just decoration for his unparalleled turn of phrase, and I’m delighted that the 1936 club has given me the opportunity to read another of his masterpieces.