The Heart of a Goof: Summary & Reading Guide

Nine more tales from the Oldest Member

The Heart of a Goof returns to the Oldest Member and lets him narrate all nine stories. After The Clicking of Cuthbert, the frame feels wonderfully familiar: the club offers a place where an encounter or a question can release a complete tale of sporting folly. The individual stories are not one extended tournament. Each sets a different person’s hopes against the peculiar pressures of a game that can make a small mistake feel like a character revelation. Romance, dress, status and self-image all find their way onto the course. I find the collection particularly welcoming when I want Wodehouse in doses short enough for an evening but connected by a voice I am glad to hear again.

“The Heart of a Goof” is the title story, but a fan should look beyond the title for the variety of the set. “High Stakes,” “Keeping in with Vosper” and “Chester Forgets Himself” suggest three different ways that social pressure can interfere with the game. “The Magic Plus Fours” gives golf clothing its own comic promise. “The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh,” “Rodney Fails to Qualify,” “Jane Gets off the Fairway” and “The Purification of Rodney Spelvin” complete the nine. The titles themselves sound like miniature moral case histories, exactly the kind of material the Oldest Member likes to present as evidence from a larger golfing world.

The narrator’s persistence makes the episodes feel related without requiring a continuous cast of protagonists. He speaks as someone for whom a life outside the links can be understood by examining what happens on them. A listener may wish for a shorter answer, but we are fortunate that the speaker takes his time. Wodehouse’s device allows a story to move from the club’s present into another player’s dilemma and back. It gives the collection its conversational texture. Golf expertise is welcome but not mandatory. Even a reader who has never played can recognise the discomfort of making an impression on a person whose expectations one does not quite understand.

Herbert Jenkins issued the UK book on 15 April 1926; George H. Doran published the US edition as Divots on 4 May 1927. The British and American names belong to the same collection, not two separate instalments. All nine stories had appeared in magazines before collection, sometimes under a different title. “The Magic Plus Fours,” for instance, was “The Plus Fours” in an earlier magazine appearance; “The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” had also used a shorter alternate title. The specialist bibliography gives each trail. If you are buying or cataloguing an old copy, use the edition title and date. If you are simply choosing a story to read, the collected headings are a useful map.

Three of these tales — “Chester Forgets Himself,” “The Magic Plus Fours” and “Rodney Fails to Qualify” — supplied the second half of Stoll Picture Productions’ six silent golf films in 1924. The first half came from The Clicking of Cuthbert. The film date precedes this book because the stories had already lived in magazines. This is an excellent example of why the first collection year cannot stand in for a story’s entire history. A fan guide should distinguish publication of a story, adaptation of it and publication of a book containing it. The connections are more interesting when the order is made clear rather than compressed into a single claim that the 1926 book was adapted in 1924.

The comedy often begins with a player’s private belief about how the world ought to reward a good round. Another person may care about clothing, a promise, a rival or a social slight instead. The course then exposes the gap between the player’s theory and the other person’s priorities. The Oldest Member narrates with grave attention to golfing form, which makes the misunderstandings still funnier. He is never merely a device for stringing together jokes; his belief in the significance of every incident shapes what we notice. Sometimes I enjoy listening to his argument almost more than the outcome of the match. His confidence is a gentler cousin of the grand convictions held by many Wodehouse characters.

This is a natural second stop after The Clicking of Cuthbert. The first volume introduces the Oldest Member and contains one story outside his narrative frame; here all nine are his. Later golf stories appear in other collections, so these two books provide a beginning rather than an exhaustive cabinet. For someone who enjoys a particular player or predicament, the magazine record offers another route outward. For a first reader, I would pick a title whose small drama appeals and let the voice take over. The stories have separate conclusions and do not demand that one remember the result of the previous round.

I like how the book turns a club’s familiar rituals into opportunities for surprise. The Oldest Member can make the outcome of a meeting seem inevitable in hindsight, yet the people inside it have to improvise under pressure. A piece of clothing, a reputation or a golf score becomes a token of something much larger to them. Wodehouse’s light touch keeps the stakes humane. The Heart of a Goof is a collection to savour in sequence or revisit at random, with the American title Divots ready to guide anyone searching the other side of the Atlantic. Wherever you find it, settle in: the Oldest Member has another account to give, and it will almost certainly take longer than the listener expected.