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Rudyard Kipling
KIM Barnes & Noble Classics. 2003. ISBN-10: 1593081928 reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 02/03/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. KIM begins in Lahore, West Punjab, in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Thirteen year old Irish orphan Kimball O'Hara has been raised by a half-caste woman who turned his ex-sergeant father into an opium addict. Kim O'Hara is already a master of disguise. He can pass (though he does not choose to) as a young white sahib. Or a low-caste Hindu boy or a Mohammedan. He is mad for anything new and will spare all the time it takes to investigate a novelty. One such novelty befalls Kim one day at the great cannon ZamZamah before the Wonder House (novelist Rudyard Kipling is a master of capitalizing words to show their importance) or native museum of Lahore. A tall Red Lama, a former abbot of a monastery in Tibet, appears, speaking good Urdu and asking Kim for directions. Kim follows the lama into the museum, run for decades by the novelist's father John Lockwood Kipling. What he overhears the monk and the curator speaking begins Kim's education for the next four years in Buddhism, the greatest novelty of his entire life. Kim becomes the lama's willing disciple (chela), begs for him and is instructed in the Buddhist law. If the Lama is the greatest influence on Kim's young life, he is not the only one. A Pathan horsetrader in far lands, Mahboob Ali, has had his eye for three or four years on talented, spunky young Kim. The Pathan thinks that Kim will make the greatest spy for the British Raj in India that the world has ever known. And soon he entrusts Kim with a message for Colonel Creighton in Umballa that unleashes a small army against pro-Russian rajas in the hills. And The Great Game is on for Kim. Kim is sent away to the best Catholic school in India, in fabled Lucknow, where he excels in mathematics and learns the surveying trade that he needs to play the Great Game. In Simla he is also trained by the mysterious dealer in antiquities, Lurgan Sahib, in mnemonic techniques. Soon Kim can take in the contents of a room or a box of jewels at a single glance. By novel's end, Kim has helped another spy, a fat Bengali Babu, foil a Russian surveyor team come down from Leh in Kashmir. We are left wondering: will Kim stay with his lama and learn the Way or follow his equally beloved Mahboob Ali into thwarting the Russians in the Great Game? Rudard Kipling's KIM is among a dozen or so books that this 75-year old book reviewer would want to have if stranded on a desert isle. It has adventure, comparative religions, ethnology, anthropology and the many races of India under the Raj. Kipling brings them all to life and keeps them in memory. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/331320264.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com one review. 02/13/2011 name of review: The India of 13-year old Kimball O'Hara, "Little Friend of All the World" rating: * * * * * review: Imagine yourself, sometime around 1880 or 1890, a 13-year old boy born in India to Kimball O'Hara an Irish Colour Sergeant and an Irish domestic servant Annie Shott. Sergeant O'Hara was one of 900 "first-class devils" of the Mavericks, a fictional Irish regiment. When their son, also Kimball -- or Kim -- O'Hara was three, Annie died of cholera at Ferozepore. Her husband had mustered out of the Mavericks and was working down the line from Lahore as a work gang supervisor on the fictional Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway. Ex-Sergeant O'Hara and orphaned Kim ended up together in Lahore where Kimball senior died an opium addict in the arms of a half-caste woman who ran a furniture store. That kind-hearted woman made herself responsible for the orphan boy and insisted that Kim dress like the white Sahib he was born, in "trousers, a shirt, and a battered hat" (Ch. 1). For his part, Kim was happy to play the Sahib when it suited him to lord it over his Muslim and Hindu playmates climbing the giant cannon ZamZammah in front of the Lahore Ethnic museum (run for long years by John Kipling, the novelist's polymath father). But the boy was already a master of disguise and often dressed as a low-caste Hindu urchin. In that guise he bounded over the rooftops of Lahore carrying messages of love and fleeing from irate husbands. It was a game and the one Kim loved best until "the Great Game" came his way. To the Indians who know him, Kim is "the Little Friend of All the World." The nameless half-caste guardian had compressed Sergeant O'Hara's entirely worldly