Something Fresh by P. G. Wodehouse

This may possibly be the funniest novel I have ever read (I don't know, though, it's had some pretty stiff competition even in this blog). What I find fascinating about Wodehouse is that a lot of the things that happen in his work are what I absolutely hate seeing onstage or screen, such as physical farce (falling down stairs, colliding with other people, etc), just stuff that I would find really cheap and stupid in the theatre or in a movie, but he makes it so sublimely hilarious that I was literally paralysed with laughter for most of this book. I mean, this is completely priceless: 'Coming down to first causes, the only reason why collisions of any kind occur is because two bodies defy Nature's law that a given spot on a given plane shall at a given moment of time be occupied by only one body. There was a certain spot near the foot of the great staircase which Ashe, coming downstairs from Mr. Peters' room, and George Emerson, coming up to Aline's room, had to pass on their respective routes. George reached it at one minute and three seconds after two a.m., moving silently but swiftly; and Ashe, also maintaining a good rate of speed, arrived there at one minute and four seconds after the hour, when he ceased to walk and began to fly, accompanied by George Emerson, now going down. His arms were round George's neck and George was clinging to his waist.' But if I try to imagine seeing it, it just seems like a cheap laugh. How does he do it?? I think of my so far inconsiderable experience with Wodehouse, this is the book I've enjoyed the most. I get rather bored by Wodehouse's positive characters, they just don't seem real like the negative (or just ridiculous) characters do. I also don't think he's very good at writing love stories and romantic scenes. I have the same complaint about this book that I had about Leave It to PSmith; the female characters are dead boring. Even the (somewhat) adventurous and witty Joan Valentine doesn't seem to get much fun, but I think that's just part of a bigger problem of women in comedy in general, which is very much still with us. But for the most part, this book is absolutely genius, and I'm currently forcibly restraining myself from reading exclusively Wodehouse for the next three years (approximately how long I estimate it will take me to get through his considerable output if I do nothing else).