#wooster collective

[aceredshirt13]

discussion was had in the jooster discord about how there were various monocle clubs for lesbians at the time in which the stories took place. so allow me to make a story suggestion.

Bertie Wooster purchases a fashionable monocle as a stylistic statement and ends up joining a ripping new club where he makes tons of dear friends and is immensely popular. What he doesn’t know is that it’s a club for sapphics, and they all just think that he’s a cute he/him butch lesbian who tells the funniest stories. He is being flirted with by like 12 girls per night and is completely oblivious to it. They all think it’s the funniest shit ever when they find out he is not in fact a woman and he remains friends with them from then on. He still meets them for drinks at the club now and then, during which at least one new member always has to be let down gently by one of the other ladies that no, he is not a woman. He is just Bertie Wooster.

[sandwichsapphic]

where are my jeeves and wooster book fans!!!!!!!!! nothing comes between a girl and her favourite 20th century losers

[not-equippedforthis]

late night 'reading through abandoned WIPs' entertainment

[one-strugling-bean]

I really hadn't expected these two to catch me in a brainrot chokehold......

And yet, here we are!

Had fun with this one, ngl

[huanglaoshu]

"If I might make a suggestion, sir?" "Press on, Jeeves." "Would it not be possible for you to go to Totleigh Towers, but to decline to carry out Miss Byng's wishes?" I weighed this. It was, I could see, a thought. "Issue a nolle prosequi, you mean? Tell her to go and boil her head?" "Precisely, sir."

-- Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, chapter 4

Immediately after Bertie explains how he failed to say no to Stiffy:

To my surprise, instead of raising an eyebrow the customary eighth of an inch and saying "Most disturbing, sir," he came within an ace of smiling. That is to say, the left corner of his mouth quivered almost imperceptibly before returning to position one. "You cannot accede to Miss Byng's request, sir." I took an astonished sip of coffee. I couldn't follow his train of thought. It seemed to me that he couldn't have been listening. "But if I don't, she'll squeal to the FBI." "No, sir, for the lady will be forced to admit that it is physically impossible for you to carry out her wishes. The statuette is no longer at large. It has been placed in Sir Watkyn's collection room behind a stout steel door."

-- Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, chapter 10

Bertie sends Jeeves to tell Stiffy no for him, and then:

He was absent quite a time -- so long, in fact, that I was dressed when he returned. "I saw Miss Byng, sir." "And--?" "She is still insistent that you restore the statuette to Mr. Plank." "She's cuckoo. I can't get into the collection room." "No, sir, but Miss Byng can. She informs me that not long ago Sir Watkyn chanced to drop his key, and she picked it up and omitted to apprise him. Sir Watkyn had another key made, but the original remains in Miss Byng's possession." I clutched the brow. "You mean she can get into the room any time she feels like it?" "Precisely, sir. Indeed, she has just done so." And so saying he fished the eyesore from an inner pocket and handed it to me. "Miss Byng suggests that you take the object to Mr. Plank after luncheon. In her droll way she said the meal -- I quote her words -- would put the necessary stuffing into you and nerve you for the... It is somewhat early, sir, but shall I get you a little brandy?"

-- Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, chapter 10

[freshthoughts2020]

[spotforme]

of course i know him! Gussie my weird little man

Do You Know This (Non-canon) Autistic Character?

Evidence below the cut!

He is obsessed with newts and known for being socially retiring:

"Absolutely, Jeeves. The craving grew upon him. The newts got him. Arrived at man's estate, he retired to the depths of the country and gave his life up to these dumb chums. I suppose he used to tell himself that he could take them or leave them alone, and then found--too late--that he couldn't."

"It is often the way, sir."

"Too true, Jeeves. At any rate, for the last five years he has been living at this place of his down in Lincolnshire, as confirmed a species-shunning hermit as ever put fresh water in the tank every second day and refused to see a soul."

[mr-styles]

pleasing Harry Styles and Jonathan Anderson in London for Pleasing x JW Anderson, May 2024—together finishing the collection’s designs, choosing nail polish names, and creating Harry’s own version of the signature Bumper 15 bag.

The 12-piece capsule collection is available now at Pleasing.com, with a curated selection at JWAnderson.com. Available in-store at Pleasing NYC (140 Wooster), Pleasing LA (1222 Abbot Kinney Blvd), JW Anderson Soho London (2 Brewer Street), and JW Anderson Milan (Via Sant’Andrea, 16) from December 6th.

