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Reading Kim: Buddhist, spy, trans-raced?
Spoilers in what follows, if there's anyone else in the world who hasn't already read this.
Of course I totally enjoyed Kim, and definitely, if you're a Laurie King fan and read The Game, you'll want to read or re-read (as the case may be) Kipling's book. I had never read it before. There are strange gaps in my education, and Kipling is one.
On the positive side, Kipling's a fine story-teller, of course, and the characters are all immensely appealing. The bad guys are indeed smarmy, overconfident Europeans, for the most part (but with an occasional bad-guy Asian thrown in). Also, I did not expect to find a Buddhist in such a central role, and expected even less that Kipling would understand Buddhism as much as he did. I know less about the other cultures and religions, but will assume factual accuracy. And for the most part, he credits culture over "blood" by making Kim so Asian in almost all ways. You have to imagine Kim, when he does so well at "passing," as wish-fulfillment (Mary Sue?) for some colonials.
On the negative side, there were a few outright racist statements (we always have a hint that the reason for Kim's excellence at everything is his white blood, many stereotypes about punctuality, etc.), and certainly the great powers, the reason for the existence of the "Great Game," were the European powers. Like all the Hollywood movies purporting to be about Africa (like Cry Freedom, supposedly about Stephen Biko) but really about the white people involved with them, perhaps Kipling too deals with true Asians only as supporting cast for his white hero.
On the questioning side, I remember Edward Said, probably inaccurately, and his descriptions of European writers involved in "Orientalism." I doubt that he dealt with anyone as pop as Kipling, but I recall his negative views on other Europeans (Flaubert, T.E. Lawrence, etc), who "represent[ed] Asia, because she c[ould] not represent herself" and thus appropriated Asian as something for Europeans and Americans to use, not as existing in its own right--cultural colonialism. That last part is hardly the case in our day, with all the brilliant South Asians writing in English (Seth, Ghosh, Roy, Mistry, Mukerji, Desai, to name a few--not to mention controversial figures like Rushdie and Ondaatje). Definitely Asians now represent themselves in world literature.
Certainly reading Kipling in the present context is a good bit different from what it was in his time. So one question is exactly what I'm reading. I think I'm reading how Kipling represents his own kind, really. I'm looking at the book, not for what it shows me of Asia, but for what it shows me of British colonialist mentality before the twentieth century.
Also, I'm wondering if there is a need in the world, though, for cultural "translators." I know my own progress, as much as I've made it (knowing we can't totally erase the culture that produced us), from living in a racist, segregated society, to seeing everyone as fully human, was aided to some extent not only by my immediate personal experience, but also by writers like Julia Peterkin(a local white novelist who sympathetically wrote about the lives of black people in Black April and even by Dubose Heyward, though I'm sure that now the story of Porgy and Bess (perhaps not the music, though) seems more racist than anything Kipling wrote. But I'm not sure I would have been able to understand James Baldwin and the other African American writers I first encountered if I hadn't had those stepping stones that gave me a little more insight into the lives of people my culture didn't recognize as people. At the time, those writers were pulling back a curtain. Now that the curtain is gone, they seem very limited in vision.
So did Kipling in any way create a bridge between cultures, or did he just make the crossing more difficult? (hmm, too many metaphors, but hope you know what I mean.)
Or maybe I'm just trying to justify something that shouldn't be justified. Maybe I should leave it where we started--it's a great yarn, but it comes out of a sick culture.
Of course I totally enjoyed Kim, and definitely, if you're a Laurie King fan and read The Game, you'll want to read or re-read (as the case may be) Kipling's book. I had never read it before. There are strange gaps in my education, and Kipling is one.
On the positive side, Kipling's a fine story-teller, of course, and the characters are all immensely appealing. The bad guys are indeed smarmy, overconfident Europeans, for the most part (but with an occasional bad-guy Asian thrown in). Also, I did not expect to find a Buddhist in such a central role, and expected even less that Kipling would understand Buddhism as much as he did. I know less about the other cultures and religions, but will assume factual accuracy. And for the most part, he credits culture over "blood" by making Kim so Asian in almost all ways. You have to imagine Kim, when he does so well at "passing," as wish-fulfillment (Mary Sue?) for some colonials.
