Kingsley Amis - RUDYARD KIPLING

Kingsley Amis

RUDYARD KIPLING:
with 114 illustrations

first (1975) published in hard cover as

RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD
(Pictorial Biography)

Thames & Hudson. 1986. 128pp.

ISBN: 0500260192

reviewed by Patrick Killough

(1) biblio.com 10/22/2011

Would you recommend this book to other readers? YES. * * * * *

review:

In RUDYARD KIPLING (1975), Kingsley Amis in 128 packed pages surveys the life of Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936). Also how that life intertwined with Kipling's huge volume of written work. More than a third of this book is filled with enlightening black and white illustrations, cartoons, photographs and newspaper clippings. ***

Kingsley Amis notes that from around 1890 to 1930 Kipling was the most widely read poetry and short story writer in the English-speaking world. For the next forty years he was criticized for being racist ("Take up the white man's burden," he exhorted the Americans after their wresting the Philippines from Spain); for jingoistic praise of all things British, including the Empire, and for other alleged weaknesses. But he has since been rehabilitated as a man who wrote about things inadequately noticed by most others: India, the British Raj, travel, imperial politics and administration and more. ***

Kipling has been admired by D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and other important writers. Writes Kingsley Amis:

"a large amount (of Kipling's work) can now be seen to be of the highest quality. The diverseness of his poetry alone is wihout parallel in our language, and, among the varied forms in which he excelled, the ones he invented himself predominate. With all his breadth there went the gift of distilling a whole thought into a few memorable words. No modern writer has added more phrases to the language." *

Uniquely after Charles Dickens, Kipling spoke to all levels of society, from royalty to soldiers, to women, to children, to lovers of poetry and to scholars, too. Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING is a handsome, rewarding book. Display it proudly on your coffee table. Reach for it when you are snugly in bed at night.

-OOO-

http://www.biblio.com/books/236082316.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(2) lunch.com 10/23/2011

name of review: Rudyard Kipling: Father of Modern Science Fiction?

rating: * * * *

review:

How many science fiction tales have you read written by Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)? I had no idea that he had composed any at all until my recent first reading of RUDYARD KIPLING (1975) by novelist, poet and critic Sir Kingley Amis (1922 - 1995).

At http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_scifi.htm Fred Lerner in 2004 names and summarizes in chronological order from 1893 to 1932) ten of Kipling's sci fi tales. Of these, nine appeared in book form as KIPLING'S SCIENCE FICTION (New York: Tor Books, 1992), edited by noted British Sci-Fi writer John Brunner. It is readily available through Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other book stores.

Fred Lerner also details the happily acknowledged impact of Rudyard Kipling on Poul Anderson, L Sprague de Camp, Joe Haldeman, and Gene Wolfe. Wrote Poul Anderson:

“His influence pervades modern science fiction and fantasy writing."

Some have even called Rudyard Kipling "father of modern science fiction."

But this is not an essay on the origins of science fiction but a review of Kingsley's Amis's book, RUDYARD KIPLING. Amis mentions and comments on four or five sci-fi works of Kipling. Here is a sample:

(1) "A Matter of Fact," 1893, ("it ends with a dig at the United States"). Three journalists of different countries on a passenger vessel discover two dying sea-monsters. How bring this important story to publics in no wise prepared to accept it?

(2) "The Eye of Allah," 1926, writes alternative medieval history: to reveal or suppress in the West an important discover made in the East but already lost there.

(3) "With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D."
and its sequel (4) "As Simple as ABC,"
explore a world increasingly united by aviation. In the latter, according to Kingsley Amis, Kipling "went so far as to depict a future state of society in which invasion of privacy is a uniquely serious legal offence."

In his Preface to RUDYARD KIPLING, Amis says,

"I have not been concerned to find and reveal new facts, though several unregarded ones have come my way."

I think that Kipling's science fiction may be one of those "unregarded" facts.

There is, as you might expect, in a commissioned biography by Kingsley Amis, a complete survey of Kipling's life and world, with 114 well selected, nicely sourced black and white illustrations, one page listings "Select Bibliography" and "Kipling's Principal Works, seven pages of "Lists of Illustrations" and "General Index (the latter not terribly helpful, it says nothing for instance of "science fiction."

But by and large Kingsley provides superior commentary and flashes of insight into a remarkable man who won the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature, innovated in short stories, travel narratives and verse. It should not be suprising that a man born like Kipling in Bombay, India, speaking good Hindustani before mastering English, should take up science fiction. For was not his prose masterpiece, KIM, for most readers of his day, about aliens? A world full of Hindus, Muslims, some Buddhists, a lama, an Afghan horse trader, British Intelligence and Russians playing the Great Game against the British Raj?