[cfffrk]

fashion!au, sixties or fifties, thought up with @karabin4ik :з

Jeeves the famous fashion designer, one day was having coffee on the veranda at a cafe and reading a newspaper. In an instant this newspaper was snatched from his hands by a certain tall stranger. He hid his face in it, sat down opposite Jeeves at the table, and stood still. Reginald was about to be indignant, but a girl jumped out of the corner of the room, looking round with frantic eyes for this particular stranger. Without noticing him, she went on along the street, and the strange fellow awkwardly and apologetically returned the paper and fled. Jeeves remembered his hideous suit and tall, slender figure: he had long needed models of that build for his new men's collection. But everything happened so quickly that Jeeves didn't even have time to give him his business card.

The next day fate was favourable to Jeeves: walking along the seafront, he saw the couple again. They were talking in high tones, and the fellow with the long-suffering expression on his face was trying to get out of the conversation. Using all his charm and politeness, Jeeves stepped in and helped the stranger out of trouble. In return for the favour, Jeeves offered him a ride to his costume studio to try something on. So this is the moment:

(by the way, Jeeves' costumes won't be to Bertie's taste, so he leaves, but Aunt Dahlia finding a crumpled business card in his flat will make him come back)

DBH!au, thought up with @karabin4ik :]

In this au the Wooster family is in the business of manufacturing and selling high-end universal android servants all over England and the world. At some point their company invents a new model RJ0 - the ultimate android servant that can literally do everything and satisfy your every whim. It is perfect in everything, but because of the crude software it sometimes shows its character and acts not quite according to the master's expectations.

[blo0d-and-neons-artblog]

all of my silly jeeves and wooster sketches, ungracefully collected

[spotforme]

I got the first parts now!!

I now have the knowledge that my local liberary hosts P. G Wodehouse's Jeeves books and i don't think i can contain myself much longer. Even with my five unfinished books staring at me, i shall happily march in there very soon and take what i so yearn!

[aceredshirt13]

having read nearly all of the Jeeves short stories, it’s so funny to me that Bertie’s bisexuality manifests as casting a wide but shallow net at girls and a narrow but ridiculously deep net at men. He thinks girls are pretty on a reasonably frequent basis, and has tried to marry at least four women thus far (not counting the unwanted engagements), but when it doesn’t work out he’s over it in 24 hours. Meanwhile he shows absolutely no interest in and never gives flattering depictions of 99% of the men in his life, but will praise Jeeves to anyone who will listen, wax poetic about his appearance (and get defensive on his behalf about it when a child insults it), and is absolutely inconsolable when they are separated.

(also Bertie is in no way allosexual. he is canonically terrified at the thought of reproducing. and due to the narrow but deep net on the other end I don’t imagine he’s going around sleeping with loads of men, either. that man’s either demi as hell or just entirely ace)

[221bees]

I recently posted a World of Wooster print on my art blog and was pretty shocked to get more than three notes on it! Since a few people showed some interest/curiosity about the show I wanted to make a more informational post here as well. This 20-episode series aired on the BBC from 1965-67, but the majority of it has unfortunately been lost/wiped. One episode, The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace, exists in full and is available on youtube. The other episode is Jeeves and the Indian Summer of an Uncle, which various sources say is archived, or in a private collection, or that only 7 minutes exist, or that only a few clips exist. The above clip, taken from the 2011 Wogan on Wodehouse documentary, is the only one I've ever seen, but I shall keep on holding out hope that maybe someday someone will release another couple seconds.

[janasojka]

Two of my designs with Night Landscapes have been selected and featured on garments print for Paul Smith, Red Ear Collection! These garments are now available for purchase on the Paul Smith Japan website 🙏🏻

It's an honour to have my designs featured by such an iconic brand!

There may be a limited amount, in Paul Smith London Beak St store and Wooster Street, NYC around September!!!

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Somebody at some point in the evening: you know, newts are kind of like snakes-

Gussie: don’t you daRE

happy (belated) st patricks day! knowing bertie wooster i think he and the drones would get drunk and decide to honour Pádraig by chasing the snakes out of london but theyd just throw people's hoses into the thames

[ripeteeth]

Hi! I hope this isn't too random or intrusive, but I discovered your blog recently due to coming across your post about reading Frankenstein when I was searching a book ask meme tag. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about the books you like and I found I shared quite a few of your tastes and opinions as well (eg. I wasn't a big fan of Love in the Time of Cholera or Neil Gaiman's solo writing either, I really love grotesquely interesting and oddly pretty stories like Perfume).

please don't feel any pressure to answer this if you'd rather not, but I was wondering if you had any other books to recommend or talk a bit about that have really stuck with you? I'm also curious about how you usually find more good books for your future reading list – if you have any tips or advice you could share Thank you! ♡

Hi! I’m always down to talk about books I love or loathe! There’s so much out there in terms of grotesque beauty, so to speak!