On the negative side, there were a few outright racist statements (we always have a hint that the reason for Kim's excellence at everything is his white blood, many stereotypes about punctuality, etc.), and certainly the great powers, the reason for the existence of the "Great Game," were the European powers. Like all the Hollywood movies purporting to be about Africa (like Cry Freedom, supposedly about Stephen Biko) but really about the white people involved with them, perhaps Kipling too deals with true Asians only as supporting cast for his white hero.
On the questioning side, I remember Edward Said, probably inaccurately, and his descriptions of European writers involved in "Orientalism." I doubt that he dealt with anyone as pop as Kipling, but I recall his negative views on other Europeans (Flaubert, T.E. Lawrence, etc), who "represent[ed] Asia, because she c[ould] not represent herself" and thus appropriated Asian as something for Europeans and Americans to use, not as existing in its own right--cultural colonialism. That last part is hardly the case in our day, with all the brilliant South Asians writing in English (Seth, Ghosh, Roy, Mistry, Mukerji, Desai, to name a few--not to mention controversial figures like Rushdie and Ondaatje). Definitely Asians now represent themselves in world literature.
Certainly reading Kipling in the present context is a good bit different from what it was in his time. So one question is exactly what I'm reading. I think I'm reading how Kipling represents his own kind, really. I'm looking at the book, not for what it shows me of Asia, but for what it shows me of British colonialist mentality before the twentieth century.
Also, I'm wondering if there is a need in the world, though, for cultural "translators." I know my own progress, as much as I've made it (knowing we can't totally erase the culture that produced us), from living in a racist, segregated society, to seeing everyone as fully human, was aided to some extent not only by my immediate personal experience, but also by writers like Julia Peterkin(a local white novelist who sympathetically wrote about the lives of black people in Black April and even by Dubose Heyward, though I'm sure that now the story of Porgy and Bess (perhaps not the music, though) seems more racist than anything Kipling wrote. But I'm not sure I would have been able to understand James Baldwin and the other African American writers I first encountered if I hadn't had those stepping stones that gave me a little more insight into the lives of people my culture didn't recognize as people. At the time, those writers were pulling back a curtain. Now that the curtain is gone, they seem very limited in vision.
So did Kipling in any way create a bridge between cultures, or did he just make the crossing more difficult? (hmm, too many metaphors, but hope you know what I mean.)
Or maybe I'm just trying to justify something that shouldn't be justified. Maybe I should leave it where we started--it's a great yarn, but it comes out of a sick culture.
no subject
And I'm really touched that my one woman dislike of Ondaatje has been enough to earn him a place next to Rushdie as controversial! I actually don't like Rushdie all that much either but that's because i keep trying to read him and stalling - my sister raves about him, and I picked up her copy of the one about the Indian pop star thinking, "how inaccessible can this be any way" and got hugely frustrated all over again about his prose all over again.
Errm, I have to admit that I have read more Kipling than any of the S Asian authors you name. I now feel ashamed. I grew up reading Desai though....
no subject
I found the South Asian writers to be a great delight. The ones I like best--Seth and Ghosh--for the most part work within the traditional realistic novel format, but their powers of observation are so rich, their characters so complex, that I'm sorry when a book ends. The only one that I don't like much is Mistry--his view of the world is so depressing.
no subject
I agree about closeness to culture. I don't know about his long term rep, but I think it will be slight. Compared to what is happening, the voices that cannot speak and the strangulated songs, what he wants to say seems so slight. Which is fine. There is room for slight. But it feels like he's missing the real thing.
Also Running in the Family exposed a snobbishness and world view that made me cringe a little. but it is quite readable and funny, and i think, less overwritten than his other work!