“BEST SELLER”has some claims to being the funniest short story that ‘‘Best P.G. Wodehouse ever wrote. In it a girl named Evangeline Pembury, greatly to her own surprise and that of her fiancé Egbert Mulliner, produces a best-selling novel entitled Parted Ways.
On the strength of this she acquires a suave and Byronic-looking literary agent named Jno. Henderson Banks, who addresses her as “Dear lady” and fixes up a string of lucrative commissions which it is beyond her ability to fulfil. Asked by an increasingly disgruntled Egbert who the man he saw her with the previous night was, Evangeline replies “That wasn’t a man. That was my literary agent.”
The Secret Author was reminded of this withering exchange about half-way through a fascinated sit-down with Richard Charkin’s My Back Pages,…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2023