As the title may indicate, “Best Seller” is a story about writing. Many writers—especially once they become famous—seem to start focusing on stories about their craft. And why? The oldest adage since the epic died is “write what you know.” You spend your life holed up in a room with a typewriter (or computer, now) and guess what: what you know is the world of writing. Heck, an incredibly successful career could be carved just out of the books that Stephen King has written about writers.
Wodehouse was kinda, sorta, in a way the Stephen King of his day. Which is to suggest that he was a wildly popular writer whom people knew by name and whom critics virtually ignored. Eventually—like King—critics would come around, but even today one of the things that has still continues to haunt the legacy of Wodehouse is that while he was unquestionably a great storyteller who invented memorable characters and placed them into a narrative exceptionally well-written…there’s not a lot of meat on those bones.
Which is to say that the single most common critique of Wodehouse is that his stories lack depth. They entertain to the point of making a reader laugh out loud, but not to the point of being able to remember much of anything about any particular story. Mention the name Wodehouse to those who know their writers and you will instantly draw a response about how wonderful the adventures of Wooster and Jeeves are, but ask them to summarize any one particular story about Bertie and his gentleman’s gentlemen and all but the most voracious of fans will likely be stumped.
Of course, this is due in part to the fact that every Wooster and Jeeves story is pretty much like the next. Wodehouse was—unquestionably—a formula writer. He established a popular formula, peopled that formula with recurring characters and gave readers the comfort of knowing what to come. “Best Seller” fits into that by being part of Wodehouse’s “Mulliner stories.” These have nothing to do with the formula for the Wooster and Jeeves stories, but they follow the same pattern: they open in the same pub where Mr. Mulliner overhears a conversation and launches into one of his own.
On the surface, this might make “Best Seller” seem hardly worth a read unless you are already a fan of the Mulliner stories. And it is precisely that misassumption which stimulated the writing of “Best Seller” as well as what drives its narrative. This is a story about critical assumptions placed on writers. In a way, it can be honestly described as a slap across the face of his critics by Wodehouse. In a more honest way, one can rightly describe “Best Seller” as being something which does not pop up much in the canon of Wodehouse: it is vicious.
Being the proper English gentlemen and purveyor of British writ that he is, “Best Seller” does not seem particularly vicious. Consider this, however: the story opens with a barmaid bawling over a scene in a romantic novel she assumes is written by a female author; a scene that is almost too painful to describe due to the construction of clichés upon which it builds. Only thing is, it turns out not to have been written by a woman at all and—what’s more—to have been written by a literary snob who turns out to have no talent writing at all. As a story intended to be a critique upon London literary critics circa 1929 written by a proper English gentlemen and purveyor of British wit…it just doesn’t get any more vicious.
In 1929, you see, the only woman who would even be allowed inside that pub was the barmaid. And she couldn’t tell the difference between a literary snob and sentimental female author trafficking in clichés.