I worked in a bookstore all throughout college, so I had a ton of resources there in being connected to other book lovers and had the pure luck to spend thousands of hours shelving books and having so many titles pass through my hands. Many of my favorites are here because something about the cover or summary intrigued me while I was reshelving it or finding it for someone (or pulling it during zoning to return to the publisher if it hadn’t sold). If you have a good used bookstore near you, I HIGHLY recommend just taking time to wander through and just look for something weird! Something that catches your attention, even if you can’t put your finger on why. Ask the booksellers there if they have any recommendations - I’ve rarely met a bookseller that didn’t have an opinion or five about good books to share.

I also had the benefit of having a very book-centric family, especially my mom. She’s my best friend and she introduced me to so many incredible titles, like The Stranger, Jane Eyre, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, Lolita, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Anna Karenina, Murder on the Orient Express, and the collected hijinks of Jeeves and Wooster. So many of the books I read are ones she recommends!

Beyond that and recommendations from friends, I tend to pick up books from following publishers. Right now I’m obsessed with reading publications by the New York Review of Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions, both of which publish incredibly high-quality writing from authors I’ve usually never heard of. A lot of these books are either experimental or have never been translated into English before (or haven’t been published in decades). I really tend to just go through their catalogs and grab a book at random and I haven’t had a miss yet. Right now from NYRB, I’m reading Mourning A Breast, a memoir of living with breast cancer by Hong Kong writer Xi Xi, and I have Vasily Grossman’s Leningrad on deck. From Fitzcarraldo, I recently loved Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and am going to start Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor soon.

Right off the top of my head, based on the few you referenced here such as Perfume and Frankenstein, I’d recommend:

Grendel - John Gardner

Along with Frankenstein, this is probably my all-time favorite book. It’s a fascinating retelling of Beowulf, all from Grendel’s point-of-view. It’s lush but in that way of undergrowth and decay, and Gardner leans into Grendel’s wretchedness and monstrosity, letting it sing. He’s not interested in rehabilitating a monster, but in giving this pathetic creature a voice. I have a deep love of retellings that move the viewfinder and give the reins to a side character or villain. (Though I admit I haven’t liked many of the recent releases in this vein. They give me the crawling sensation that they were written because it became popular, not because the author had an interest in the story or characters, which is perfectly valid - hey, it’s a capitalist hellscape we all live in, no shame in getting paid - but those aren’t the books I enjoy.)

Crash - J.G. Ballard

This is a weird one. A wonderfully messy, fucked-up weird one where the heartbeat of the story is about psychosexual car crash fetishes. Cronenberg made it into a film in 1995 and the fact that Cronenberg made a movie about it at all should tell you everything you need to know.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories - Flannery O’Connor

If you like dark and oddly beautiful, nothing fits that criteria more than Flannery O’Connor. Something heavy and somber hovers over her work. A sense of dread. Dry grasses. Revival tents. The dead eyed stare of a preacher. A fire you cannot escape.

[A list of recs below the cut]

A few others that come to mind as titles you may enjoy, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. These are all beautifully written, fascinating, and many are uncomfortable in the precise way I like fiction to leave me feeling.

Cassandra - Christa Wolf

The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist

Hunger - Knut Hamsun

Solenoid - Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu

We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

Rashomon and Other Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson

Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age - Bohumil Hrabal

Voices From Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich (Proof that non-fiction can be poetic and haunting)

Just Kids - Patti Smith

A Map To The Door of No Return - Dionne Brand

This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Tadeusz Borowski

The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz

Lote - Shola von Reinhold

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson

Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino

2666 - Roberto Bolaño

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

The Pearl Diver - Jeff Talarigo

Beyond The Gates - Molly Gloss

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Self-Help and Other Stories - Lorrie Moore

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Get In Trouble: Stories - Kelly Link

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Consent - Vanessa Springora

Medea - Christa Wolf

Simple Passion - Annie Ernaux