For 40 years Kipling was the most widely read poet and prose fiction writer in the English-speaking world. His reputation faded for a time as political correctness misunderstood the context of phrases like, "Take up the white man's burden" and "lesser breeds without the law." But once rediscovered and promoted by the likes of D.H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, Kipling's reputation has once again soared. Start with his sci-fi and then read all the Kipling that you can get your hands on.

-OOO-

http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Kingsley_Amis
_RUDYARD_KIPLING-1773559.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(3) bn.com 10/25/2011

title of review: Rudyard Kipling: Apostle of "Real Work"

rating: * * * *

review:

Let's assume that we are just beginning to read systematically into the vast writings of Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936). What should we read first? What do experts consider of permanent value in his work? Which are better: Kipling's short stories, novels, poems, travel narratives? Who will enlighten us? Beginners could do worse than tackle RUDYARD KIPLING: WITH 114 ILLUSTRATIONS (1975) by Sir Kingsley Amis (1922 - 1995).

Novelist, poet and literary critic Sir Kingsley Amis was commissioned by the innovative publisher Thames and Hudson to relate Kipling's works to his life. In his Preface Amis writes,

"I have not been concerned to find and reveal new facts, though several unregarded ones have come my way."

Other authors of brief Kipling biographies might not have showcased Rudyard Kipling as father of modern science fiction or perhaps the greatest travel writer in the English language. But Kingsley Amis does.

Kipling's core value, for Amis, is work, everything to do with work. Sounding rather like medieval Christian philosophers, not very conventionally religious Kipling believes that a power higher than man has created him particularly meant for some line of work. Man's destiny consists in identifying that proper work and dedicating himself to it to the best of his ability.

-- In CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, fishing boat captain Disko Troop seems to agree: it is important, he says, to know how the next man earns his "vittles."

-- In the LIGHT THAT FAILS, successful painter Dick Heldar is master of his craft, one whose essence he penetrates only when he learns that he will go blind within a year.

-- Kipling himself in his very last autobiographical work, SOMETHING OF MYSELF, dwells lovingly on the tools of writing: selection of writing paper, ink, pens. He lived to work with his hands, Amis tells us. Whenever amateur theatricals were afoot, Kipling was the man to go to for costumes and bling bling.

-- In the great poem introducing STALKY & CO., Rudyard Kipling praises his teachers at United Services College for the sheer example in their "daily work" that

"Man must finish off his work --
Right or wrong, his daily work --
And without excuses."

Amis uses Kipling's belief that his work defines a man, his rights and his duties, to explain the famous, ostensibly politically incorrect exhortation,

"Take up the white man's burden."

This was addressed to the USA after it had decided to relieve Spain of the Philippine Islands. There was a time when one set of humans were clearly better at ruling places like Manila Bay or the Indian Raj. Around 1900 those men happened to be white and English speaking. But it was their duty to apprentice the less prepared to replace them in "the work" and in adhering to "the Law."

As expected of any Thames and Hudson publication of anything on any subject, RUDYARD KIPLING is lavishly, brilliantly and aptly illustrated (114 photos, cartoons, reproductions of newspaper items, and on and on). Each illustration is carefully identified and sourced in seven pages at book's end. If Kingsley Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING has one obvious weakness, it is in its two-page "General Index." You won't find "science fiction" or "travel writings" mentioned there. There is, alas, worse: this book is no longer mentioned in the on line catalog of Thames and Hudson. It is out of print.

-OOO-

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rudyard-kipling-
kingsley-amis/1000007765?ean=9780500260197&itm
=3&usri=kingsley%2bamis%2b-%2brudyard%2bkipling

also http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/
review.aspx?reviewid=1931519
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(4) amazon.com 10/26/2011

title of review: RUDYARD KIPLING, and THAMES AND HUDSON: Fine Book Meets Perfect Publisher

rating: * * * *

review:

I don't recall ever having noticed Thames and Hudson Publishers (T&H) before reading the firm's 1975 commissioned study by Kingsley Amis, RUDYARD KIPLING: WITH 114 ILLUSTRATIONS. The book also appeared slightly earlier, as I recall, with a slightly different title, RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (Pictorial Biography) (Hardcover). My splendid paperback, alas, is no longer listed in T&H's on line catalog. But it is easily purchased elsewhere on line and is well worth the money.

Thames and Hudson commissioned Sir Kingsley Amis, poet, novelist, critic, to write RUDYARD KIPLING for its Literary Lives Series. A happy, happy marriage of content and presentation. The 128-page text has 114 black and white illustrations. They make up by bulk perhaps 40% of what lies between the book's covers. At book's end fully nine pages go to "List of Illustrations" in useful detail.

