Dear Lexi and Poirot,

I'm glad you liked the article. While not without its problems I do find he spoke some essential truths.

"Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department."

He copped a lot of flack for it from female comedians but he wouldn't have minded that one bit.

His rebuttal to those criticisms are a delight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7izJggqCoA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It will be interesting to see what response we get here. Will it be 'the rain in Spain' or 'Move yer bloomin' arse'? I'm banking on the latter.

Poirot, I think PG would indeed be flattered. My crass male sense of humour would have struggled to make the soup anything other than 'Pea and Ham'. But the Fawlty specialty Brown Windsor captures the era perfectly. Well done. 

Dear Poirot,

P.G. Wodehouse's reminds me somewhat of David Niven
fine sense of the absurd in his book, "The Moon's A
Balloon, which we've discussed, I believe, sometime ago.

However the difference is of course as Niven himself
attests: "...It makes little sense to write about
the butler if Chairman Mao is sitting down to dinner."

Some write to please the reader, and some write for the
greater pleasure of the reader. Niven falls into the later
group. P.G. Wodehouse probably belongs in the first category.

Dear csteele,

Interesting subject - humour.
According to survey done by psychologists in Canada -
there are differences in humour between genders.
According to the surveys - women want to settle down with a
guy who can crack a good joke while men want a partner who
laughs at their antics. In other words women want a man who
is a humour "generator" while men seek a woman who's an
"appreciator." We're told that a woman who displays a male
sense of humour - one that's aggressive or
competitive - is a turnoff to men. Not sure if I agree with
any of this though. I personally feel that GSOH (good sense of
humour) is important in a relationship -provided of course
that it's not at the expense of any one else. Again a question of
savoir-faire.

Lexi,
I do enjoy a well written and humourous autobiography.
The Moon's A Balloon was incredibly funny, but I found Bring on the Empty Horses less enthralling. In the same way I enjoyed the first two volumes of Clive Jame's memoirs, but found his third was less entertaining in his particular style.

The strength of people like Wodehouse is that, although their subject matter seems frivolous, they are capable of continually conjuring up the humour. Here he is writing on humourists in 1971 when he was 90:

"I go in for what is known in the trade as "light writing", and those who do that--humourists they are called--are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at. When I tell you that in a recent issue of the "New Yorker" I was referred to as "that burbling pixie", you'll see how far the evil has spread.
These things take their toll. You can't go about calling a man a burbling pixie without lowering his morale. He frets. He refuses to eat his cereal. He goes about with his hands in his pockets and his lower lip jutting out, kicking stones. The next thing you know, he is writing thoughtful novels analysing social conditions, and you are short another humouristst.....In order to be a humourist, you must see the world out of focus, and today, when the world really is out of focus, people insist that you see it straight."

Perhaps the thing I find so attractive about him is his outlook on the world and all its absurdities. So he played with words and meanings and made us laugh.

Hell, I notice I have been spelling Grenouille incorrectly, my apologies.

I did want to touch on sex. It is such a large part of Perfume but I will keep it at a little more pleasant level than that explored by the book. However we are, I suspect, all adults here so no beg your pardons.

Two observations. The first is the habit of my own, and from what I gather many males, of after love making of lying back and nestling ones good lady under one arm while raising the other arm above ones head.

It is not a position I would sleep in in any other occasion but seems so natural after sex.

It was only after reading the book that I understood what had been going on subliminally. Firstly we are in effect scenting our partner with our spore with one armpit and with the other we are letting our scent wash over their face to be inhaled.

The second observation is that exquisitely scented area of skin between a woman's shoulder blades (and more than likely a man's as well), that because of the difficulty of reaching it invariably remains somewhat free of the ravages of soaps and perfumes.

I happily admit to finding it intoxicating.

Finally I do wonder about this new generation and their shavers, Brazillian waxes and body sprays. While there are of course benefits to this lifestyle for Gen X and Y, they are perhaps unknowingly foregoing the pleasures of the human pelt and it's accompanying odours.

Perhaps it is just the evolutionary behavioural path our species is on. We certainly turn our noses up at the imagined odiferous offerings of Grenouille's time and it could eventuate that our pelts and odours are bred or genetically modified out of existence in a few hundred years.

Dear csteele,

Smell is an irresistible lure - especially as far as sex
is concerned and we can muse on the nature of desire in
general - and its folly. In Suskind's novel it reaches its
peak at the end of the novel when the mob consumes
Grenouille because of the irresistible lure of the scent
of the 25 women - bringing
together the two main human desires - food and sex.

The smell of the young women is the distilled essence of desire
(in excess), although few of us would be drawn into the
urge to eat the person wearing it.

I don't quite agree that the power of smells will disappear
with time. Sure there are scented soaps, candles, shower gels,
air-freshners, body lotions, oils, perfumes, that make up
the cosmetics of our world. However there are also still
exotic tropical flowers, guavas, mangos, and other tropical
fruits that provide the most wonderful fragrant smells.
As well of course as unpleasant smells - that I remember
from the past - in smoggy, grotty old Newcastle, with the
BHP chimney stacks on one side belching out continual explosions
of toxic pollution into the air...and on the other side of
gut-wrenching stinking abattoirs! It was disgusting! To this day
I can still smell that stench ...especially in the sharp air
of a cold winter's night. Some things are locked in our memories.
And it will, I suspect always be so even for future generations.