estate within an amulet pouch that Kim wore constantly around his neck. Three papers comprised all his father's worldly possessions when he had "died as poor whites die in India" (Ch. 1). Early on in the novel (Ch. 5) this "charm" is opened by the Anglican and Roman Catholic Chaplains of the Mavericks regiment when Kim, by now roaming India as the chela or disciple of a Red Lama from Tibet, blunders across those 900 first-class devils with their emblem of a Red Bull on a green background. The amulet pouch contains Sergeant O'Hara's credentials as member of a Lahore Masonic lodge and young Kim's birth/baptismal certificate, with the Sergeant's handwritten, drunken sprawl begging "Look after the boy. Please look after the boy" (Ch. 5). At this point, many possible futures as an adult await young Kim. Despite his ten years already spent dodging Christian priests, curious Freemasons and members of the Sergeant's old regiment trying to make a proper white boy of him, he has now fallen firmly into the hands of two important, conscientious Christian chaplains of the Mavericks. The Anglican is also a Mason and the Catholic had officiated at the marriage of Kim's parents. They and the regimental colonel determine that Kim must be educated as a white man, as a future "ruler of India." The red lama will pay for the best education Kim can get in India, which is agreed will be not a school for regimental orphans, not a school for orphans of Masons, but a Catholic boarding school, St. Xavier's in Lucknow. The lama will not hear of Kim's being trained to be a bloodthirsty soldier and Kim hates that very idea. So how will he be educated? Ostensibly to be a surveyor. Kim blossoms at St Xavier's and takes a prize for mathematics. An older friend of Kim, the Mohammedan Afghan horse trader Mahboob Ali, unbeknownst to the boy, is a spy in the employ of Colonel Creighton. He persuades Creighton that Kim possesses colossal potential talent to become a "spirited polo pony" to play in "the Great Game." That Game is the Victorian Cold War in which the Russian and British Indian empires move closer and closer together in the area of Afghanistan and the Pamirs of China and Tibet. Creighton sends Kim to 7,000 foot high Simla for training in spycraft by the mysterious non-English white man Lurgan Sahib, who owns an antiques shoppe near the mall. The novel begins with Kim O'Hara, in poor quality western clothes, driving away two neighborhood friends, a Hindu boy and a Muslim boy, from perching upon the great cannon Zam-Zammah. Enter the ancient Red Lama in quest of a salvific river where an arrow shot by Lord Buddha fell long ago. And Kim's life is changed forever. Kim follows, serves, begs food for the lama and is exposed to "the Buddhist Way" and more detailed Buddhist teaching than most Westerners will hear or read of in a lifetime. At the same time Mahboob Ali is tempting and Lurgan Sahib is training Kim into "the Great Game" of the Raj v. the Russians. How will Kim turn out? Poor white trash like his father in the end? A spy? A university-trained ethnologist of India? An ardent contemplative Buddhist? By novel's end nothing is decided, all options remain open. Kim will have first hand acquaintance with Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Hinduism. He will have learned something of Freemasonry but surprisingly (for a boy with three years at a Catholic prep school) little of orthodox Christianity. A marvelous book. It bears reading and re-reading a hundred times. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/reviews/book/UserReview-Kim-1507387-201161 -The_India_of_13_year_old_Kimball_O_Hara_Little.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 02/14/2011 title of review: KIM's womenfolk rating: * * * * * review: 55 years ago I wrote an A+ term paper on "The Motherhood of Lady MacBeth." Did I make much of little in Shakespeare's play?" Are the handful of women in Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel of British India, more important to KIM than Lady MacBeth's motherhood? Yes. But the women are background, peripheral to the spiritual quest of Kimball O'Hara between ages 13 and 17. Very few European women are mentioned in KIM: (1) spy chief Colonel Creighton's wife for
her brief role as hostess in Umballa for the Army Commander in Chief;
