Book reviews: Kim, Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, The Man Who Would Be King

[gfish]

I spent the last week+ Kipling. I've now Kipled. I had read some of his poetry -- my dad quotes "They do not preach that their god will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose" enough that I couldn't avoid that. I read "If...." after learning it was the source of the title of my favorite movie. Never his prose, though. And what a pleasant surprise! These were all pretty fun reads.

First, the cons: these works are 100% colonialist in perspective, nor are they lacking in casual racism. It wasn't the overwhelming focus in the way that I had feared, though. For his time, he seems like he was actually genuinely interested in other cultures, and could even show respect for them under the right conditions. The understanding of Buddhism he demonstrates in Kim, for instance, goes well beyond what a thoughtless bigot would ever have bothered with. But these definitely shouldn't be read without the willingness to interrogate Kipling's biases.

Kim was a really delightful story, a proper ripping yarn, with a cast of brightly realized characters in a brightly realized world. It somehow managed to combine a bildungsroman with a spy novel with an exploration of Buddhist spirituality in a way I certainly wasn't expecting. Of all these, this one will stick with me the longest, I think.

Jungle Book was fun, I guess? One of those weird things were modern mythology has completely overwhelmed the source material.

Captains Courageous was an easy sell, as I'm always a sucker for a nautical story with far too much technical detail. I didn't entirely buy how quickly the main character, the spoiled brat of a railroad tycoon, adapts to his new situation as a working hand on cod fishing boat. The moral message of the sanctity of work was a bit heavy handed as well. It didn't shy away from some of the horrors of life at sea, at least, which seemed refreshingly honest.

I had seen the movie of The Man Who Would Be King, and it turns out it was a pretty direct adaptation of a fairly short story. I should watch it again, now.

Comments

[danceswithlife]

Any excuse is a good one to re-watch The Man Who Would Be King.

I don't know how you feel about Sherlock Holmes take-offs, but Laurie R. King's series about him, Mycroft, and his partner Mary Russell, includes one book with Kim in it. It's the 7th book in the series, but I think would do ok as a standalone. I like all these books, BTW. And if you listen to audiobooks the narrator for this series is amazing.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1AG6/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5

[randomdreams]

I *love* The Jungle Book, but I read it probably ten years before I saw the movie, and that helps a lot. There are several scenes in there that still make my heart race when I reread it.
(Specifically the surprise-Bagheera scene in "letting in the jungle" and pretty much all of rikki-tikki-tavi.)

[duskpeterson]

"Stalky & Co." ("The Complete Stalky & Co." includes the later stories) is a good read, if you can tolerate the chapter in which the heroes become vicious bullies. (They're supposed to be bullying the bullies. Doesn't make it any easier to read, I've found.) The novel was the first cynical take on boarding-school fiction, but was based on Kipling's own schooldays, so the novel ended up not so cynical as all that.