Sir Kingsley Amis reviews Kipling's life and family from his parents' UK marriage in March 1865 and "Ruddy's" birth in Bombay till his death in England in 1936, not long after his 70th birthday. He began his working life in Lahore, India at age 16 as an Assistant Editor, later held the same position on a more prestigious Anglo-Indian daily in Allahabad and retained features of journalistic writing to the end of his days. He always wrote fast, framed quite a few of his India stories, e.g. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, as tales told by participants to a sympathetic journalist, and wrote directly, simply and to the point.

His first book, BARRACK ROOM BALLADS, was poetry, his second, PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS, was prose. By age 24 he was living and writing in London, already with a bit of reputation which soon soared. Until perhaps 1930, according to Kingsley Amis, Kipling was the most widely read poet and story teller in the English-speaking world. His verses were set to music, most notably, "Danny Deever" and "On the Road to Mandalay." Some became plays. At least three movie versions (1937, 1977, 1995) of his Grand Banks fishing novel CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS are readily available in DVD or VHS. Spencer Tracy won an Oscar for playing Portuguese fisherman Manuel in the earliest film, which also included Freddie Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney.

Amis sees work and everything to do with work as a defining value for Kipling and his characters. A man is his work. In his very last manuscript, finished two weeks before his death, Rudyard Kipling took loving leave of the tools of his craft of writing: paper, pen, ink, studio. It is for every man or woman (or in the case of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS of every teenager) to find for himself the work that he is most qualified for and then do it to the best of his ability. This even applied to nations. "Take up the white man's burden," was America's allotted work once it relieved Spain without cause of the Philippine Islands. In addition white Englishmen were, temporarily, best suited to rule India. But it was their duty to train up natives as their replacements. Work was responsibility, duty. Do the work foreordained for you and take your proper place in the world. If you become a ruler, it will not be because of heredity or through influence or bribery. You will have, you must have earned the right to rule.

A second major theme, much emphasized in THE JUNGLE BOOK and THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK is the mysterious "law," within whose framework all creatures do their "work."

Kingsley Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING WITH 114 ILLUSTRATIONS is a handsome book, with a thick paper cover displaying three faceless British soldiers marching forward, accompanied by three Indian bearers. Although unsourced, I surmise that the cover drawing was produced in house by T&H.

Let RUDYARD KIPLING proudly adorn your favorite coffee table. You should have read at least a book or two of Kipling's before tackling Amis's stimulating, sometimes provocative, meditations and suggestions. But at the end of Amis's text, you will know where to dive next into Kipling's poems, prose, travel writings or even into his ten short stories of science fiction (one British sci-fi writer declared Rudyard Kipling "the father of modern science fiction").

-OOO-

http://www.amazon.com/Rudyard-Kipling-World-Pictorial-
Biography/dp/0500130523/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=
UTF8&qid=1319143933&sr=1-11

also

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/
ABABCND8BHUXC/ref=cm_pdp_rev_title_1?ie=
UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R1V4QN70CU1KEB
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(5) epinions.com 10/27/2011

Title: "Take up the White Man's Burden": for Rudyard Kipling this is THE LAW

You may or may not like Rudyard Kipling the man, the writer, the political thinker. But you have to admire the publisher of Sir Kingsley Amis's 1986 paperback, RUDYARD KIPLING: WITH 114 ILLUSTRATIONS, in the Literary Lives series.

Entitled RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (Pictorial Biography), this book had first appeared between hard covers in 1975. The publisher is Thames and Hudson aka T&H or sometimes just TH. The renowned firm is equally based in London and New York, as the names of the two rivers and the logo of two dolphins facing east and west are meant to suggest. Of itself the firm modestly asserts in two places of its web site:

"Thames & Hudson: The world's great publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, fashion, archaeology and history"; and " Thames & Hudson is the most eminent publisher of illustrated books in the world."

If RUDYARD KIPLING be a typical T&H book production, who am I to dispute their claim?

The 114 illustrations are all black and white, mainly photos of Rudyard Kipling, his parents, his sister Trix, uncles, aunts, cousins (including Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin), friends, school,a contemporary map of India, Kipling residences and a variety of documents. These illustrations make up a good 40% of the text. You cannot turn a single one of the 128 pages of my paperback edition -- before the appendices -- without encountering one. In a few cases an illustration occupies an entire page. They are very well selected and include many Rudyard Kipling photos entirely new to me.

I suspect that the ten-color front cover sketch of three faceless soldiers and three turbaned Indian bearers marching westward in step together was done by an anonymous T&H in-house painter of considerable expressive skill.

Thames and Hudson, founded 1949, commissioned and paid Kingsley Amis to write RUDYARD KIPLING. By the early 1970s, the firm's reputation was established and high. In his Preface, Sir Kingsley positively purrs with satisfaction that he had been so commissioned. He regards highly both S&H and Rudyard Kipling. At the same time, Amis acknowledges that 75 years of Kipling studies had left him

"no new facts, though several unregarded ones have come my way." He does, however, promise fresh "interpretations, emphases and connections ... and ... critical judgments."