and (2) Annie Shott O'Hara, Kim's Irish domestic servant mother. Annie died of cholera when Kim was three. Perhaps author Kipling killed her off because of the well-attested negative cross-cultural influences of British Memsahibs within the British Empire. They often distanced themselves socially, even the poor like Annie O'Hara, from the sea of alien natives surrounding them. It seems important that Kim lost his Irish mother early, and that, not long after, his still young ex-Sergeant Irish father died of drink and opium. Parents were around long enough to teach Kim the ruling class's English language and to make sure he knew his rights as a potential ruler of India. Their early deaths freed Kim from British prejudice against Indian Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. White Kim grew towards manhood uniquely open-minded. On his father's death a new woman was there for Kim: his father's unnamed mistress, "the half-caste woman who looked after him" in Lahore. She insisted that the white boy wear European "trousers, shirt and a battered hat." But impish Kim often dyed his skin even darker than the sun had burnt it and passed himself off as a low-caste Hindu for secret missions carrying love letters to and from other men's wives across the rooftops of Lahore for the Pathan horse trader Mahboob Ali . Kipling sketches scenes of a wealthy hill country noblewoman who travels down to the hot plains to visit her married daughter. She wins Buddhist merit by providing food and shelter to Kim and the Red Lama of Tibet whose disciple Kim made himself. But the woman, though kind-hearted, also wore out the aged lama with talk and requests for charms to assure the health of her grandchildren. Several native women remark on the good looks of our teenage spy-in-training for "the Great Game" -- that Victorian cold war in High Asia between Russia and Britain. Kim is sure to break many a girl's heart. Towards novel's end, the lama, seriously injured by two Tsarist spies, finds shelter with Kim in the tiny Himalayan hamlet Shamlegh-under-the-Snow. The still beautiful Woman of Shamlegh despatches her two husbands with others to carry the lama to the healing lowlands on a litter. She comes on to Kim and he sees it. It has happened before "in lands where women make the love." Kim is annoyed: "How can a man follow the Way or the Great
Game when he is so-always pestered by women?"
Previous women and girls had treated Kim as a boy. Now the Woman of Shamlegh flirts as woman does with man. Why? Because disguised Kim reminds her of a young huntsman Sahib she had once nursed to health. He had promised to return and marry her. He did not, despite her education in English by "Ker-lis-ti-an" missionaries. Knowing what she wants, Kim "kissed
her on the cheek, adding in English: 'Thank you verree much, my dear.'"
Happily, there is much more in KIM to delight you than his fleeting relations with women. -OOO- recommended reading: -- E. M. Forster - A PASSAGE TO INDIA -- Peter Hopkirk - QUEST FOR KIM: IN SEARCH OF KIPLING'S GREAT GAME -- John Masters - THE NIGHTRUNNERS OF BENGAL --Philip Woodruff - THE MEN WHO RULED INDIA http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/ review.aspx?reviewid=1557990 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 02/14/2011 title of review: Tracing God's plan for Kimball O'Hara, orphaned Irish teenager in India rating: * * * * * review: For more than 300 years young men took passage from the British Isles for India. They came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. They came to trade, to spread Christianity and to rule ever larger swatches of territories populated by Sikhs, Jains, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. One such man was John Lockhart Kipling. With his bride he sailed for India. In Bombay their famous Nobel Prize winning son Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in December 1865. His first years were lived in India, pampered by native servants. After unhappy school years spent in Engliand with his younger sister, Rudyard returned to India to be a journalist and to discover what a colossal expert on Indian culture and religions his father John Lockhart had made himself, inter alia, on Buddhism, as curator of an ethnic museum in Lahore, West Punjab. Britons living in the Sub-Continent doggedly made themselves "the men who ruled India." As Rudyard Kipling would later salute them: "Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-- " Britons wrote well and insightfuly of British experience in India. Novelist John Masters wrote of six generations of the fictional Savage family. E. M. Forster in A PASSAGE TO INDIA showed how hard it was for English men and women who arrived in Hindustan as adults to relate empathetically and effectively to local mores. In perhaps the greatest work of non-fiction about fabled Hind, THE MEN WHO RULED INDIA, Philip Woodruff sang of the unselfishness of young men who came out from England with a bible in one