I don't know if you heard, but the search engine 'Ask Jeeves' gave Jeeves the boot today after a decade of service and is now plain old 'Ask.' We at Overlook, however, are continuing to reissue our The Collectors Wodehouse editions unphased. Due up in April are Very Good, Jeeves!, The Coming of Bill, Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, and The Little Nugget. We're also trotting out two more in the fall.Something tells me fans of Jeeves and company won't lose a lot of sleep over the today's news. The quote below comes from Tony Ring, a founder of the Wodehouse Society in Britain, in a Salon.com article from 2000:
"My personal view is that having tried to use the engine to find a few things, Ask Jeeves is more like Ukridge [a decidedly thick-headed Wodehouse character] than Jeeves. So although when it was set up (acknowledging our Jeeves as the inspiration) it might have been regarded as something of a compliment, the fact that it does not now acknowledge his existence, coupled with its incompetence, says to me that like so much marketing today, it is no more than a con-trick."Or, in the words of Wodehouse himself, “Jeeves knows his place, and it is between the covers of a book."
Speaking of books, you can find a list of the Overlook reissues here. We've got 30 and counting!
--John Mark
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