Collection: The Clicking of Cuthbert

Overview
The Clicking of Cuthbert is a 1922 collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse that centers on the genteel, often absurd world of golf. Each vignette sketches a round or two on the links, but the stories are as much about the personalities who populate clubhouses, fairways and cottages as they are about birdies and bogeys. Wodehouse blends sporting detail with romantic misadventure and social satire, producing compact comedies that prize wit, timing and a keen eye for human foibles.

Structure and Content
The book gathers a series of standalone tales tied together by setting and subject rather than by recurring heroes. Most stories are short, focused narratives that build toward a single comic reversal or a tender payoff. The "title" story gives the collection its tone: a parable of obsession and eccentricity delivered with playful precision. Throughout, golf acts as both plot engine and metaphor, a civilized arena where pride, romance and vanity expose themselves in perfectly timed strokes.

Characters and Tone
Characters are vividly drawn in a few telling lines: a blustering club captain, an earnest novice whose single swing changes everything, a vain rival undone by his own pomposity. Wodehouse treats them with affection even as he teases their pretensions; there is seldom malice in the satire, only an amused insistence on human inconsistency. The tone is light and urbane, often slipping into sly sentimentality when a romantic or honorable gesture earns its comic due.

Style and Humor
Wodehouse's prose is deliberately economical and rhythmically charged, full of slick similes and precise comic timing. Jokes are frequently built on the juxtaposition of genteel language and down-to-earth pratfalls, with golf providing a steady stream of situational absurdities. Much of the humor depends on the narrator's assured voice and the author's knack for setting up expectations and quickly undercutting them with a twist, a pun, or a perfectly timed reversal of fortune.

Themes and Satire
Beneath the laughter lie recurring themes of obsession, competition and the human craving for recognition. Golf functions as a civilized battlefield where character is revealed: generosity and petty vanity, loyalty and comic cowardice all come to light amid scorecards and post-match drinks. Wodehouse skewers social pretensions, club hierarchies, amateur pedigrees and the theater of respectability, while celebrating eccentricity and the small acts of decency that redeem his characters.

Appeal and Legacy
The Clicking of Cuthbert endures because it marries sporting specificity with universal comic insight. Readers who know little about golf can still enjoy the stories for their character work and brisk humor, while golf enthusiasts appreciate the authentic detail that gives the jokes extra weight. The collection showcases Wodehouse's mastery of short-form comedy and remains a prime example of how lightness of touch can reveal deeper human truths without losing the pleasure of a well-crafted laugh.