hand and Plato's REPUBLIC in the other to be rulers of alien races as career members of the Indian Civil Service. Rudyard Kipling, by contrast, told of a notably different British experience in India. In 1901, six years before his Nobel Prize, Kipling serialized KIM for an American magazine. Kim (Kimball, Jr.) was born in India in the 1870s to Irish domestic servant Annie Shott and Colour Sergeant Kimball O'Hara of the Mavericks, a 900-man strong Irish regiment. The sergeant mustered out of the British army and supervised a work gang on an Indian railroad. When young Kim was only three, his mother Annie died of cholera. Father and son then lived up and down the railroad until the father settled in Lahore, joined the local Masonic lodge and began to live with a half-breed woman who taught him to smoke opium. That final addiction plus his earlier one to alcohol soon proved fatal to the still young ex-Colour Sergeant. The unnamed local woman raised orphaned Kim to age 13, when Kipling opens his novel in Lahore. As his adoptive mother insists, at novel's beginning Kim is dressed as a poor young white boy or Sahib (trousers, shirt, floppy hat) and is playing with neighborhood Indian friends: a wealthy Hindu boy and a poor Muslim boy on Zam-Zammah, the mighty cannon still stationed before Lahore's Wonder House, the museum run in those years by John Lockhart Kipling. As Cardinal John Henry Newman, himself a novelist, would have argued: any Englishman of any stripe of religion would believe that young Kim had started life precisely where a loving God had intended him to start. Soon he will meet, as fate or kismet or God intended, Father Vincent, Roman Catholic chaplain of the Mavericks, the man who had officiated at his parents' wedding. By that time Kim has already become the disciple of an ancient Buddhist monk wandering down from Tibet in search of a river of India. That stream had been created ages ago when the future Buddha won an archery contest for his bride. He shot an arrow farther than all his rivals. Where it landed no one knows. But redemption is the reward of whoever discovers the River of the Arrow. There is something in Kim that uncharacteristically attracts this teenaged scamp and prankster toward genuinely holy men of any religion, but uniquely to this Urdu-speaking Red Lama of Tibet. And there is also something in Kim that makes native Indians who know him both as a sunburned poor white Sahib and sometimes in disguise as a low-caste Hindu, salute Kim as "little friend of all the world." For years Kim has impressed Mahboob Ali, aging Pathan horse trader and secret agent of Colonel Creighton, head of the British Raj's spy network. Mahboob Ali regards Kim as an extraordinarily promising young colt, a perfect future polo pony to run in the "Great Game." Kim loves games of any sort, especially, carrying love letters across the roof tops of Lahore to married women on behalf of admirers like Mahboob Ali. And as young Kimball O'Hara is taught the mechanics of spycraft by Lurgan Sahib in 7,000 foot high Simla, Kim is strongly tempted to play the Great Game: that Victorian Cold War between Russia and Britain for domination of Central Asia, Afghanistan, parts of China, India and Tibet. Catholic Father Vincent and his rival Anglican chaplain of the Mavericks, the latter also a Freemason, learn from a birth/baptismal certificate he carries in a pouch who young Kimball O'Hara really is: a white Sahib, who must without question take up the white man's burden. Both the regiment and the Masons maintain schools in India for their orphans and Kim must go to one or the other to take up his father's trade as a British soldier. "No!" insists Kim's lama. Educated as a Sahib Kimball must be and at the finest school for Sahibs in all India, St. Xavier's in Lucknow -- all at the lama's expense! But soldier, never! Violence is not the Way of Lord Buddha. That is fine with Kim. Over the next four years Kim is taught to be a surveyor and wins school prizes in mathematics. He is ready to move up a notch in the Great Game. During school holidays Kim is either helping his monk find the river of the arrow, or learning spy trade secrets with Lurgan Sahib and a fat Bengali Babu or out training for the Great Game all over northern India with Mahboob Ali and his horses. At novel's end, as Cardinal Newman would have it, Kim is at the lama's side, with Mahboob Ali the spy also at hand. Kim is at a moral crossroads and must choose: either religion (the Way) or spying (the Great Game). Kipling leaves Kim's answer open. It is Kim's choice. God, presumably, whether Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan or Buddhist God, has seen to it that Kim's life to age nearly 17 has empowered him to make wisely his next Great Choice. -OOO- tags: white man's burden in india, the great game, tibetan buddhism, mahboob ali, lurgan sahib, rudyard kipling http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/ABABCND8BHUXC/ref=cm_ pdp_rev_title_1?