About book The Mark Of The Beast And Other Horror Tales (Dover Horror Classics) (2011)
The Foreword by Roger Burlingame is most helpful to the understanding the context of this collection of stories. Some of Mr. Burlingame's insight comes from having met Kipling. Kipling was a visitor to Mr. Burlingame's childhood home as Kipling was a friend of his father's. Mr. Burlingame points out that people find the endings of some Kipling stories obscure. Working out for oneself the meaning comes with thinking about the story after it is finished. This Kipling quote sums up the nature of the stories: "I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and of many the do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women, and Love and Fate, according to the measure of my ability...."1. It is easy to enjoy stories of the glory of Empire but hard if the reader can't actually side with the Masters. "Without Benefit of Clergy" reveals the point of view of a native woman with whom the reader has much sympathy. A sad ending is inevitable. This falls in the category of "Love and Fate."2. "The Mark of the Beast" is in the werewolf genre but with a twist, leprosy.3. "They" (The title itself is in quotes and should be understood to mean "They, whoever They may be." This is definitely a story in the realm of "Twilight Zone." It is also "Life and Death."4. "The Brushwood Boy" Not the best story in the lot, but my favorite. The heroine's name is Miriam. This is heavy on the romantic and mystical. This is "Love and Fate", but points to a happy conclusion.5. ".007" Before The Little Engine that Could and Thomas. This story is from the point of view of .007 a little engine in the roundhouse in the United States. He chats and competes with the other engines. Also before 007. (Makes you wonder where Ian Fleming came up with that number.)6. "The Man Who Was"7. "Georgie Porgie"8. "An Habitation Enforced"9. "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney"10. "The Man Who Would be King" The movie version was so good I couldn't help but hear the voices of Michael Caine and Sean Connery as I read.11. "Brother Square-Toes" About smuggling and the American Colonies.12. "Garm--A Hostage" A story of a dog named Garm. Although not from Garm's point of view we know what Garm is thinking because his caretaker can sense Garm's point of view.13. "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" Autobiographical.14. "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" Another from the Zone, but it has a happy ending.15. "The Gardener" You won't get the ending unless you know the Gospels. It is a very, very short story by Kipling standards. ("The Brushwood Boy" is almost a novella.)
Phew! Finally finished this bible-thick volume of Kipling's 'weird fiction', and am now enlightened as to what a prolific and talented author he was, and can recognise the tendrils of his influence in the work of other authors that followed him.Strangely, Rudyard Kipling wasn't a name that I associated with this kind of writing - prior to reading this, the works he had written that were known to me I could count on one hand. The Jungle Book. Riki-tiki-tavi. Kim. Just So Stories. I'd heard of 'The Phantom Rickshaw' but didn't know it was by RK.After WWI, and with the waning of British Imperialism, Kipling came to be decried in what are known as 'liberal circles' as somewhat of a racist and imperialist due to the jingoistic tone of many of his works, his support for the Boer War and his friendship with Cecil Rhodes, and I think this negative view of Kipling persists in the minds of many. But his work needs to be viewed in the context of the times in which it was written, and taken for what it is, which is the work of a skilled and clever author. Besides which (at least in these stories), Kipling's imperialism is actually tinged with a very healthy degree of cynicism for the workings of Empire, and his racism does not express itself in hateful language. In fact you will find a good deal more racism in the works of other fantastical writers who succeeded him, such as R.E.Howard or H.P.Lovecraft (both of whom I respect and admire as authors).The thing I enjoyed the most about reading these stories is the picture they paint of life in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century. Kipling writes about people from all walks of life. Though well-connected, Kipling was no stranger to hardship and suffering, and his life was filled with a breadth of personal experience of the human condition. This is what separates Kipling from many other authors of weird fiction - he writes convincingly, with believable characters, and his stories are more than a mere facile vehicle for whatever bit of phantasmagoria he wants to dangle in front of the reader.Top marks.
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I'm not quite sure if it happened only once, but I seem to have the memory in my mind of the blind Jorge Luis Borges, whenever an English-speaking visitor came to interview him, asking the visitor to read out loud to him from the work of Rudyard Kipling. As for myself, it has been some years since I've read any of Kipling's work. I suspect I have been staying away from his work because of his reputation of being an unregenerate imperialist. (My friends from India, for example, loathe him.)When I picked up a copy of The Mark of the Beast and Other Horror Tales to read, I was surprised to find that there is something about the man's style that is indeed admirable. I would find myself re-reading a passage out loud just for the color of the words and the marshaling of the sentences. Take, for instance, the opening of "My Own True Ghost Story":There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. Then they drop upon his neck and remain. There are also terrible ghosts of women who have died in child-bed. These wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. But to answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black.Most of the stories in this collection are set in India and liberally interspersed with Anglo-Indian slang. Many of the more unusual terms are explained in a glossary at the end of the book.It has become a ritual for me as Halloween approaches to read one of the many Dover Publications collections of horror stories, of which this is an excellent example. It contains a short, but adequate introduction by S. T. Joshi before launching into the stories themselves.As horror stories go, Kipling's are not particularly horrible the way some of Algernon Blackwood's or M. R. James's stories are. They can even be said to be as much psychological as horrific, like many of the Val Lewton horror films of the 1040s.
—Jim
