Over the weekend, I've been reading The Most of PG Wodehouse, which is just as delightful -- and delightful is really the right word -- as you'd expect. What surprised me, though, was realizing that Douglas Adams, long my favorite author, is really just PG Wodehouse in space. Turns out the influence is admitted, but not on the early portions of his oeuvre:
Douglas was a fan of P.G Wodehouse. I once asked Douglas if Wodehouse had any impact on his own writing, and he said "Yes, a huge impact. But not an early impact. I didn't start reading Wodehouse until I was writing Restaurant at the End of the Universe (I can see the impact starting almost immediately). I think that he, without exaggeration, was a genius on the English language."
So is Wodehouse so pervasive in England that his tone and cadence could seep in without conscious emulation, or is there just a weird synchronicity in their outlooks?