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R2AWPTJWEGXI4G =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 02/14/2011 Title of this review: "and behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama" Reviewer's rating of KIM: * * * * * Product Rating - Pros: The Great Game: (Cold War in High Asia). Spycraft. Buddhism. India under the Raj. Cons: Capitalizes a lot: "Great Game," "Woman of Shamlegh," etc. Needed: good map(s), notes, glossary. The Bottom Line: KIM rewards on many levels: vivid narrative, memorable characters, the British Raj, spycraft and the coming of age of Kimball O'Hara, Irish orphan with a talent for the Great Game. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Rudyard Kipling - Kim Normally, when I review a book for epinions.com, I assume that most readers are unfamiliar with that work. My job is simply to help them decide whether or not to add the tome to their pile of items to tackle. But Joseph Rudyard Kipling's novel KIM was serialized in 1901 for an American magazine. It has never once been out of print in the intervening 110 years. The author was 35 when it was issued. Six years later he became the first Englishman and youngest writer ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Who, then does not know something of KIM? I am, therefore, reviewing a book that you have probably already read, perhaps long, long ago. It may be that you don't want to hear anything good about a novel by a man who wrote these lines: "Take up the White Man's burden-- ***** To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man's burden-- ***** To seek another's profit And work another's gain. ***** Take up the White Man's burden, And reap his old reward-- The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard--" ***** Let me begin by saying that I have loved Kipling and his works for over 65 years. Every time I read him, I grow in admiration for his story telling, his word mastery, his magic. If I ever take a dozen books with me to the proverbial desert island, KIM will come too, along with the ILIAD and the BIBLE. More times than I can remember, I wish that I had been born British and gone out to India around 1900 to serve thousands of Indians as a District Officer of the Indian Civil Service. Enough! Let us do a mental experiment together. How would the evolution of Kimball O'Hara, Junior, have been different if certain characters in KIM had lived different lives? Kim was born, I calculate, around 1870. Kim's father was young Colour Sergeant O'Hara of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment posted to India. Importantly for Kim's prophetic future, its insignia was a Red Bull (how Kipling loved to capitalize key words!) on a green field. Father Vincent, Catholic chaplain of the mavericks, had officiated at the sergeant's marriage to Irish Annie Shott, a maidservant. O'Hara then mustered out of the British army and worked as a gang foreman on an Indian railroad. Annie died of cholera when Kim was three. Already a heavy drinker, ex-Sergeant Kimball took up with an Indian half-caste woman who taught him to use opium. The sergeant had time to join the Lahore Masonic lodge before he died. And important Lodge membership papers along with Kim's birth/baptismal certificates were preserved by Kim's new foster mother and placed in a pouch that he always wore around his neck. -- What if Kim's Irish parents had lived a
long life and stayed in India? They would probably have imbibed the
wide-spread British disdain for Indians. Not being rich, the O'Haras
might have seen to it that Kim attended some third-rate Catholic school
and picked up firm Catholic apprehensions about Protestants and every
other form of non-Catholic. As it was, Kim grew up pampered by the
half-caste woman and was allowed to run nearly wild. He loved to
disguise himself as a low-caste Indian boy and make pocket money
running across the rooftops of Lahore with love messages from young men
to other men's wives. It was a dangerous game, but fun, and Kim loved
it. He had learned no detailed religious or white man's values that
made him contemptuous of prostitutes, natives and poor people. Because
he was orphaned, and managed to keep out of the clutches of other
do-gooder Europeans, Kim grew up with an unusually keen and open,
albeit untutored mind.
