tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post8054676863745964405..comments2023-12-18T23:20:31.042-06:00Comments on Scriblerus Club: Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling.PrisonerNumber6http://www.blogger.com/profile/03156430802462353459noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-4222681795683401922022-03-09T06:45:35.565-06:002022-03-09T06:45:35.565-06:00Still reading the replies, but I've always lov...Still reading the replies, but I've always loved Kipling. His works totally immerse the reader!<br />I have read Kim, Lord Jim, The Jungle Book, others... as well as nearly everything Lovecraft wrote. I'm of a similar opinion to most everything you both wrote above!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02110785288684433720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-38633488190197971892019-11-24T19:34:22.857-06:002019-11-24T19:34:22.857-06:00(3) I kinda misread what you wrote so I must apolo...(3) I kinda misread what you wrote so I must apologize. Actually, the way you put it is quite right, I just thought you were ranking them, but that required my misreading the words you actually used.B McMolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02706178983936146307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-62465478167923296922019-11-24T19:33:02.528-06:002019-11-24T19:33:02.528-06:00(8) Sorry, yes got the two confused. (Although inc...(8) Sorry, yes got the two confused. (Although incidentally have not read LORD JIM, either, but I was thinking of KIM when I wrote that, oops.) B McMolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02706178983936146307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-84128926216438071882019-11-24T18:39:36.144-06:002019-11-24T18:39:36.144-06:00Sounds interesting. May have to hunt down a copy.
...Sounds interesting. May have to hunt down a copy.<br /><br />ChrisCPrisonerNumber6https://www.blogger.com/profile/03156430802462353459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-77021057724815195892019-11-24T18:38:51.589-06:002019-11-24T18:38:51.589-06:00(4) I agree, that really is the highlight of Allen...(4) I agree, that really is the highlight of Allen's biography. I'd like to see if a movie could be made of this. The only trouble I can find with it is that when people think Kipling (in a positive frame of mind) they think "Jungle Book".<br /><br />I think most audiences would want to see a biopic centered around the writing of those stories. The trouble is he wrote all of it after he left India for good, so it's difficult to fit the two parts of his life into the same film. This is less of a problem for say, Charles Dickens in "The Man who Invented Christmas", which had the advantage of focusing on just a single action in a contained setting that helped keep things focused.<br /><br />I suppose on way to handle this scenario is to have the action split between Kipling in Vermont, and a series of flashbacks where he's remembering those night walk explorations. Who knows?<br /><br />(6) The collection I've been making my way through is "Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy" edited by Stephen Jones, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. It's the best gateway text I can find for those who want to start dipping their toes into that particular secondary world. Incidentally, Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" is a riff on Kipling's Mowgli story.<br /><br />(7) Thanks.<br /><br />(8) I could be wrong, however you might be confusing Kipling's "Kim" with Conrad's "Lord Jim" there, partner. Just FYI.<br /><br />ChrisCPrisonerNumber6https://www.blogger.com/profile/03156430802462353459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-63442490897783976812019-11-24T18:30:25.193-06:002019-11-24T18:30:25.193-06:00(1) (2) This was the one aspect of the review that...(1) (2) This was the one aspect of the review that proved the biggest headache (which is sort of natural seeing that the poem itself qualifies as one). I'm willing to go with the idea that what separates Kipling from Lovecraft is that in the end I can't find much in the way of actual malice in the "Jungle Book", whereas in Lovecraft...Yikes. Just yikes. The punchline is the latter guy still knew a thing or two about sending shivers up your spine. In the end, I have to admit this was like the best solution I could find to the whole mess.<br /><br />That said, I take a lot of your point.<br /><br />(3)Point taken again.PrisonerNumber6https://www.blogger.com/profile/03156430802462353459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-1573989970840893482019-11-24T10:03:59.170-06:002019-11-24T10:03:59.170-06:00Incidentally, the issue of BACK ISSUE I'm read...Incidentally, the issue of BACK ISSUE I'm reading at present is an overview of MARVEL FANFARE, and the article I just opened to is about the P. Craig Russell/ Gil Kane adaptation of THE JUNGLE BOOK. Synchronicity!B McMolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02706178983936146307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-14069730186921557852019-11-24T09:56:00.105-06:002019-11-24T09:56:00.105-06:00(4) I love Kipling's nightly walks around town...