Pale Grenville Woodhaus. About the benefits of optimism

The first Russian biography of the author of Jivs and Wuster

Alexander Livergant - literary critic, translator, editor -in -chief of the magazine Foreign Literature, Professor of the Russian State University. The author of the biographies of Redyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Graham Green, Virginia Wolf. The new book “Pale Grenville Woodhaus. On the benefits of optimism ” - the first portrait of the largest English comedian of the twentieth century in the literary, theater, social and political interior of the era.

“ In September 1915, the Philadelphia magazine “Saturday Evening Post” printed the story “ Young Gassi, who would not have anything special if not for two short, insignificant remarks. At first, a middle -aged already, the recently hired, the butler tells his master: “Mrs. Gregson, sir wants to see you.” And then, when the owner - a young pavement - informs the butler that they go to America, takes, as a butler, and supposed to be under the visor: “Very good, sir. What costume will you wear? ”

who could have foreseen that these passing remarks will enter the annals of English literature? Meanwhile, this is exactly what happened, because they marked the birth of a famous couple: Jivs and Bertie Wuster.

“Now that I wrote so much about him,” Woodhaus will note half a century later, “it seems funny as it is funny as it is funny Jiva quietly and imperceptibly into my life... I blush from the thought that during our first meeting I treated him so unceremonious. "