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Getting Around

Excerpt from the preface of Thank You, Jeeves.

"This is the first of the full-length novels about Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, and it is the only book of mine which I tried to produce without sitting down at the typewriter and getting a crick in the back.

Not that I ever thought of dictating it to a stenographer.  How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth, face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine.  Yet many authors think nothing of saying 'Ready, Miss Spelvin?  Take dictation.  Quote No comma Lord Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quote said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth close quote period.  Quote Well comma I'm not the last man on earth comma so the point does not arise comma close quote replied Lord Jasper comma twirling his moustache cynically period  And so the long day wore on.'

If I started to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period.  How comma with homes for the feeble-minded touting for customers on every side comma has a fathead like this Wodehouse succeeded in remaining at large all these years mark of interrogation.'"

 

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