<br />(4) I love Kipling's nightly walks around town, learning the local color, smoking opium with assorted 19th century characters. I'd love to see this movie, just a recreation of this little period of his life. <br /><br />(5) "So opens 'Mister Anthony Dawking', which deals with one of Ruddy's favorite low-life subjects: the European loafer, almost always an ex-soldier who has fallen on hard times and taken to drink, staggering from one Station to another, scrounging off the Native population until he dies alone and unlamented. This and other tales may have been worked into fiction, but their credibility comes from scrupulously observed fact." Yes! Agreed. I've read this one. <br /><br />(6) What's interesting is at the end of his life seeing Kipling ruminate on Freud and what not. Brackish waters of then-and-now, sort of like Steinbeck writing the King Arthur book at the end of his own career. I love little details like that. <br /><br />(7) Nice post Chris!B McMolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02706178983936146307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3917612005522287441.post-23296638021065487442019-11-24T09:55:54.189-06:002019-11-24T09:55:54.189-06:00This was a very interesting post to read. I can...This was a very interesting post to read. I can't comment on certain aspects of it as I really only know 2 Kipling books well enough: his Collected Short Stories (one of those hardcovers with the glossy pages and illustrations here and there) all of which are excellent, although I've yet to read every story in there, and POOK OF PUCK'S HILL (ditto, minus the hardcover). I love those, and I like the whole end-of-Empire fiction and personae in general. It's a fascinating era, Britain's was a fascinating Empire, and it's just close enough to our own era (with considerable overlap) where it's all accessible. But i've never seen or read THE JUNGLE BOOK or LORD KIM, and those seem to be the ones people talk about. One of these days!<br /><br />(1) On one hand, it saddens me to hear Kipling would be lumped in with someone like Lovecraft. To a certain type of 21st century reader, this is undoubtedly a hard line in the wokescold world. But, outside of being white guys who lives in eras given to white supremacist views, governments, and actions, there's little in their respective fictions (or worldviews) to put them under the same umbrella. I don't expect reasonability from the wokescolds of now - they're in a constant state of working on their own "White Man's Burden" poems, just horses of a different color no pun intended - but I've known from an early age that I have interests in writers of different eras precisely because they're of different eras and it's fascinating to me. Too many these days treat anything written even before 2001 to be hopelessly antiquated, or worse, that exposure to it will cause them to either collapse in sadness for the world, or enrage them. Like everything prior to their own existence is simply fuel for wokescold rage or projection of 2019 ethos. What an absurd way to live. It is for these reasons I never pursued any kind of college professor/ educator / critic profession, even though at one point it seemed like the natural next stage for me. But I can't exist in that world. I like to read Waugh, Kipling, whomever, on their own terms, in their own context, and learn what they thought of the world/ their own lived existence. To view anything through the narrow view of now is as unappealing to me as viewing anything solely through the view of, say, "White Man's Burden." (Which for all its "horror," expresses a cynicism and world-weariness that any ruling empire-builder has expressed in similar poems from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Islam, China, Japan, etc.) Not defending it, just making the point: it's more interesting to read the work itself and not the lamentations of 2019 people reading it. <br /><br />(2) Which is not to say none of that serves a purpose (the lamentations of 2019) - it does, it's just not one I'm particularly interested in. it seems to be circular reasoning and reductive. All narcissism is, of course, just that's the follow-the-crowd-at-narratvie-chow-time world we live in. So it goes. Kipling had his own follow-the-narrative-crowd-at-chowtime, of course, as demonstrated in "WM'sB" and elsewhere. <br /><br />(3) "If pampering a child is the first mistake a parent can make, then the second and most severe is to abuse him." I might reverse those two, myself! <br />B McMolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02706178983936146307noreply@blogger.com