“The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or article, …
Tag: Kipling
ISIS hates pigeons
Yes, I know; first Patrick, then others, sent me the news that ISIS is now executing pigeon fanciers, some teenagers. I did predict it a few pages ago. Long ago, I concluded that tyrants tend to get rid of pigeons. Not only are they a primitive form of clandestine, encrypted conversation; watching at them fly …
On taking Kipling seriously
Kipling, perhaps because of his (perceived) politics, still “can’t get no respect” from middlebrow critics and the kind of hacks who enjoy making up dismissive one- liners. He has fewer problems with actual readers– he is never out of print– or serious critics; in addition to the ones mentioned below, good recent essays on him …
Kipling Goshawk
As mentioned below, Rudyard Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling, artist and museum curator, wrote a book on Indian animals (Man and Beast in India, 1892) which includes a bit on falconry. Here is HIS gos.
More Far Away- and Great First Lines
“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam- Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib- Gher– the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum”. The opening lines of Kim, of course. My friend Grayal Farr, formerly of the Special Forces, naturalist, archaeologist, and fellow Kiplingite (see Kipling’s “The …
Dennis Hopper RIP
He was never quite like anybody else— hipster visionary and “admittedly unorthodox Kansas Republican”; drug- addled loon and serious art collector; someone with more “second acts” than Scott Fitzgerald could have conceived; finally, gracefully stoic at his hard end. He was an archtypical American artist. (Rod Dreher goes a bit off- subject, but has some …