‘Money for Nothing’ sees the return of Wodehouse’s favourite crook trio, Dolly the Dip, Soap Molloy and Chimp Twist whom we met previously in ‘Sam the Sudden’. Soapy is of course attempting to sell shares in none existent oil wells but Ronnie Fish is convinced the only money to be made is in Night Clubs ‘You can fuel some of the people all of the time and you can fuel all of the people some of the time.’ He tells Soapy and Lester Carmody. Soapy is thwarted in his attempts to sell to Lester as he cannot liquidate the family heir looms in order to make a sale and so they hatch a plot to arrange for the theft of the articles in question so that Lester can get ‘Money for Nothing’.Matters are complicated further by Lester's nephew, Hugh Carmody attempting to secure the necessary funds to go into the nightclub business with Ronnie Fish. Also complicating matters is Lester’s other nephew, John Carroll, trying to woo Pat Wyvern whos father has forbidden the match as he is engaging in a law suit with Lester. And so John and Wodehouse have only to foil the robbers without embarrassing the family, Obtain sufficient money to allow Hugo and Ronnie to waste it in a flawed enterprise and reconcile Lester and Colonel Wyvern so they can marry. All in a days work. Fantastic.
I'm a big fan of Wodehouse and consider his writing marvellous in every way. Well, perhaps every way except one: Wodehouse novels are hard to read if you don't plug away at them consistently or devour them in one or two sittings. The plots and characters are simply too similar to remember between one reading and the next, especially if you, like me, have read so many of his books. There's always a Major or a Captain or a policeman in there somewhere, a stupid one. There's a country estate. There's an idiot relation. There's an uncle. But surprise! In "Money for Nothing", there are also gangsters. One gets the impression that Wodehouse watched a bunch of mobster movies set in Chicago before sitting down to write this and the language is ripped straight from American movies and dislocated to the English countryside. A highlight though is the health spa, Healthward Ho, where the inhabitants subject themselves to physical exercise and abstain from smoking, drinking, and rich food. Poor buggers. This is worth reading just for that chapter.
What do You think about Money For Nothing (2007)?
MONEY FOR NOTHING. (1928). P. G. Wodehouse. ***.This was a typical Wodehouse of confusion and mayhem, once you got passed all the false starts in the story line. It’s almost as if the author was making it up as he went along, using his bag of tricks to fill in the blanks. When he finally settled down, the story was about money and how to get it when the laws of the land were against you. It seems that there was an “heirloom law” in England. (There may be one still for all I know.) This law specified that property on an estate could be left to its heirs in perpetuity, and was not to be sold for gain by any of the succeeding heirs. One way around this, however, was to insure these heirlooms and then have them stolen. When you mix in a dozen or so inept upper class types who represent most of Wodehouse’s objects of fun, along with some fake upper-class crooks from America, the chances for humor escalate. On the whole, the plot for this novel was extremely forced. After a while I found myself skimming.
—Tony
