Kipling’s Early Experiments in Fiction
Rudyard Kipling. The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories: Uncollected Prose Fiction. 440pp, 6X9”, hardback. ISBN: 978-1-108-47642-3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
*****
I began reading sections of this collection when I needed inspiration as I was editing my own short fiction stories. The best element in them is the density and complexity of the style, the type that is rare in modern fiction. However, these are lesser known stories of Rudyard Kipling’s and their lack of popularity appears to be due to their singular nationalistic themes. Many stories are propagating for Indian rights and describing corruption and social problems in India in a similar manner. Another repeating problem is the lack of coherent plotlines or something specific the stories are about. The narratives and dialogues are digressive, as if the narrators are stumbling along without needing to arrive at a climax or a point. Unlike some of my favorite stories such as London’s or O’Connor’s, this type of digression is tough on the reader’s attention. On the other hand, these do not offer enough complex philosophical insights like Poe’s stories; each story appears to return to the same philosophical question rather than surprising readers with unique perspectives. Thus, these stories are particularly useful to students of outstanding literary linguistics, or the utilization of complex structures, word-choice and other elements that welcomed Kipling into the echelon of top world prose writers.
This collection is also useful to biographers, historians and literature theorists writing about Kipling because it compresses 86 otherwise difficult to access stories, a relatively high number for such collections. Whenever I read several stories by O’Connor in a row or most other writers, their themes begin to sound repetitive as well, so perhaps this is what gave me this impression rather than Kipling’s tendency towards repetition. Since Kipling was familiar with Indian society and wrote about it in 86 of these stories, it would be stranger if there weren’t echoes of the same ideas repeating across the book. uncollected short fictions. Apparently, “some are” even “unrecorded in any bibliography; some are here published for the first time.” As the cover explains: “Most of them come from Kipling’s Indian years and show him experimenting with a great variety of forms and tones.” Yes, there are several curious structural experiments in these pages that attempt short newspaper notices, letters, and other modes of writing to carry a message across. These are basically the little experiments Kipling was attempting as he was developing his style for grander works such as Kim. “We see the young Kipling enjoying the exercise of his craft; yet the voice that emerges throughout is always unmistakably his own, changing the scene every time the curtain is raised.”
Here is an example of the type of frank language you will find in these pages. It comes from a letter addressed by the narrator to “Jack” in “A Hill Homily” (1888, Pioneer Mail): “You have put in two years of Indian service, and by this time, you should have sold some seven or eight ponies, screwed two or three more, written once at least to your father for an increase of allowance, lost your heart to several pretty girls – I trust, for your own sake, that they were girls – thought seriously about entering the Staff Corps, and backed a friend’s bill…” (210). This passage stood out in its intensity and inspired me to continue with my own story, so I left a few of my draft pages as a bookmark on this page. There are a few similarly intense sentences on nearly every page, so those seeking to understand Kipling and his world better will find these answers if they have the patience for it.
This book is also beautifully designed: the front cover text is in gold print. The flaps have leaves on them that are better seen in a darker room as they are similar to the black color of the background: making these as hidden as some of the subtexts in the stories.