WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
• What are you currently reading?
I’m re-reading Rudyard Kipling’s KIM. This is a book my mother read to me and my brother when we were babies; she read it every two years for the next six years, until I could read it for myself. At seven, I knew all the vocabulary, but I was unable to grasp the adult nuances, the inner meaning of the more adult bits. Since then I’ve re-read this book maybe ten times–not enough.
What I’ve learned from talking to others who have strong opinions about Kipling, mostly opinions critical of his supposed imperialist views, is that my mother’s reading of Kipling was unusual. She was a Wobbly–for those of you too young to know, that means, she was a member of International Workers of the World, a fact that my father kept very dark at his very conservative place of employment. Since he was an armchair Nazi and she was a pinko Wobbly, they didn’t talk politics much in front of us kids.
But when she read Kipling to us kids (my father wasn’t around for these readings) she would point out how Kipling was mocking the British, who fancied that they occupied India, dominated India, instructed, controlled, and guided India toward a more civilized i.e. British way of life. The Kipling my mother read to us pretended to flatter the British reader, but to the reader less convinced of Britain’s supremacy, it was obvious (so she showed us with explicit line-by-line analysis) that in Kipling’s view India was a giant water buffalo, if you like, and Britain a flea gnawing ferociously on the buffalo’s ear. The buffalo barely noticed.
Indian readers and American readers alike don’t seem to agree with my mother’s reading of Kipling. The man’s dead; the critics and historians will have their say. I ought to be embarrassed to be speaking up for him. But, thanks to my mother, I can’t read him any other way. I think at least that no one can argue against his appreciation of the immensity, complexity, and myriad beauties of India.
KIM tidbit: I read in one of Kipling’s autobiographies that his father asked Kipling whether he stopped writing KIM {i.e., chose to end the novel where it ends}, or whether “It” stopped. “It” referred to “the daemon of inspiration” that Kipling felt possessed him from time to time and drove his writing. Kipling replied, “It did.”
• What did you recently finish reading?
I turned to KIM from Jennifer Crusie’s BET ME. This book had a very long and interesting evolution, and if you trawl through Crusie’s website you may find her account of it. I read BET ME to my husband, three or four scenes at a stretch, before bed every night for a couple of weeks. This story is a delicious example of what I call “kneading”–when the author takes a handful of strong elements and folds them over onto one another and squishes the hell out of them, over and over, until something cracks and someone loses control and lovely big fat scenes blow up in everyone’s faces.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
Can’t decide. I’ve been hoarding a Sam Reaves a.k.a. Dominick Martell screenplay called “Rough and Tumble” for a day when I expect no interruptions.It’s an adaptation for screen of a book by Sam Reaves and Fred
Pascente and seems to be about kids, crooks, and baseball. Very neighborhood. I can’t wait!
But I also have in my hot little hand the script Christina Calvert concocted out of a whole collection of Georgette Heyer short stories called “Pistols for Two.” Calvert has adapted other Heyer work, notably and hilariously Cotillion and The Talisman Ring. At a recent event exclusive to Lifeline Theatre subscribers she offered to email this script to anyone who asked…BWA HA HA! NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! IT’S MINE! She very cleverly wove several of the Pistols stories into a delightful set of meshed Regency romances. Lifeline regularly revives one of these shows, so if you are within striking distance of Chicago, don’t miss ‘em!