-- What if Kim had never met the aging Afghan horse trader Mahboob Ali and assisted him in his amours? Then Kim would never have begun apprenticeship under Colonel Creighton as a spy in the Great Game. That Game was the Victorian Cold War for empire in Asia fought between Britain and Russia. Mahboob Ali saw enormous potential in Kim. The boy was a lively colt who could be a champion horse in the great international game of polo then being played for high stakes. Without Mahboob Ali's recommendation to Colonel Creighton, Kim would never have apprenticed for the Great Game. -- What if the two chaplains of the Mavericks, Father Vincent and the Anglican Freemason, had not laid hands on Kim when he saw the Red Bull insignia and reconnoitered their camp? The two padres would never have insisted that Kim be educated as a Sahib, with an eye to becoming a soldier of the Mavericks, like his father before him. In the novel, there was no chance that Kim would choose to be a soldier. But it would otherwise have been the natural avenue of development even if the lad had not fallen in with his father's old regiment and the two competing chaplains. -- What if Teshoo Lama, the red lama and former abbot of a famed monastery in Tibet, had not wandered into Lahore in search of Buddha's River of the Arrow on a day when Kim, in western dress, and two boy friends -- rich Hindu and poor Mohammedan -- were lounging together around Zam-Zammah, the great cannon outside the Wonder House: the ethnic museum then presided over by John Lockhart Kipling, father of novelist Rudyard? The young scamp was instantly drawn to a holy man unlike any of the many he had already met of four or five religions. Without Teshoo Lama, Kim, between ages 13 and 17, would have had no reason to become religious of any kind. He already knew several religions, had nothing against any of them. But the personal magnetism of the Tibetan transformed his life. From that day forward there were other temptations; but to be with his lama and to imbibe from him enormous dollops of Buddhism, imparted in their shared Urdu language and through the mighty drawings of the lama, was henceforth Kim's dominant passion. -- What if Teshoo Lama, confronting the
two regimental Christian chaplains had not,
(a) on learning for the first time that his young acolyte was a white man, agreed with the chaplains that Kim be educated as a Sahib. (b) but putting his foot down, had not insisted that Kim must follow the Buddhist Way and Law, not the violence of military men, and (c) had not provided the 300 rupees or so per annum needed for Kim to attend Saint Xavier's in Partibus in Lucknow: the best white boys' school in India? Without the training in surveying and especially his prizes at Saint Xavier's in mathematics, Kim's appeal to Colonel Creighton as a future player in the Great Game would have been greatly diminished. As things develop in the novel, the Red Lama in the end finds his River of the Arrow. It took a fat Bengali player of the Game, however, to keep the holy man from drowning. But the old lama's pilgrimage was finally complete. And Kim was minded to stay with him as long as he lived. And yet Mahboob Ali also hovered nearby, ready to continue training his promising colt for the great international polo game. How will Kim decide the next step of his future? Here are some of the novel's concluding words from (or about) the lama to his young disciple in regard to his final mystical experience in the River: "'I
pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. I saw the River below me --
the River of the Arrow -- and, descending, the
waters of it closed over me and behold I was again in the body of
Teshoo Lama but free from sin.
... So thus the Search is ended. ... Son of my Soul I have wrenched my
Soul back from the Threshold of Freedom to free thee from all sin. ...
Just is the Wheel! Certain is our deliverance! Come.'
He
crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won
salvation for himself and his beloved" (Ch. 15, Finis).
I have shared with you perhaps a hundredth of conceivable reasons for reading or re-reading KIM. In all events, please think kindly of the incomparable Irish-Indian lad, known to one and all as "the Little Friend of All the World." -OOO- Recommended: Yes http://www1.epinions.com/review/Book_Kim_a_Longman_Cultural_Edition_ Rudyard_Kipling_Tricia_Lootens_Paula_Krebs/content_541089631876 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/kipling_kim.html |