Kipling is famous for drawing almost everything he wrote from personal experience or from the adventures that he heard face-to-face from others. Hence some books, such as his first novel, THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, are pored over by aficianados as much for hints at Kipling's early romance with young Florence Garrard as for its plot of a talented love-lorn painter struck blind. KIngsley Amis believes that Kipling was a "conventionally monogamous man." In any event, it helps greatly to understand Kipling's works if you also know Kipling's life. And the 114 illustrations help both projects.

Kingsley Amis sees Rudyard Kipling as perhaps the finest travel writer in the English language, his ten science fiction tales hugely and rightly appreciated by Poul Anderson and other leading sci-fi writers, his poems innovative, path breaking in their rhythms and use of language of the common man, Kipling's prose of remarkably sustained high quality throughout his career, including some of the finest short stories ever written.

His politics were conservative but anti-fascist, pro-Britain, pro-Empire, pro-common sense. I will conclude by giving you Amis's suggestions on how to frame such prima facie racist, politically incorrect lines as,

"Take up the white man's burden" (from "The White Man's Burden") and "lesser breeds without the Law" (from the "Recessional" celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee).

Both T.S. Eliot and George Orwell have given those and similar verses their context. Suffice it for now to say you might be surprised at the poet's target audiences: Americans who had just taken the Philippines from Spain; and the Kaiser's Germans. You may have fun using the framework next sketched to defang those two phrases and others such as

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" (from The Ballad of East and West).

Over several scattered pages Kingsley Amis lays out Kipling's abiding themes, such as the revenge of the weak but clever on the strong (as in STALKY & CO.), the strengths of the British empire, the good in other races (notably in his masterpiece KIM), the wit and wisdom of children and more.

Kipling, not a vigorous practitioner of religion, but a tolerant, penetrating student of many faiths, had two core values: WORK and everything associated with it, and THE LAW. I am somewhat reminded of Natty Bumppo in Fenimore Cooper's five LEATHERSTOCKING TALES. To frontiersman Natty, every race and every individual had its own "GIFTS." And those gifts set limits to every man's character, fate and moral liability.

W O R K

Kipling was a hard worker himself: an assistant editor in Lahore before he was 17, a literary lion in London by age 24. He labored at the minutiae of newspaper publishing in India and remained something of a journalist to the end of his 70 year life. Two weeks before he died, in an autobiographical MS that he left behind, SOMETHING OF MYSELF, Kipling bade loving farewell to the much used instruments of the writer's craft: pen, paper, ink, his study.

His ideal world resembled a utopian feudalism in which every person was in his proper place, displaying his true gifts and having his worth seen and praised in his works. People or institutions who did no real work (e.g. Parliament) had no right to "dictate to the men who did real work." Kipling prefaced his school day reminiscenses STALKY & CO. with a famous paean to his teachers at United Services College at Westward Ho! on the north Devon coast. By their daily example they taught the value of plain, simple, hard work:

"Man must finish off his work --
Right or wrong, his daily work --
And without excuses."

"Merit, competence and a sense of responsibility were what did count" (for attaining high office or great responsibility): "the job belongs to the man who can do it." Certainly not to the man whose father bought him a commission in the Dragoons or who inherited an Earldom.

T H E L A W

Kipling's second great element in his personal credo, according to Kingsley Amis, was THE LAW. As a theme the Law permeates the two JUNGLE BOOKS.

"What is envisaged is society as a network of obligations, eah individual doing he job appropriae to him to the best of his ability. Law, order, duty, restraint, obedience, discipline ... for Kipling they were values to be pursued freely, at the bidding of self-respectd and self-reliance."

German and some other European nationalisms were "lesser breeds without the Law of duty and self-restraint in that they do not recognize it" (i.e., the Law).

Finally, Amis states that Rudyard Kipling, Nobel Prize winner in 1907, is more quoted than any other modern English writer. He, indeed finished off his daily work and "without excuses."

My criticisms of Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING are rather niggling. There are no chapter divisions, though the narrative moves ahead chronologically rather than thematically. Deliberately, as explained in his Preface, Amis declines to identify quite a few sources. But all in all this book is unusually handsome, worthy of permanent display on your coffee table and of dipping into by yourself and other readers from time to time.

-OOO-

p.s. Thanks to DramaStef for making this book reviewable by all epinionators everywhere!

Pros:
114 black and white illustrations of Kipling's life and times. Kipling in all his greatness.

Cons:
Continuous narrative with no chapter breaks. Sources, deliberately, not always identified.

The Bottom Line:
Amis's RUDYARD KIPLING marries the life and times of Rudyard Kipling as narrated by another great English writer with visual presentation in the unique style of Thames & Hudson.

Overall Product Rating: Above Average * * * *

Recommended: Yes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/amis_kipling.html