I loathe Rudyard Kipling for the obvious reasons, yet I’ve read “They” four or five times since 2004, & I’m increasingly fascinated by Adam Nicholson’s narrative (in Perch Hill) of Kipling at Bateman’s. I’m trying to understand what I might be hearing–or what, at least, I might be trying to listen for–under the sentimentality & bad poetry.
You should never ignore a prompt like that, even–or especially–when you have no idea what it’s trying to tell you.
Nice pic.
Ta, Julian. It’s hawthorns above Lower Standean on the South Downs.
When I was very young various artists (painters) would make me mad and I would say I hate so-and-so….later I came to realize that any artist that can get to you that much is worth another visit and some time.
I tend to be more forgiving with writers. I remember going to one of the Whitney Biennials with Chip Delany. It was truly awful and I was pissed (at the presentation not as reaction to the art individually). Chip, on the other hand, had found it entertaining. He can be scathing about writing, though–where I will delve in for the pure enjoyment of it.
I admit to being conflicted about “They” –that was the point of the post, really.
Kipling makes me feel as angry as Lara feels (http://tinyurl.com/5uljr4) upon reading “Heart of Darkness” for the first time. But every so often, when you know you’re looking for the writer your book wants you to be, something prompts you to go through the spoil heap again.
What does “They” have that “The Gardener” doesn’t ? Or, to put it the other way round, why should “The Gardener” make me heave when “They” doesn’t ?
The answer–if I ever get one! –won’t have anything to do with Kipling or his politics, or any of the more obvious elements of “They”(the genuine trauma & mourning which could only find an outlet in spiritualist waffle; the patronising of women, children & servants; the totemising of the shiny new status symbol, the motor car; etc) : it will have something to do with my new book.
That’s quite a predatory attitude, I suppose–not really being interested in Kipling, only in what a late NeoRomantic story of his might tell me about whatever counter-NeoRomantic stunt I’m trying to pull…
“[Chip] can be scathing about writing, though…” I bet he can! I remember him being pretty scathing when he was in London in the early 70s.
Reading Kipling, there’s usually something that jars. With “They,” it’s the spiritualist/Masonic references (proof of M.R. James’s rules); “The Wish House” has dialect, which for Kipling meant authenticity but for us conjures up “The Archers”; and “The Gardener” leaves you wondering about the moral stance of that figure in the cemetery – if He’s that grieving and compassionate, why didn’t He stop the War in the first place?
Against that, I still think “City of Dreadful Night” is fascinating – but it’s really journalism, not a developed narrative. And tellingly, you can put it against “Heart of Darkness” as yet another European account of “the other” which has no chance of answering back, in this case simply because it’s fast asleep.
Hi Martin. There’s a growing move to rehabilitate–or “reassess” –him. Not sure what I think about that. My worst fear is that if I continue to be interested I’ll have to visit Bateman’s. I had such a crap time at Garsington recently that I’m not exactly looking forward to it.
It’s all tangled, isn’t it? Angus Wilson’s biography reveals a peppery, secretive man so at odds with us that sympathy evaporates soon after his horrid, farmed-out childhood, and any present reassessment can’t escape imperial nostalgia, or the cack-handed debates over “English” identity: visit Garsington (or Oxford) and you see what’s at stake in that argument (and who’s winning it at present).
Interesting to watch who “claims” Kipling, too. He’s altogther too prickly to fit anyone’s camp – except maybe the Boy Scouts’. We’ll see.