As a reluctant student in that oxymoronic high school class, Poetry Appreciation for Teenage Males, I was surprised to rather enjoy the verses of Rudyard Kipling. Now, decades later, I thought I'd investigate his prose — these 13 tales in RUDYARD KIPLING: THE BEST SHORT STORIES written during the period 1889 -1904.Kipling had an affinity for the common British soldier and civil servant standing duty on the far edges of Empire. Thus, several chapters feature such of the Queen's own, usually soldiers relating cautionary stories regarding relationships with women. This is assuredly fertile ground for a bivouac chin wag, even today.
The author's writing style includes the occasional trick of animating animals and inanimate objects with a human voice and personality. Sometimes this worked for me, sometimes not. The former was best exemplified by "The Ship That Found Herself", a clever instruction about the structural parts of a steamship. Less entertaining was "The Maltese Cat", a dialogue among polo ponies during a big match. Perhaps if I'd understood the game better, or cared, it might have gone over more successfully.
On a scale of one star to five, I awarded no single story more than four. The least appreciated effort was "The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot", a depressing narrative set in the London slums that illustrates the adage, "No good deed goes unpunished." Of the several fours, my favorite was "They", a poignant ghost story set in England's southern Downs that would've made, with a little tweaking, a good episode for the old TWILIGHT ZONE television series. However, even the former contained an astute observation worth noting here:
"... if people did not die so untidily, most men, and all women, would commit at least one murder in their lives.'
While Kipling is undeniably a great storyteller, I suspect that his writings had a greater appeal to readers contemporary with the author than those in the current millenium. Perhaps time has passed them by. One had to be there, especially to appreciate both Britain's paternal yet condescending attitude towards the subject denizens of its colonial possessions and once-new technologies that are today considered quaintly antiquated.
I'm glad I took the time to read this book, but am also happy to be finished and moving on to the next.
