Kipling on Writing

ELT 41:1 1998 anti-semitism, on the issue of votes for women and the equality of the sexes in general, Shaw does not straddle the fence in any way: in a review demolishing an anti-female polemic by Sir Almoth Wright (the distinguished physician who provided Shaw with the technical medical knowledge he needed to write The Doctor's Dilemma), Shaw with withering irony gives the "Masculine Male Manly Man" the following self-panegyric : "I . . . am obviously purely intellectual and anionic in appraising statements; am never over-influenced by individual instances; never arrive at conclusions on incomplete evidence;... do not believe in things merely because I wish they were true, . . . but live, godlike, in full consciousness of the external world as it really is unbiased by predilections and aversions; for such gentlemen, is the happy effect of the physiological attachments of Man's mind." Those readers looking for articulations of Shaw's understanding of the nature of art and its place in society will find abundant material throughout (adjacent however to lengthy analyses of national taxation and factory legislation). As usual, Shaw oscillates between valuing art for its didactic function, and valuing it for its expressive power. In reviewing his own novels, for example, he asserts: "The business of a novelist is largely to provide working models of improved types of humanity." Six years later he states simply, "Art is the expression of feeling." In between these two declarations, Shaw wrote eloquently on the human need for art: "Art is not merely a fashion, but an organic part of life, not a dispensable, unneedful luxury, but a need so deep that no abundance of bread and butter can keep us fully alive whilst it is starved." For such passages, for the sampling it provides of Shaw's development as a thinker, for the artistic, political, social, and even economic context it brings to life, Bryan Tyson's heroically annotated second volume of Shaw's book reviews is a treasure—and seems to be priced accordingly. John A. Bertolini ________________ Middlebury College Kipling on Writing Rudyard Kipling. Writings on Writing. Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xxviii + 213 pp. $59.95 THE CHOICE OF EDITORS is first-rate: Sandra Kemp (Quintin Hogg Research Fellow at the University of Westminster) and Lisa Lewis (former Chairman of the Kipling Society). Cambridge University Press 72 BOOK REVIEWS has provided a generous allotment of space. The entire Kipling canon has been conscientiously reviewed. In some cases, holograph letters are printed for the first time. Why, then, will this collection disappoint most readers who are looking for a clear picture of Kipling's reading preferences, his awareness of literary tradition, his aesthetic judgments on the craft of writing, and his opinions on commerce and copyright? The title promises more than it delivers in any one of these categories. Perhaps the scrappiness of the selections is largely to blame; there are more than 100 extracts and short pieces (mainly poems), an average of one every two pages. Those who know Kipling will be surprised at the omission of most of the relevant passages in Something of Myself Kemp and Lewis recognize its importance; they describe that autobiographical fragment as being Kipling's "own account of his working life," and add that the whole of it might well be included here; but only four rhymed lines are quoted in the main text. The decision not to reprint sizeable selections drawn from it is, to say the least, arguable. The reason for largely ignoring The Light that Failed, another extended discussion of the aims of art, is hinted at in the editors' stated preference for Kipling's "covert criticism." The word "covert" is tantalizing , though it is evident that Kipling often approaches the problems of being a writer from an oblique direction. Indeed, a substantial number of the excerpts are so obliquely related to "writing" that a reader inevitably yearns for familiar items that are more out in the open. In practice, this preference for subtle statements means that some nearly unreadable items—i.e., "less accessible pieces"—take pride of place over "well known texts." Kipling once let Dick Heldar say...