(no subject)

[flemmings]

Did Kipling really write an inordinate number of weird tales or is it just that this collection has them all? The illustration on the spine is The Phantom Rickshaw, and so far there's also "They" and The Mark of the Beast and The House Surgeon and The Return of Imray. (But not, luckily, A Madonna of the Trenches, or The Luck House either.) Somehow I thought Kipling had written book after book about the army in India, but evidently not.

Comments

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Kipling is an excellent writer. I always figured he wrote the jingoistic stuff as a marketing thing.

Did you know he spent four years living in New England? And seriously considered permanently relocating?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The odd thing about Kipling to me is that his adult army stuff is so opaque (read The Janeites, then read wikipedia to tell me what happened) whereas his weird tales and children's stories are pretty straightforward. (Sort of. You have to know he lost children of his own to figure what's up with the guy in Them.) The Indian army stories are very much 'you have to know what he's talking about to know what he's talking about' ie not written for people outside the army unacquainted with lessay the protocols of horse racing *in* the army.

I think I knew that. Was it his wife, or someone he wanted to marry, that came from there?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yes. Kipling's wife was an American.