From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
    wrote in message   
   news:1176324946.202554.50900@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...   
   >. Paradoxically,   
   postcolonial critics later rekindled an intense interest in his work,   
   >viewing it as both symptomatic and critical of imperialist attitudes."   
      
   ...which it obviously is, at least in the latter. Look at his The Man Who   
   Would Be King - the unsustainability of the empire is all in there.   
      
   He knew the fruit-juice drinkers were after him in his own lifetime. He   
   mentions the The (Manchester) Guardian being on his tail in Something of   
   Myself. Which is quite funny.   
      
   I'll copy in more of Compton-Rickett's Kipling evaluation when I get time   
   because it's a bloody sight better and believe it or not measured than   
   anything above. I have the Ox - or Camb - Comp to Eng Lit - not much fun.   
      
   Meanwhile, as they say at the Oscars, let's just remind ourselves with an   
   excerpt:   
      
      
   Then I became respectable, and returned   
   to an Office where there were no Kings and   
   no incidents except the daily manufacture of   
   a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to   
   attract every conceivable sort of person, to   
   the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission   
   ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly   
   abandon all his duties to describe a   
   Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a   
   perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who   
   have been overpassed for commands sit   
   down and sketch the outline of a series of   
   ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles   
   on Seniority versus Selection; missionaries   
   wish to know why they have not been permitted   
   to escape from their regular vehicles   
   of abuse and swear at a brother-missionary   
   under special patronage of the editorial We;   
   stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain   
   that they cannot pay for their advertisements,   
   but on their return from New   
   Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest;   
   inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines,   
   carriage couplings and unbreakable   
   swords and axle-trees call with specifications   
   in their pockets and hours at their disposal;   
   tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses   
   with the office pens; secretaries of   
   ball-committees clamor to have the glories   
   of their last dance more fully expounded;   
   strange ladies rustle in and say:-"I want a   
   hundred lady's cards printed at once, please,"   
   which is manifestly part of an Editor's duty;   
   and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped   
   the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business   
   to ask for employment as a proof-reader.   
   And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing   
   madly, and Kings are being killed on the   
   Continent, and Empires are saying, "You're   
   another," and Mister Gladstone is calling   
   down brimstone upon the British Dominions,   
   and the little black copy-boys are whining,   
   "kaa-pi chayha-yeh" (copy wanted) like   
   tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank   
   as Modred's shield.   
      
   But that is the amusing part of the year.   
   There are other six months wherein none   
   ever come to call, and the thermometer   
   walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass,   
   and the office is darkened to just above reading   
   light, and the press machines are red-hot   
   of touch, and nobody writes anything but   
   accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations   
   or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes   
   a tinkling terror, because it tells you   
   of the sudden deaths of men and women   
   that you knew intimately, and the prickly-heat   
   covers you as with a garment, and you   
   sit down and write:-"A slight increase of   
   sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta   
   Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic   
   in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic   
   efforts of the District authorities, is now   
   almost at an end. It is, however, with deep   
   regret we record the death, etc."   
      
      
   C/O   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)